Questions for the Coach on ECACHL website

Coach Schafer answers questions from fans:
[www.ecachockeyleague.com]

[q]3) What do you think of the "Fish" tradition??

Coach Schafer: I think there are so few traditions left in college sports that as long as the tradition of throwing fish on the ice remains under control and I think the fans have done a great job, in the last couple of years, that they get thrown on the ice once and that there isn’t a constant delay in game. I think that is important, it is a tradition, but not a delay the actual event itself. It’s also important to not be out of control.[/q]

Wonder what Mr. Nighman has to say about that...

[q]Frank from Boston:
There’s been talk the last few years of renovations to Lynah Rink? Any truth to that? If so, what kinds of things are in the plans and when will it happen?

Coach Schafer’s answer:
There will be renovations to Lynah Rink. Whether they are a year, or two years from now. We have plans on renovating it, to update the facility. Not much has been done to it since it was built in 1957. We are hoping to update all our facilities—locker rooms, offices and visiting teams locker rooms. It is in the works and hopefully it will be done in a couple of years.[/q]Come on coach, I thought you read the forum! If you did, you'd know that the visiting locker rooms are a feature, not a bug!

Unless by "update" he meant adding bigger air conditioners, splinters to the benches, and making them smaller...

Seriously! I was surprised by this answer! Keep the visiting locker room! It makes my heart warm to know that Harvard has to try to relax in a stuffy, worn down room with a chalk board that most classrooms don't have any more.

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

Come on coach, I thought you read the forum! If you did, you'd know that the visiting locker rooms are a feature, not a bug!
[/q]
Could an inhospitable visiting locker room be a deterrent to getting top teams to Lynah?

I've been hearing for four or five years that in "one or two years" they are going to renovate.

[q]Could an inhospitable visiting locker room be a deterrent to getting top teams to Lynah?[/q]I suppose it could be, but it strikes me as a pretty lame excuse. I'd put my money on the money issue.

I happen to have first hand knowledge that firms have been bidding on the renovation.

[Q]atb9 Wrote:

Seriously! I was surprised by this answer! Keep the visiting locker room! It makes my heart warm to know that Harvard has to try to relax in a stuffy, worn down room with a chalk board that most classrooms don't have any more.[/q]

Four "big league" locker rooms would make Cornell a more attractive host for tournaments like the Everblades. Right now there are three rooms, so a fourth team keeps their gear in Bartels and puts their skates on in the rink. Rinky-dink to say the least. A first-class facility is also a recruiting tool.

I trust Mike Schafer knows what's best for his program.

[Q]calgARI '07 Wrote:

I've been hearing for four or five years that in "one or two years" they are going to renovate.[/q]

Then you probably have been listening to the wrong people. Nothing is announced until there are definite plans, and that includes $$$.

If Brian is correct, then they have a target price in mind, and probably have some or all of the money lined up. Knowing the way Cornell works, they will not announce anything until it's a done deal. That makes perfect sense.

I doubt very few recruits who visit Cornell would hold the visitor's locker room against the program. The home locker room maybe.

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

I doubt very few recruits who visit Cornell would hold the visitor's locker room against the program. The home locker room maybe.
[/q]

It might dissuade recruits from other ECAC programs.

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

I doubt very few recruits who visit Cornell would hold the visitor's locker room against the program. The home locker room maybe.
[/q]

Players come to Cornell even before they're officially recruited to play in junior and pee wee tournaments. Having some of them dress in the crappy visitors' locker room, and others across the street, hasn't exactly left a favorable impression on many of them.

In addition to addressing that problem, if they expand the number of locker rooms, which I'm not sure is actually part of the plans that Athletics approved, it makes it easier to host youth tournaments, and thus get kids excited about Cornell at an early age.

[q]Knowing the way Cornell works, they will not announce anything until it's a done deal. That makes perfect sense.[/q]

HAHAHA *breathe* HAHAHAHA

Let's take Cornell's new shining star-- Duffield Hall. Duffield was announced way before it was a "done deal." Hell, nothing was a "done deal" for a long time with Duffield-- being bounced around departments, arguments over lab space, what should be in the lab space, etc... To this day Cornell really doesn't know how to pay for the upkeep of Duffield, and if you walk through it, you see that it's not exactly the "hub of research" it was supposed to be. I think the only thing the building is being used for is a shortcut to Upson and Phillips halls. It may look nice on the inside, but it is, unfortuanately, useless as of now. I want the old Engineering quad back.

To get to the point, Cornell has not been too good at managing building projects. What may seem as a done deal will really change many, many times. I don't have any reason to believe that a Lynah rennovation will be much different. This adminstrative stuff at Cornell never really makes sense.

You're talking about two separate things. I think Townie meant that it wouldn't be announced until they knew it was paid for - which is usually true, they won't announce a building project or a naming until they have at least half to two-thirds of the money committed. This was true of Duffield Hall, as well - at least to the extent that, when they originally announced it, they already had half of the projected cost committed.

The fact that Duffield hasn't yet been used as efficiently as possibly for its intended purpose may be a shame, but it's hard to imagine such a thing happening with the renovation and extension of a hockey rink.

Beeeej

[Q]Beeeej Wrote:

You're talking about two separate things. I think Townie meant that it wouldn't be announced until they knew it was paid for - which is usually true, they won't announce a building project or a naming until they have at least half to two-thirds of the money committed.
Beeeej[/q]

That's correct, Beeeej. Of course, rumours often spread while plans are being drawn - hence Ari's "hearing for years" about the Lynah upgrade.

*cough* *cough* Alberding *cough*....

[Q]Frank from Boston: There’s been talk the last few years of renovations to Lynah Rink? Any truth to that? If so, what kinds of things are in the plans and when will it happen?
Coach Schafer’s answer: There will be renovations to Lynah Rink. Whether they are a year, or two years from now. We have plans on renovating it, to update the facility. Not much has been done to it since it was built in 1957. We are hoping to update all our facilities—locker rooms, offices and visiting teams locker rooms. It is in the works and hopefully it will be done in a couple of years.[/Q]

There's discussion here to the effect of: Why make nicer locker rooms for visitors since they're just visitors and we're trying to defeat them?

The advantage of sticking it to Harvard on the road is outweighed by having nicer locker rooms for youth tournaments and maybe for college tournaments, although I'm not sure how much pull there'd be for a Cornell Thanksgiving / Holiday Classic that would attract an Ohio State as opposed to a Utica Free School. (Ohio State bailed on the Everblades to run its own holiday tournament at home, but in a monster (16000 seats?) civic arena.) Actually you need at least five not four locker rooms because you've got the Cornell women's team also. And I don't know what the referees' locker room is like, but there's no reason they should have a lousy place to be between periods. Better facilities will make an impression on potential student-athletes playing youth tournaments here. Richie Moran in his mid-1070s glory years arranged a HS lacrosse tournament here on Schoellkopf Field (back when artificial turn was a novelty outside Nebraska and pro stadiums) and by incredible coincidence one of the invitees was Sewanhaka HS and by further incredible coincidence its top player was Eamon McEneaney, who after seeing the facilities, turned down a slew of scholarship offers and enrolled at Cornell.

We've become a nation of centralized rules. One could see the NCAA or ECACHL requring X level of amenities in a visitor locker room if a rink if built or substantially remodeled after 1/1/2006, say, just as the feds now require handicap access in a building remodeled at a cost of >= 10% of building value. And if Cornell has to do it for visiting teams, those teams would eventually have to do it for us. Maybe it's just fair that visitor locker rooms have a reasonable level of amenities and square footage.

As for all the renovation plans being drawn up “in secret” for Lynah, that’s just the way it’s done if the university can do it, and with no disrespect intended to the Cornell Daily Sun, Ithaca Journal, or WVBR, none so far as I know has competed for a Pulitzer for investigative journalism and in the past many of the people wanting to be professional journalists used the Sun news board not sports board as their springboards, even if many of the sports people went on to decent professional journalism careers, since writing about Cornell hockey is more real-world-important than writing a story about, say, “Student senate committee discusses draft plan for Willard Straight student organization room lottery."

As for Duffield Hall moving slowly by way of comparison once the plans were initially announced, we all know the process of getting things done in a university setting is next to impossible with so many interest groups wanting to be consulted and give their approval: worries that Duffield Hall might sit on hallowed Indi – sorry, Native American – burial grounds, and making sure the marble slabs didn’t come from a country not supporting sustainable marble farming, and which endowed-chair professor gets which office, and the department of mystic engineering studies looking for a feng shui analysis and then demanding the main entrance be moved around back, that some things get shunted to the side, such as does the building work properly and does it get finished on time and on budget.

Look at the campus store which was supposed to be completely underground, not sticking 10 feet aboveground and then covered with dirt -- oops, forget to test for bedrock. Or Uris Hall of the 1970s whose exposed iron beams were supposed to oxidize quickly and form a beautiful purple "patina," I think the word was, except somebody forgot that Ithaca air is less corrosive than NYC air and so the year or two would be a decade or two and in the meantime there'd be years of brownish water dripping down and staining walkways.

Note Schafer says renovate, not “remove the roof and add 2,000 more seats.” A not unreasonable assumption is that this is part of the $100 million campaign for athletics and that’s still in process but if you were make sounds like you had a million-dollar checkbook, you might learn more about the plans. Or you might learn more about what’s possible for $500K and for $2.5M and points in between. While Shafer said not much has been done to Lynah, new refrigeration for the ice has gone in a couple times, and anybody who recalls life before Newman Hall and the concourse connector remembers a lot less to do between periods.

And even if the What If threads on eLynah have discussed a bigger building, Cornell has to think long and hard about the cost-benefit of having say 6,000 seats -- will they get filled every game and what does the cost per seat work out to for renovation. If its say $100 per square foot and each seat and aisle space (and exit aisle) is a 3.33 foot square, that's $1000 a seat. There must be an architect on the forum who has a better estimate of the per seat cost of raising the roof.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

Richie Moran in his mid-1070s glory years arranged a HS lacrosse tournament here on Schoellkopf Field (back when artificial turn was a novelty outside Nebraska and pro stadiums) and by incredible coincidence one of the invitees was Sewanhaka HS and by further incredible coincidence its top player was Eamon McEneaney, who after seeing the facilities, turned down a slew of scholarship offers and enrolled at Cornell.



[/q]

Maybe so, but we almost must consider that today's youth may be impressed and influenced by factors other than those were back in the 11th century.

[Q]Robb Wrote:
*cough* *cough* Alberding *cough*....[/q]
There's committed and there's committed. It's not the easiest thing in the world to ask an old man who's promised you a large sum of money whether he's put it in his will just in case he dies before he can cut the check and his family is inclined to claim they know his intentions better than he did.

Beeeej

[Q]Ohio State bailed on the Everblades to run its own holiday tournament at home, but in a monster (16000 seats?) civic arena[/Q]

Though, to be fair, they only did this because the NCAA required them to do so. As host of the 2005 Frozen Four they have to host some other tournament during the year. I'm not sure of the exact rules, but it's something like that. I believe they'll be back next year?
Regardless, I think you're right that more/better locker rooms can only help.

.....and it may be more than just locker rooms. Look at the Friedman Wrestling Center with its private training room. I'd wager that whole package has a powerful effect on young men who are typically from blue collar families - not unlike hockey players. Imagine a Lynah with a training room and a Hall of Fame/trophy room. I think that would be pretty impressive.

But again, they would need mucho $$$ for something this ambitious. For THE premier university athletic program, I'd build whatever money, space and university aesthetics would permit while preserving the atmosphere in the rink.

Training rooms, study rooms, film room, better concessions, store front (mini fish market would be nice), trophies displayed, history & photos wherever one walks, hall of fame, better sound system, upgraded scoreboard...a school now must be the Jones family. Let everyone else try to keep up.

They would theoretically have a great deal of space to work with - the entire parking lot on the west side.

Parking is already tight on campus (sorry to restate te obvious), I doubt you will see any expansion into the Teagle/Biotech lot (although they may decide to expand out to the edge of the sidewalk). This does not rule out expansion into the lot just to the south of Lynah toward Schoellkopf. If you factor in this area to the space currently occupied by lockerrooms and refigeration equipment there is more than ample space to do almost everything mentioned above. It is not necessary to have a large foot print to make smart use of what they have to work with.

just my $.02

There's a loading dock into Biotech in that lot. They can't go past the sidewalk.

...and with the upcoming Life Sciences expansion into Alumni Fields, there will probably be added demand for that space, both parking and trucks.

They'll likely stage across the street in the Ag Quad (between Kennedy and Plant Science) ... the same space they are currenty using for the "old" Mann Library renovation.

[q]They'll likely stage across the street in the Ag Quad (between Kennedy and Plant Science) ... the same space they are currenty using for the "old" Mann Library renovation.[/q]

Why don't they do something with that space?

And am I the only one that thinks the new West Campus dorms are an architectural disaster?

[Q]There must be an architect on the forum who has a better estimate of the per seat cost of raising the roof. [/Q]

Well, I can tell you this: Eminem's Encore CD will run you about $15.

Athletics campaign is officially over, though there are some remaining funding opportunities. Lynah renovation was never part of that campaign.

Roof will not be raised.

Paulspen: Are you suggesting the rumours are only rumours?

Rumors are always rumors until they've been officially announced.

That said, the ROOF will not be raised, even when the money is.

[Q]Jordan 04 Wrote:

billhoward Wrote:

Richie Moran in his mid-1070s glory years arranged a HS lacrosse tournament here on Schoellkopf Field (back when artificial turn was a novelty outside Nebraska and pro stadiums) and by incredible coincidence one of the invitees was Sewanhaka HS and by further incredible coincidence its top player was Eamon McEneaney, who after seeing the facilities, turned down a slew of scholarship offers and enrolled at Cornell.



[/Q]
Maybe so, but we almost must consider that today's youth may be impressed and influenced by factors other than those were back in the 11th century.[/q]
Sorry if the point meant to be obvious, wasn't: Great facilities impress prospective students. That's a universal recruiting tool (as are female students in tank tops cheering at the games). In 1973, when most schools played lacrosse on a grass soccer field so they wouldn't mess up the varsity football field, that new Polyturf mat was the bee's knees. Obviously not today when even high schools have Astroturf. Back in that era, albeit not so far back that McCartney was still with that band before Wings, Moran did what some other posters here suggested might help Cornell hockey recruiting:

You can see what Friedman Hall has done for the wrestling team. (And by the way, it's about time Cornell had a building with that didn't sound like Rockefeller, Taylor, Barton, Dickson, White, Donlon Hall -- we've got enough clenched teeth WASP name buildings. Well, okay, we do have Schoellkopf.)

So better facilities might impress Cornell recruits. And what was cool 30 years ago, for instance replacing the black mat in the Cornell locker room with a red (gad, was it shag?) rug was progress. And then putting in a weight room. But it is time to move on. BU has built two whole arenas since Lynah went up.