Newspaper Tradition

A friend of mine was telling me about her recent med school interview at UPenn. The guy who interviewed her was a Cornell alumnus and asked her if the students still do "that thing with the newspapers" before the hockey games. When she answered yes, he excitedly claimed that he and his friends had started that. She estimates that he would have been an undergraduate 25 or 30 years ago...I'm curious to know, could what he said be true?

If it is true, would it be possible you to get a message to that guy and his friends thanking him for starting such a cool tradition (even if it's been slightly altered through the years)?

Becca wrote:

A friend of mine was telling me about her recent med school interview at UPenn. The guy who interviewed her was a Cornell alumnus and asked her if the students still do "that thing with the newspapers" before the hockey games. When she answered yes, he excitedly claimed that he and his friends had started that. She estimates that he would have been an undergraduate 25 or 30 years ago...I'm curious to know, could what he said be true?

If you can get me the person's name and year, I'll be happy to add it to the cheers page when I update it over winter break.

It would be true only if he sat with me. What is his name?

I stole the idea from the University of Scranton basketball fans when I was home on mid-semester break in '81. In the early '80 Scranton was one of the top teams in D-III and their fans were as rowdy as the faithful. One of their things was to sit behind the opponent's basket and rattle newspapers as they tried to shoot foul shots. The coach, however, thought this was extremely unsportsmanlike, and requested they stop it. The debate made the local papers, which is where I learned about it.

It seemed a natural fit for introductions, since that was the only time you could do it without missing part of the game. The "boooooooring" part was easy to come up with, as that was already used for all sorts of sporting events (taunting opposing bands, especially). The throwing the papers in the air and on the ice when they announced the Big Red sort of evolved on its own.

JH

She dug up his name - it's Steve Fakarzadeh. Did you know him, Jeff?

Never heard of him. I'm willing to concede that they tried to start the tradition before I arrived, but it apparently didn't really catch on.

When I arrived in '78, nothing was being done during the opposing team announcements and it pretty much stayed that way until well into my junior year. Our players would skate into the opposing zone and spray ice at the goalie as their name was announced, but that was the extent of announcement activities.

JH

Jeff Hopkins '82 wrote:

Our players would skate into the opposing zone and spray ice at the goalie as their name was announced, but that was the extent of announcement activities.

That should be done again! I'd love for ol' Sieve-Hyphen-Sieve to get pissed off by that!

A certain Mike Schafer used to do this as a young lad, though he denies it to this day...

Awesome - Did anyone see him do that?

Er, Shafer graduated in '86... Greg's '85. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say yes, someone has seen Shafer do that. :-p

I saw Shafer do something during the announcements on one occassion that was much more provoking than spraying ice - I think it was a Harvard game. It must have been discussed in this forum before...does anyone know what I am talking about?

With the structurally compromised stick?

What happened? <--- Youngin here

Yes, the stick was rigged - it was the best psych-out move I've ever seen. Cowbell Guy, I'm not so great at telling stories, do you want to tell it? Were you there?

Isn't there another story about Schafer pausing on the red line, turning to the opposing team, and aiming a slapshot at the coach?

I know nothing about any stunt like that.

But what I remember as the most provoking stunt I’ve ever seen is:
As the starting lineup for Cornell was introduced, most of our players would skate up to the blue line, perhaps spray some ice and greet each other. When Shafer was introduced, he skated past the blue, to the red line, screeched to a halt, then looking into the faces of (I think) the Harvard players, he broke his stick over his head. The crowd went crazy. It was beautiful.

I understand that he'd cut his stick with a saw before the game to be sure that the attempt didn't backfire on him.

yougoon wrote:
Cowbell Guy, I'm not so great at telling stories, do you want to tell it? Were you there?

Good Lord, how old do you think I am?
I'll defer to someone who might have actually seen it.

Harvard was humiliating Cornell 11-3 at Lynah, Schafer's clearing pass became, accidentally, a Clearying pass.

It was no more on purpose than Mitchell ringing up Mike at Potsdam.

The other shoe (stick) dropping in the story of Mike breaking his stick over his head is that Harvard then rushed out to a 4-0 lead in the first 7 minutes of that game. The rest is history: [members.cox.net]

Note the scorer of Cornell's go-ahead goal.



Post Edited (12-04-03 15:25)

20 years ago, nearly to the day.

Also the ice spraying made some teams (most now) face their goalie so as to not be able to get any spray.

I once talked to a teammate of the coach who said that Shafer wanted to break a stick over his head but his friends on the team talked him into making the cut and taping it over to hide the marks.