Cornell Fans Rock

My wife and I live in Atlanta. She is a native Atlantan, born and bred on college football. She attended Florida State during the glory years and has taken me to games and the roar of the crowd is deafening there and it is just awesome. But having told her about the Lynah Faithful and their passion and wit, I finally got some tix this year and flew up for the games this past weekend. I had her read the cheers section of this site beforehand as a kind of study session.

To say that she was completely blown away by the Lynah Faithful was an understatement. Her experience was everything I had described and was better than I remembered. All I can say is that if you love Cornell hockey and haven't been back in some years, returning to Lynah makes you realize how special it is, especially when you get to watch someone else (who knows what big time college sports is about) experience for the first time. I won't wait 17 years until I am back again.

A friend of mine was up this past weekend as well. He's a Clarkson grad who lived in Ithaca for about 10 years and is now lives in St Louis and is a pretty dedicated Blues fan. He said that most of the Blues games are very quiet and nothing like the college game and from his view there's definitely no place like Lynah. From his perspective, the only time NHL rinks approach the kind of fan involvement Lynah enjoys nearly every game is during the playoffs.

I hope Gary Bettman '74 enjoyed the game.

Turns out that you stumbled into a helluva weekend, crowd-wise. I'd say the crowd was as into this weekend's games as any this year, save Hahvahd, and even that game didn't come close to the intensity of last year.

As for your comment, Larry, I find the same thing. Regular season NHL hockey produces some awfully quiet houses -- everywhere. Sure, an extended period of pressure, or some great sequences of hitting or up and down play will get the crowd to their feet. But I think by default, when so many fans are so far away from the action (and the ones closest may not be the most die-hard, but the ones with the most cash), it's going to produce a relatively tame atmosphere for most regular season games.

Playoffs are a whole different story, obviously.

Larry '72 wrote:

He said that most of the Blues games are very quiet and nothing like the college game and from his view there's definitely no place like Lynah. From his perspective, the only time NHL rinks approach the kind of fan involvement Lynah enjoys nearly every game is during the playoffs.

Shortly after I moved to Switzerland, there was an article in one of the local free newspapers about a fan of the Bernese hockey team (SCBern) who had moved to Santa Monica. One of the things he mentioned was that the atmosphere at NHL games was lacking compared to what he was used to in Switzerland. Having been to several SCBern games at that point, and seen the singing, chanting, cheering and drumming that went on throughout the game, I wrote to tell him that sort of enthusiasm could be found in American hockey, just not at the professional level. It was an explanation I had to repeat for a number of Swiss hockey fans, along with the fact that I didn't really follow the NHL. (Europeans in general seem to be very interested in the NHL as the top level of play in the world.)

Maybe that's why Lance Nethery stayed in Europe.

Worth every penny of $$ when wife and I went back to Ithaca for the Harvard-Brown weekend. We are gearing up for another road trip to Providence & Cambridge this weekend. JS Rosenberg '86: Next time, you have to bring wife to a Cornell-Harvard game (preferrably at Lynah, but Lynah East would do)--the fish, the cheers, the intensity of it all.

LGR!

I agree. A couple of years ago I asked for Harvard tix for my biday but the wife could not score any. Now, after this weekend, we are both completely pumped up to throw some fish!