Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by billhoward
Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: billhoward (---.ziffdavis.com)
Date: November 08, 2004 01:48PM
Semi-interesting story on Penn hockey on USCHO. Penn resurrected its hockey program in the 1960s, did pretty well in the early 1970s (including getting a brand new rink in 1970 and knocking off defending NCAA champ BU in 1973 in the playoffs), then ran afoul of budget woes and finally was dropped in 1978.
[www.uscho.com]
There's speculation about Philadelphia having a storied hockey history and wouldn't it be nice if Penn came back and played hockey again (giving Princeton an ideal travel partner), but it seems more wishful thinking than anything else.
If the story is correct, it wasn't that big a drain on Penn finances: Bob Finke, the final coach, says the budget the last year was $60,000 (about $175,000 in today's dollars). And every other sport that was cut for budget reasons was later restored -- except hockey.
[www.uscho.com]
There's speculation about Philadelphia having a storied hockey history and wouldn't it be nice if Penn came back and played hockey again (giving Princeton an ideal travel partner), but it seems more wishful thinking than anything else.
If the story is correct, it wasn't that big a drain on Penn finances: Bob Finke, the final coach, says the budget the last year was $60,000 (about $175,000 in today's dollars). And every other sport that was cut for budget reasons was later restored -- except hockey.
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: lhayes (---.clsphila.org)
Date: November 08, 2004 02:18PM
As a Philadelphian, I'd be thrilled to have U Penn start up D-1 hockey again. But I strongly doubt you could run a hockey program on $175K a year now. I wouldn't think that would even cover the costs of coaches' salaries and benefits, much less equipment, team travel, and recruiting. Anyone know what Cornell's hockey budget is?
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: nyc94 (66.147.178.---)
Date: November 08, 2004 02:25PM
Presumably, they would have to start a women's team as well - or some other sport to keep within Title IX balance.
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: billhoward (---.ziffdavis.com)
Date: November 08, 2004 02:32PM
What's amazing is that the Class of '23 kicked in something like $3 million to build the rink a decade earlier. That would have been around their 45th reunion. You'd think the athletics department would have gone back to the class 10 years later and said, for $100K a year, you can keep your investment filled with hockey players, or for let's say $1.5 million you could fund the program in perpetuity. Don't know why they didn't do it. There is a big difference between 45th reunion (you're about 67) and 55th reunion in terms of vibrancy and perhaps the most key donors had gone on the the blue and red section in the sky.
The rink has (at least had back then) a big glassed-in VIP section that say high above the ice and kept the noise manageable. I think it was about 3200 seats, not bad for a school that had been playing in places like Cherry Hill before the rink got built.
The rink has (at least had back then) a big glassed-in VIP section that say high above the ice and kept the noise manageable. I think it was about 3200 seats, not bad for a school that had been playing in places like Cherry Hill before the rink got built.
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: A-19 (---.ne.client2.attbi.com)
Date: November 08, 2004 04:28PM
where did penn play in cherry hill? that's my hometown.
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: cornelldavy (---.stmnca.adelphia.net)
Date: November 08, 2004 05:36PM
Growing up 15 minutes from Penn, my high school hockey team used to practice at Class of '23 rink, and as far as rinks in the Philly area go, it's pretty decent. I can't think of another nearby rink offhand (not counting the Wachovia Center and Spectrum) that seats more, and as a player, I appreciated that the locker rooms are nice and big (way bigger than the visitors' room at Lynah). The only drawback with seating would be that there isn't any behind the goals, if I remember correctly, only walkways above the ice surface that go between the seats on either side of the ice (kind of like Meehan, I think). Also, like some other rinks (Bright, for example), the benches are on opposite sides of the ice from one another, which I never really liked. I always thought the coolest thing about Class of '23 though was that when you stood on the goal line on the west end of the rink, you could look through the windows above the seating area in the northeast corner of the rink and have a perfect view of the scrolling marquee of the electric building in center city Philly. It was a nice distraction between suicides.
___________________________
Alex F. '03 * [www.uclahockey.org]
Alex F. '03 * [www.uclahockey.org]
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: KeithK (---.external.lmco.com)
Date: November 08, 2004 05:41PM
[q]I appreciated that the locker rooms are nice and big (way bigger than the visitors' room at Lynah).[/q]You say this as if the visitor's locker rooms at Lynah were a bug and not a feature.
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: cornelldavy (---.stmnca.adelphia.net)
Date: November 08, 2004 05:47PM
Good point...I guess I was thinking of when I dressed in there for campus tournament games, pe class, intramurals, etc...and in those occasions, we didn't have a full 20-man roster of 6-foot-plus guys...I was always tempted to leave a message on the chalkboard in there after skating on Saturday morning.
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: billhoward (---.union01.nj.comcast.net)
Date: November 08, 2004 06:59PM
Penn played in Cherry Hill mid to late 1960s. Maybe in their spare time, as long as they were in the area, it let them try to pick up girls hitching rides home from Camden Catholic.
The 1978 Penn transfer windfall
Posted by: Hillel Hoffmann (---.usb.temple.edu)
Date: November 09, 2004 11:57AM
I was glad to see that the uscho.com piece on the demise of Penn hockey mentioned Cornell's 1978 transfer windfall. Those four Penn refugees -- Whitehead, Roeszler, Berk, and Strawman -- ended up playing major roles in a transitional period for the program.
Whitehead, an excellent forward, was the only upperclassman in the bunch, so he only played a season.
Roeszler, Berk, and Strawman came as sophomores. Although they were somewhat overshadowed by Cornell's brighter lights of the time (Nethery, Tredway, Eliot, Hayward, Kerling, and the like), they formed a nucleus that held together some teams that [ahem] presented leadership challenges.
They also were unsung heroes in arguably two of Cornell hockey's top five greatest moments: "The Game" (the comeback against Providence in the 1979 ECAC playoffs) and 1980's amazing, improbable ECAC tournament run -- a championship that ended a long drought.
Strawman was a gangly defenseman. Berk was a solid center and playmaker who quietly racked up about 25 points a year. But Roeszler was always my personal favorite. Although tiny compared to most of Cornell's other great defensemen, I still consider Roeszler the second-best Cornell defenseman of the post-Harkness period. Always composed and reliable. A fantastic QB on the power play. A great puckhandler under pressure. And yet largely invisible, even to fans of the day. He finally got what he deserved when his teammates voted him MVP in his senior year -- not bad, considering Cornell's number one and number two all-time leading goal scorers were also seniors that year.
Whitehead, an excellent forward, was the only upperclassman in the bunch, so he only played a season.
Roeszler, Berk, and Strawman came as sophomores. Although they were somewhat overshadowed by Cornell's brighter lights of the time (Nethery, Tredway, Eliot, Hayward, Kerling, and the like), they formed a nucleus that held together some teams that [ahem] presented leadership challenges.
They also were unsung heroes in arguably two of Cornell hockey's top five greatest moments: "The Game" (the comeback against Providence in the 1979 ECAC playoffs) and 1980's amazing, improbable ECAC tournament run -- a championship that ended a long drought.
Strawman was a gangly defenseman. Berk was a solid center and playmaker who quietly racked up about 25 points a year. But Roeszler was always my personal favorite. Although tiny compared to most of Cornell's other great defensemen, I still consider Roeszler the second-best Cornell defenseman of the post-Harkness period. Always composed and reliable. A fantastic QB on the power play. A great puckhandler under pressure. And yet largely invisible, even to fans of the day. He finally got what he deserved when his teammates voted him MVP in his senior year -- not bad, considering Cornell's number one and number two all-time leading goal scorers were also seniors that year.
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: jkahn (216.146.73.---)
Date: November 09, 2004 02:07PM
I was at the Jan. '69 game at Cherry Hill. My friends and I would routinely bring hats to games in anticipation of throwing them for hat tricks. Strangely, nobody was really doing this at Lynah until we started, although it seems like I remember more road hat tricks than home. Knowing there was a good chance of needing hats that day, we drove into Philly and found a hat store (there were actually stores that sold men's dress hats in those days in downtown business districts). We asked the owner if he had any out-of-style inventory that he was ready to throw out and he sold us a dozen for 50 cents each. We wound up walking into the rink at the same time as the team, and Brian Cropper saw me carrying the stack of 12 fancy dress hats. He almost fell over laughing. We wound up bringing the hats back with us that day, as we scored ten goals, with four different guys netting two.
Starting the next year, Penn's teams seemed to improve markedly. Last week I walked by the Class of '23 Arena, and it looks pretty nice from the outside, but my thoughts were that it was a wasted asset.
Starting the next year, Penn's teams seemed to improve markedly. Last week I walked by the Class of '23 Arena, and it looks pretty nice from the outside, but my thoughts were that it was a wasted asset.
___________________________
Jeff Kahn '70 '72
Jeff Kahn '70 '72
Re: The 1978 Penn transfer windfall
Posted by: Jeff Hopkins '82 (---.airproducts.com)
Date: November 09, 2004 05:29PM
Whitehead was the key to turning "The Game" around.
We were down 5-1 when Whitehead who was generously listed at 5'6" checked Big Jim Korn (6' 5"
into the corner boards near section G. That fired the whole team up, and the comeback began.
We were down 5-1 when Whitehead who was generously listed at 5'6" checked Big Jim Korn (6' 5"
into the corner boards near section G. That fired the whole team up, and the comeback began.
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: Townie (---.twcny.rr.com)
Date: November 09, 2004 06:21PM
[Q]billhoward Wrote:
You'd think the athletics department would have gone back to the class 10 years later and said, for $100K a year, you can keep your investment filled with hockey players, or for let's say $1.5 million you could fund the program in perpetuity.[/q]
A $1.5 million endowment would generate about $70k annually at Cornell. I'm guessing they'd need at least 5 to 10 times that amount to endow the program.
You'd think the athletics department would have gone back to the class 10 years later and said, for $100K a year, you can keep your investment filled with hockey players, or for let's say $1.5 million you could fund the program in perpetuity.[/q]
A $1.5 million endowment would generate about $70k annually at Cornell. I'm guessing they'd need at least 5 to 10 times that amount to endow the program.
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: billhoward (---.union01.nj.comcast.net)
Date: November 09, 2004 08:08PM
[Q]Townie Wrote:
billhoward Wrote:
You'd think the athletics department would have gone back to the class 10 years later and said, for $100K a year, you can keep your investment filled with hockey players, or for let's say $1.5 million you could fund the program in perpetuity.[/Q]
A $1.5 million endowment would generate about $70k annually at Cornell. I'm guessing they'd need at least 5 to 10 times that amount to endow the program.[/q]
The reference was to 1978 dollars when the Penn hockey budget was said to be $60,000, which is about $175,000 in 2004 dollars. $1.5 million returning 5% would give you $75K a year without touching the principal, which was a bit more than what the Penn hockey team cost then. Get a smart Wharton guy to invest it and you might have twice that (or none).
But as NYC94 noted, to bring back Penn hockey you'd need to invest in a women's team as well.
I don't know how big a check you'd have to write to endow Cornell's hockey program in perpetuity -- maybe $5 million, $10 million to be safe and to include in the women's team. In 1998, a Cornell Law grad, Robert Ziff, endowed the *Harvard* hockey coaching position with a $2 million gift - coach only, not the whole team expenses. (He'd previously endowed the Harvard intramural hockey program in honor of the fun times he'd had as an undergrad there. He played intramurals here, too, so keep your fingers crossed.) That endowment netted Mark Mazzoleni about $100,000 a year (reportedly). Are we agreed Mike Schafer's got to be worth more than that, even if Ithaca has a cheaper standard of living?
The current Cornell athletics campaign is trying to net $100 million and a good chunk of that will be to endow the majority of the coaching positions.
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: peterg (---.twcny.rr.com)
Date: November 09, 2004 09:06PM
Mike is formally the Jay R. Bloom '77 Head Coach of Men's Hockey" which I would take to mean his position is endowed already.
Re: Penn hockey history on USCHO
Posted by: Beeeej (---.nycmny83.dynamic.covad.net)
Date: November 10, 2004 12:34AM
[Q]peterg Wrote:
Mike is formally the Jay R. Bloom '77 Head Coach of Men's Hockey" which I would take to mean his position is endowed already.[/q]
That is correct.
Beeeej
Mike is formally the Jay R. Bloom '77 Head Coach of Men's Hockey" which I would take to mean his position is endowed already.[/q]
That is correct.
Beeeej
___________________________
Beeeej, Esq.
"Cornell isn't an organization. It's a loose affiliation of independent fiefdoms united by a common hockey team."
- Steve Worona
Beeeej, Esq.
"Cornell isn't an organization. It's a loose affiliation of independent fiefdoms united by a common hockey team."
- Steve Worona
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