Cornell Women's softball problems

[Ken711]

https://cornellsun.com/2019/05/06/softball-players-detail-years-of-mistreatment-by-coach-neglect-by-cornell-athletics/

[billhoward]

Good story. Hold their feet to the fire. Sometimes athletes who've grown up being stars (else you wouldn't go on to the next level) have a too-high sense of their worth and importance, and gripe too much. But all they've learned about teamwork and pulling together makes it seem as if the players would not speak out unless there was an issue.

This is where the Meakem-Smith Director of Athletics and Physical Education earns the big bucks. That and trying to be cheerful up in his box in the colonnade at Schoellkopf in the fourth quarter, in the rain, in late October, when Cornell is down by 3 TDs and is looking at third and 24 on its own 11-yard-line. The president can leave at halftime. Not him.

Note the Daily Pennsylvanian cited similarly issues with the Penn softball team in 2018. https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/02/penn-softball-coach-leslie-king-retention-issues-mental-health-investiagtion [edit add: And Penn softball coach Leslie King is still there, just completed her 16th season, 22-17, including wins over Cornell 12-7, 8-0, 14-0. Had been captain of the 1991 New Zealand world cup soccer team.]

[Ken711]

Good story. Hold their feet to the fire. Sometimes athletes who've grown up being stars (else you wouldn't go on to the next level) have a too-high sense of their worth and importance, and gripe too much. But all they've learned about teamwork and pulling together makes it seem as if the players would not speak out unless there was an issue.

This is where the Meakem-Smith Director of Athletics and Physical Education earns the big bucks. That and trying to be cheerful up in his box in the colonnade at Schoellkopf in the fourth quarter, in the rain, in late October, when Cornell is down by 3 TDs and is looking at third and 24 on its own 11-yard-line. The president can leave at halftime. Not him.

This President is anti-sports, I'd be surprised if she even made it to the "President's box" to watch the game.

Note the Daily Pennsylvanian cited similarly issues with the Penn softball team in 2018. https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/02/penn-softball-coach-leslie-king-retention-issues-mental-health-investiagtion

[billhoward]

Martha Pollack does attend football games. I'm less sure than you that she is anti-sports. It is more that she runs one of the world's 25 great universities, also one of NYS' top 10 employers, and there are conflicting demands on her time. You can't be great unless you have money to run the show, and the show's popularity and ratings depend on the quality of faculty. We are next to last among the Ivies in "urban setting that makes with jobs for trailing spouse." Her Homecoming Weekend day started pretty early and ended late and maybe she was blocked out for a private conversation at the same time as the second-half kickoff.

[upprdeck]

cornell athletics does not care about cornell athletics. its as about poorly run an AD as there is anywhere.

[Trotsky]

cornell athletics does not care about cornell athletics. its as about poorly run an AD as there is anywhere.

Cornell athletics is about donor money.  Everything about Cornell is about either donor money or grant money and has been for at least 50, if not 100, years.  It's a property scam that adheres to a university for the public good will.

But then again, if A.D. White and Ezra's vision was intact we wouldn't have any athletics, so: hockey or academic integrity?  Seems like an easy choice to me.  Go Red!

[Beeeej]

cornell athletics does not care about cornell athletics. its as about poorly run an AD as there is anywhere.

Cornell athletics is about donor money.  Everything about Cornell is about either donor money or grant money and has been for at least 50, if not 100, years.  It's a property scam that adheres to a university for the public good will.

But then again, if A.D. White and Ezra's vision was intact we wouldn't have any athletics, so: hockey or academic integrity?  Seems like an easy choice to me.  Go Red!

Pretty sure Cornell had a baseball "club" and a boating "club" by about 1870.

[Trotsky]

cornell athletics does not care about cornell athletics. its as about poorly run an AD as there is anywhere.

Cornell athletics is about donor money.  Everything about Cornell is about either donor money or grant money and has been for at least 50, if not 100, years.  It's a property scam that adheres to a university for the public good will.

But then again, if A.D. White and Ezra's vision was intact we wouldn't have any athletics, so: hockey or academic integrity?  Seems like an easy choice to me.  Go Red!

Pretty sure Cornell had a baseball "club" and a boating "club" by about 1870.

And I'm sure they were manned by Upper Class Twit of the Year candidates indulging in muscular Christianity so they wouldn't masturbate or turn Socialist, in that order.

[Beeeej]

cornell athletics does not care about cornell athletics. its as about poorly run an AD as there is anywhere.

Cornell athletics is about donor money.  Everything about Cornell is about either donor money or grant money and has been for at least 50, if not 100, years.  It's a property scam that adheres to a university for the public good will.

But then again, if A.D. White and Ezra's vision was intact we wouldn't have any athletics, so: hockey or academic integrity?  Seems like an easy choice to me.  Go Red!

Pretty sure Cornell had a baseball "club" and a boating "club" by about 1870.

And I'm sure they were manned by Upper Class Twit of the Year candidates indulging in muscular Christianity so they wouldn't masturbate or turn Socialist, in that order.

...admitted by A.D. and Ezra in pursuit of their "vision."

[Trotsky]

cornell athletics does not care about cornell athletics. its as about poorly run an AD as there is anywhere.

Cornell athletics is about donor money.  Everything about Cornell is about either donor money or grant money and has been for at least 50, if not 100, years.  It's a property scam that adheres to a university for the public good will.

But then again, if A.D. White and Ezra's vision was intact we wouldn't have any athletics, so: hockey or academic integrity?  Seems like an easy choice to me.  Go Red!

Pretty sure Cornell had a baseball "club" and a boating "club" by about 1870.

And I'm sure they were manned by Upper Class Twit of the Year candidates indulging in muscular Christianity so they wouldn't masturbate or turn Socialist, in that order.

...admitted by A.D. and Ezra in pursuit of their "vision."

Oceans rise, empires fall.

[David Harding]

It gets uglier, with three players dismissed from the team.  https://cornellsun.com/2019/05/10/two-cornell-softball-players-dismissed-from-team-day-after-2019-season-ends/

[Swampy]

cornell athletics does not care about cornell athletics. its as about poorly run an AD as there is anywhere.

Cornell athletics is about donor money.  Everything about Cornell is about either donor money or grant money and has been for at least 50, if not 100, years.  It's a property scam that adheres to a university for the public good will.

But then again, if A.D. White and Ezra's vision was intact we wouldn't have any athletics, so: hockey or academic integrity?  Seems like an easy choice to me.  Go Red!

Pretty sure Cornell had a baseball "club" and a boating "club" by about 1870.

And I'm sure they were manned by Upper Class Twit of the Year candidates indulging in muscular Christianity so they wouldn't masturbate or turn Socialist, in that order.

Very unfair, at least to A.D. When Cornell started out he was getting letters insisting Cornell provide a good "Christian education." Although he too paid lip service to the concept, the author of A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom never took this religious stuff seriously.

As a teenager he refused to be confirmed, which is why he started at Geneva College. Dad insisted he go to a school affiliated with the family's church.

In his letters to other academic reformers, A.D. wrote: "Imagine a university dedicated to truth for truth's sake. One free of potentially corrupting influences: free of religious influences, free of political influences, free of commercial influences." (I'm quoting from memory, so this isn't literal.)

In retrospect, Cornell has done a pretty good job with two out of the three. Unfortunately, Cornell has gone way overboard selling out (literally) to commercial interests.

OTOH, I believe it was after the Democratic Party's nomination of Bryan for the 1896 presidential election that he wrote an op-ed in the N.Y. Times warning about the anarchists and socialists supporting the Democrat.

Nobody's perfect.

[Robb]

Laing shoulda kept men's fencing and gymnastics instead of this crapshow....  Not that I'm still bitter about losing my senior season or anything.  

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

cornell athletics does not care about cornell athletics. its as about poorly run an AD as there is anywhere.

Cornell athletics is about donor money.  Everything about Cornell is about either donor money or grant money and has been for at least 50, if not 100, years.  It's a property scam that adheres to a university for the public good will.

But then again, if A.D. White and Ezra's vision was intact we wouldn't have any athletics, so: hockey or academic integrity?  Seems like an easy choice to me.  Go Red!

Pretty sure Cornell had a baseball "club" and a boating "club" by about 1870.

And I'm sure they were manned by Upper Class Twit of the Year candidates indulging in muscular Christianity so they wouldn't masturbate or turn Socialist, in that order.

...admitted by A.D. and Ezra in pursuit of their "vision."

Oceans rise, empires fall.

Can we send a fully armed battalion to remind the players of OUR love?  Even if the admin behave like autocrats.

[CU2007]

Laing shoulda kept men's fencing and gymnastics instead of this crapshow....  Not that I'm still bitter about losing my senior season or anything.  

"Should have kept men's fencing and gymnastics" said no one ever