Kyle Dake and other dominant Cornell athletes

[billhoward]

3 seconds away from a national championship was crushing. But it doesn't affect the player's standing among a century of lacrosse greats.

[Towerroad]

3 seconds away from a national championship was crushing. But it doesn't affect the player's standing among a century of lacrosse greats.

23 seconds but who is counting. I would include Max on the list.

[ugarte]

3 seconds away from a national championship was crushing. But it doesn't affect the player's standing among a century of lacrosse greats.

23 seconds but who is counting. I would include Max on the list.

Where do you get 23 seconds? Syracuse scored the tying goal with under 5 seconds in regulation.

[TimV]

3 seconds away from a national championship was crushing. But it doesn't affect the player's standing among a century of lacrosse greats.

23 seconds but who is counting. I would include Max on the list.

Where do you get 23 seconds? Syracuse scored the tying goal with under 5 seconds in regulation.

Ugarte is right.  It was 4.5 seconds. Towerroad is probably recalling the cover of the subsequent (July) Inside Lacrosse magazine:

[scoop85]

3 seconds away from a national championship was crushing. But it doesn't affect the player's standing among a century of lacrosse greats.

23 seconds but who is counting. I would include Max on the list.

Where do you get 23 seconds? Syracuse scored the tying goal with under 5 seconds in regulation.

Ugarte is right.  It was 4.5 seconds. Towerroad is probably recalling the cover of the subsequent (July) cover of Inside Lacreosse magazine:

Seeing that cover ... oy

[TimV]

Yeh.::bang::::cuss::

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

It never happened.

[Towerroad]

It never happened.

I once heard a fairy tale about a team that had posession of the rock deep in their own end and only had to hold on to it for 23 seconds to win the national title. Then the lax god Riddus interviened.  I doubt that it ever happened.

[onetime]

Bill,
   Jim Trenz here. A few data points could help you and the CU Lax community. The single season highest scoring duo in points per game and goals per game in NCAA history is Trenz-French: 6.5 ppg and 6.71 ppg, respectively, and combined 7.85 goals per game in 1974. French had 5.71 and 6.56 ppg the next two years. My career 6.21 ppg was an NCAA record, as were career goals per game; and at Penn State the NCAA Single Season records of points per game 7.0, goals per game 4.2, and points in a Single game 13. Five NCAA Records in total. I don't know how many records French has, but he had overtaken me in three of them. Without many others- Jon Levine, Billy Marino, Hagerty, Bobby Mitchell, Sanford- helped French in 1974 when he had 4.5 gpg, his highest seasonal rate. What a nice guy! He was a great teammate. Without a supporting team, it's too difficult to achieve. The '74 team had two NCAA records, and still has the Ivy record for most goals in a season, and CU record of most goals in a game.

   If you consider your comment of what-if French and Mac and Trenz were on the same team, who would have drawn the number 1 defenseman? Who would have played defensive middie to take away ball possession of a stalling team? What shame I didn't get use my last year of athletic eligibility and been on the '75 team. No, I had to graduate - in those days if you didn't get out in four years, there had better be a good reason.

   I don't think having Mac only would have changed the 1974 Semifinal result - we didn't have the middies and faceoff expert, and other problems  the subsequent teams didn't have. We did well and had a great fun, especially on bus rides...

   The total number of points in a career is obviously a function of the number of games played. Simply taking points per game for the last two years of play is an interesting calculation :  mine was 7.0 and 6.5; French: 5.71 and 6.56. Go figure. Go Big Red.

[RatushnyFan]

Men's Hockey:  Ken Dryden, Doug Ferguson, Bruce Pattison, Dan Lodboa, Doug Murray, Lance Nethery, Joe Nieuwendyk, Dan Ratushny.

Nice call on Ratushny..........a lot of people who watched him closely knew that he was a controlling presence when he wasn't in the box.  How about Brock Tredway?  He had four dominant years - isn't he Cornell's leading all-time scorer?  Three of the four seasons were good to very good seasons. Two NCAA appearances including one Frozen Four finish.

[George64]

Kyle Dake's extraordinary achievements led me to think about other truly dominant Cornell athletes.  By dominant I mean athletes who stood head and shoulders above their intercollegiate peers as defined by sport and era (to accommodate changed levels of competition).    

The following list is biased towards athletes of the last 50 years because that coincides with my time on the Hill and as an alum.  It's also biased towards the sports that I've followed most closely and towards men's teams, because until recently women have played in their shadows.  Because Ivy football and basketball lack parity with nationally ranked teams, I've set the bar lower for these two sports.

Men's Hockey:  Ken Dryden, Doug Ferguson, Bruce Pattison, Dan Lodboa, Doug Murray, Lance Nethery, Joe Nieuwendyk, Dan Ratushny.

Men's Lacrosse:  Mark Webster, Butch Hilliard, Bruce Cohen, Mike French, Eamon McEneany, Bill Marino, Tim Goldstein, Max Siebald, Rob Pannell.

Football:  Gary Wood, Pete Gogolak, Ed Marinaro, Chris Zingo, Chad Levitt, Tom McHale, Kevin Boothe.

Wrestling:  Dave Auble, Travis Lee, Kyle Dake.

Basketball: Chuck Rolles, Ryan Whittman.

Track and Field:  Charlie Moore, Meredith Gourdine.

Women's Hockey:  Rebecca Johnston, Laura Fortino, Lauriane Rougeau, with more to follow soon.

As I thought about this, I realized just how many extraordinary athletes I've seen over the years or at least read about.  I've set the bar high -- this list excludes scores of All-Americans.  I'm sure that I've left out many deserving candidates.

The latest issue of Cornell Alumni Magazine ranks the best Cornell athletes ever.  Tough to do when you limit the numbers.

[Chuck Henderson]

George's posting on the Alumni Magazine list was a while back, but the topic is timeless. The list seems pretty reasonable. Presumably it's just the straight voting result, with nothing done to resolve any contradictions or rankings that would look out of order if a single person were doing it. For example, Dryden is first and Nieuwendyk sixth. I don't see how one separates them in the rankings based on hockey careers. And Nieuwendyk was a better lacrosse player than Dryden was a baseball SS. I would bet that if he played lacrosse but not hockey at Cornell, he would make the list just on that basis. I'd rank him ahead of Dryden.

It seems as if there are too many lacrosse players on the list, but it's hard to demote any of them. I'm glad to see Roberson relatively high.

Criteria are difficult to specify--whether it should just be undergraduate performance or later as well; whether dominance in one sport is more important than diversity. I would probably go with a top 10 like this:

1. Roberson
2. Dake
3. Moore
4. Nieuwendyke
5. Dryden  
6. Pfann
7. McEneaney
8. Savitt
9. Marinaro
10. Gourdine

Dake is penalized for now because his post-Cornell career is incomplete. McEneaney gets extra points for being pretty good in football, in addition to his great lacrosse career.

I add Gary Wood near the top of the second 10, and drop Gogolak (his classmate and mine) from the top 20 (too specialized) and probably drop Wittman, retaining the others.

Moore, Gourdine, and Walt Ashbaugh (another '52 Olympian, who just missed a medal) all were from the same Cornell team.

There are no basketball players on my list; if I were to consider one, the under-recognized Lou Jordan would be among the possibilities. If one wanted to add another wrestler, it should be Frank Bettucci, who was named the outstanding wrestler at the 1953 NCAAs. There probably should be more pre-1950 candidates.

Of interest only to me, I've seen everyone on the Alumni Magazine list play except Pfann and Holland; and I knew Pfann a bit back in the '60s and am good friends from high school with Holland's son (his older son, not Joe).

[Jim Hyla]

I still have to put Dryden first. He was head and shoulders above his college opponents, and had immediate and lasting impact in the pros. Now if we get some Olympic Gold medals, that might change. But I also thought Gretzky should have won out against Ali.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

I still have to put Dryden first. He was head and shoulders above his college opponents, and had immediate and lasting impact in the pros. Now if we get some Olympic Gold medals, that might change. But I also thought Gretzky should have won out against Ali.

But Gretzky would have to get Dave Semenko to fight Ali, so it's not a fair comparison  ::bolt::

[billhoward]

1. Roberson
2. Dake
3. Moore
4. Nieuwendyke
5. Dryden  
6. Pfann
7. McEneaney
8. Savitt
9. Marinaro
10. Gourdine

Someone sees just your list and not your underlying thoughts, they'll think: "The man is daft." You do make some interesting points. But, sheesh, Ken Dryden behind four others?

A lot of thought and discussion went into compiling the list of top athletes. If there are any certainties in compiling a list of the 10 greatest male athletes at each of the Ivy schools -- Luckman or Gehrig #1 at Columbia? Bednarik or Tilden at Penn? Calvin Hill or a Doonesbury character at Yale? -- the givens would be Bradley at Princeton and Dryden at Cornell: stellar in college in and out of the uniform, standouts against the competition, stellar in the pros, stellar in service to their country.