Cornell 3 Mercyhurst 2 final OT

[Al DeFlorio]

Last year - Troy Nickerson was a national champion

AND a few years back when Jordan Leen won. It has been a good run for wrestling. If things break right, we could have two more by the end of the night.

And two for Travis Lee before that, with Tyler Baier a runner-up one of those years.

[dag14]

WOW.... this is just sinking in but doesn't this means that our women's hockey team could win the first Cornell NCAA championship for any sport in.... how many years? Anyone know? They really should get more coverage in the Sun because this is really a terrific season for these girls.

The Sun's coverage of women's hockey has been second-rate all season. At least in winter sports, the men's teams always get the back page on Monday. If they are lucky, women's hockey gets to share the back page on Tuesday. I once asked about this and was told that this was perceived as pretty good coverage....Even when they qualified for the Frozen Four the same weekend as basketball's pairing was announced, the Sun went with a full-color, full page splash for the basketball team on the back page on Monday. The hockey teams split Tuesday's back page with the theme being both teams' demolition of Harvard hockey.

So The Sun is very late on the band wagon. Women's hockey has been making history pretty much all season and they are still second-class citizens down at the Sun's sports department.  It will be interesting to see how the student media handles this weekend's success.

[David Harding]

It would also be interesting to compare the coverage of men's and women's basketball the year they both went to the NCAA tournament.

[ugarte]

It would also be interesting to compare the coverage of men's and women's basketball the year they both went to the NCAA tournament.

I am as pro-Title IX as anyone you'll find. I think it is important to give women (and girls) as much opportunity for athletic achievement as possible. I'm the guy who thinks that the football budget and rosters should be counted for the equity calculations until there is some similarly bloated and expensive women-only sport to balance the ledger.BUT...

I can't pretend that guys - who make up the vast majority of non-participants that care about sports, and therefore read sports coverage - care enough about women's sports to think that the newspaper should treat the sports any more "equally" that the readership does.

[Al DeFlorio]

It would also be interesting to compare the coverage of men's and women's basketball the year they both went to the NCAA tournament.

I am as pro-Title IX as anyone you'll find. I think it is important to give women (and girls) as much opportunity for athletic achievement as possible. I'm the guy who thinks that the football budget and rosters should be counted for the equity calculations until there is some similarly bloated and expensive women-only sport to balance the ledger.BUT...

I can't pretend that guys - who make up the vast majority of non-participants that care about sports, and therefore read sports coverage - care enough about women's sports to think that the newspaper should treat the sports any more "equally" that the readership does.

Agree completely, especially the part about football.

[Towerroad]

I agree that the Sun has come up short on Women's hockey. They are playing for the National Championship for goodness sake. They found time to post a nice article about the Men's Basketball team on Sat. but not the Women. No disrespect to the BBall team or the Wrestlers but not to put too fine a point on it, no Cornell Team has won an NCAA National Championship since the Lax teams of the 70's and the Women look like a team that might end the drought. That should be worth premier placement.

I will be watching and rooting on Sunday

Lets Go Red!

[Willy '06]

I thought volleyball always got pretty decent coverage, but they're a Fall sport. And the girls wear spandex...

[dag14]

The achievements of the women's hockey team this season is NEWS; Isn't the purpose of sports coverage to report sports NEWS as well as cover teams the fans like to follow?  Are journalists supposed to report what readers/viewers/listeners' poll say are the most popular topics, or are they supposed to inform the public?  I remain disappointed that the training ground for student journalists at Cornell is behind the curve instead of leading the charge.  

I am not suggesting that the achievements of all other Cornell athletes this weekend should be ignored, rather that the teams that are actually competing for national titles right now should be covered adequately.  And this includes wrestling.  Something that guys do.  So this isn't about Title IX.

[billhoward]

Let those of us without sin stone the cast of The Cornell Sun. This forum hasn't been overrun with women's hockey discusson. Trotsky started a Women's hockey thread that was pretty much the single point of discussion from Jan. 17 onward until just recently.

Yes, The Sun could have done more but the team's success has come as a surprise to a lot of people.

The Harvard Crimson had so little interest in the Cornell-Harvard men's quarterfinals it handed the story off to a freshman writer and IIRC they didn't get around to posting the game 2 story until later Monday.

[dag14]

This is a fan forum so the fact that the progression of the women's hockey program this season was not high-profile among posters isn't necessarily a big deal.  However, if there had been more news coverage last fall when the team swept Harvard and Dartmouth [at the time both nationally-ranked in the top 10] and then defeated Clarkson [at the time #2], more fans might have been encouraged to develop an interest in the team earlier than the post-season.

[Al DeFlorio]

This is a fan forum so the fact that the progression of the women's hockey program this season was not high-profile among posters isn't necessarily a big deal.  However, if there had been more news coverage last fall when the team swept Harvard and Dartmouth [at the time both nationally-ranked in the top 10] and then defeated Clarkson [at the time #2], more fans might have been encouraged to develop an interest in the team earlier than the post-season.

Like ugarte, I am very supportive of women's sports.  There were none when I was at Cornell, and that was absurd.  But look at attendance at men's and women's hockey games to get an idea of relative campus interest.  That may change after this year's tournament run, but it was a fact of life throughout this past season.

Should the women's hockey team get a fair share of coverage this weekend at the Frozen Four?  You bet.  But throughout this past "regular" season?  I don't think it was justified by campus interest.  Again, with the team a defending national champ or runner-up, campus interest and therefore coverage may change significantly next year.

[billhoward]

This is a fan forum so the fact that the progression of the women's hockey program this season was not high-profile among posters isn't necessarily a big deal.  However, if there had been more news coverage last fall when the team swept Harvard and Dartmouth [at the time both nationally-ranked in the top 10] and then defeated Clarkson [at the time #2], more fans might have been encouraged to develop an interest in the team earlier than the post-season.

A website / blog / forum is part of the new media and new media now is really part of media, just as dead-tree operations such as The Sun. This forum is another way of getting the word out. If anybody should lead the charge it should be Cornell's hockey fans. Has anyone here sent a note The Sun's sports editor askng for more coverage, wondering why there isn't more coverage? I'm as bad as anyone else. I've seen one women's hockey game in the past two years which isn't a lot and it may be as much as most of the fans here.

[dag14]

I contacted The Sun directly months ago [after the Harvard/Dartmout/Clarkson upsets] and was told that they thought a prominent story on Tuesday [in the paper] was pretty good coverage for this team.  I work at Cornell so I read the paper the old fashioned way.  But if the story is running in print on Tuesday, it is safe to say it is running on-line on Tuesday as well.  I waited throughout this post-season run where every game the women played set a record for the program -- first ECAC play-off game win; first ECAC tournament game win; first ECAC tournament championship; first NCAA quarterfinal appearance and victory.  I do not believe that one of these stories ran with a headline on the back page on the Monday following the achievement.

[Jim Hyla]

Does anybody check the women's ECAC page? I have both up and I can go days before seeing updates on their page. That's mainly because with the men there are many newspaper and other articles to link to, not so with the women. Off to watch the men.:-)

[billhoward]

Well, you did your job of being a public-minded citizen. You're right that a big story on Tuesday is not quite like a story on Monday for those who read the print edition.

Yes, the ECAC pages are slow to be updated. And this morning the women's triumph was not on the hom epage rotation of cornellbigred.com for some time. It was there if you went to women > hockey.

Either way, LGR! Now it's off to Albany.