[OT] Best sport facilities (Ivy League)

[ninian '72]

[Q]Shorts Wrote:


[Q2]I was disappointed that the renovations to the Helen Newman aquatic facilities didn't include reconfiguring the new and old space into a 50m competition pool.[/Q]
I'm also a bit surprised that Cornell doesn't have a bigger pool, especially considering the excellent facilities that Yale, for example, has.  Of course, the problem with a 50m pool is that it's 25 meters longer than a 25m pool, and so making the change would mean some serious rebuilding, and Helen Newman Hall isn't exactly located in the easiest place for construction, perched over Beebe Lake.  Also, my understanding is that the swim teams use Teagle anyway, probably because of its proximity to all the rest of the althetics facilies (weight rooms, coaching offices, parking).[/q]

There is no quick fix for the pool at Teagle.  To expand the pool in that building to a standard 50Mx25y configuration, you'd have to push the building out east toward Lynah and north.  I'm not sure existing space would allow this.  Newman would be easier.  I've seen the plans for expansion someplace on the web, and a new lap pool is being added on the west side (?) of the existing pool.  Although the Newman location is not convenient for the team's dryland and weight training, it seems that with a little tweaking, a larger pool could have been accommodated that would allow for the same activities envisioned for the two pools now planned.  It's standard practice for aquatic facilities with 50m pools to stripe them crosswise and thereby provide a lot of 25 yard lanes for simultaneous practices, lap swimming, and lessons, and for large meets.   I'd like to think that there was a good reason for configuring Newman this way and that an upgrade to the exhibition pool facilities is someplace on the distant horizon, but I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[jeh25]

[Q]Shorts Wrote:
 the backdrop of traditional-looking Vet. school buildings, the trees along tower road, and the top of the Wilson Synchrotron building has a much more college-campus/outdoorsy feel [/q]

One minor nitpick. Those are CALS buildings, not Vet School Buildings.  

Stocking Hall houses the best food science program in the world. However, at a time when Rutgers, Ohio State and UC-Davis are throwing money at their facilities or faculty, Cornell chose to renovate Bailey Hall instead....  ::screwy::

Wing Hall, with its' infamous Wing Wing, is home to microbiology and Riley-Robb is home of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (and is named after a relative of a certain frequent poster.)

Capt. Pendantry exits stage left....

[Lowell '99]

Dammit, John, you're making me post.  Bailey Hall MUST be renovated.  Uncomfortable seats, horrible acoustic, virtually ZERO climate control, no back stage space... it blows.  

And for what it's worth, a HS friend of mine who was a team manager for Brown's basketball team said that history aside, he thought Cornell had the nicest gym in the Ivy League.  The Palestra is probably the best overall, everything considered, but I don't know what the fuss is with Jadwin.  Big gaping cavernous space behind one set of stands.  Basically, eh, it's a gym.

[Robb]

Now who would that be?  :-D

Unfortunately, I'm going to miss the parade.  Apparently, they're going to take a picture of as many "building" family members as they can gather.  My great-grandfather Dean Byron Burnett Robb has passed on, but there's a possibility that my 6-month old cousin-once-removed Byron, my father (middle name Burnett), and my Uncle Robb may be there...

[billhoward]

[Q]LowellFrank Wrote:

 Dammit, John, you're making me post.  Bailey Hall MUST be renovated.  Uncomfortable seats, horrible acoustic, virtually ZERO climate control, no back stage space... it blows.  

And for what it's worth, a HS friend of mine who was a team manager for Brown's basketball team said that history aside, he thought Cornell had the nicest gym in the Ivy League.  The Palestra is probably the best overall, everything considered, but I don't know what the fuss is with Jadwin.  Big gaping cavernous space behind one set of stands.  Basically, eh, it's a gym.[/q]

Cornell's new (newish) basketball facility reminds me of a really nice high school gym. But I'm not sure what a great college basketball gym should have - individual seats?

Jadwin has nice architecture but, you're right, it really is kind of a bunch of bleachers rolled into the middle of a very big building. Of course, with Princeton's record and history, who's complaining? Just as Lynah Rink's best features aren't the physical structure itself.

It's a sign of age when when older alums start thinking - cripes, wasn't Bailey Hall just renovated? And the answer was, yes, sometime back like 30 years ago.

[Tom Pasniewski 98]

[Q]Shorts Wrote:

 The soccer team currently (at least this past year, probably for the past couple years) plays on Berman field in the "Robert J. Kane Sports Complex".  Basically, of the five full-size fields that run along the south side of Tower Road (also including the upper and lower alumni fields), its the one closest to the Vet School.  It's got a track around it (as well as assorted track&field facilities next to it, like throwing ranges), and a pretty nice set of bleachers along one side.  

For wrestling, the new wrestling-only building is pretty sweet.  

  I've always thought that I'd rather watch a basketball game in the history-rich Barton Hall than high-school-gymnasium-replica Newman Arena). ([/Q]

Yes, Shorts, that's right.  The pep band played for the dedication of the Bob Kane Complex back in the spring of 1998.  The pep band likes playing at dedications.  Yes those are Ag buildings - I spent PLENTY of time in Riley-Robb having TA'd the same class for three semesters in that building and spent late nights teaching.  I love buildings with history to them and that building has history to it.  Robb - is this event we're talking about associated with the CALS 100th birthday - any renovations to Riley-Robb planned?  I know it was being talked about as on the list pending state money.

I agree with the wrestling center - not overly done in its appropriateness for the sport.  I liked the tennis bubble that used to stand in it's place - don't know when it came to be but I think it was around 96 that it ceased to exist when they decided that indoor tennis should be played out by East Hill Plaza and the Equestrian Center.  Stupid phys. ed. shuttle van never could get me back for Chemistry from my tennis class in time.

My landlord my junior year, a 50-year resident of Ithaca and very long-time employee of Cornell (now retired) has seen all the athletic facilities come and go.  She said that you really couldn't beat Barton for watching a basketball game in.  Cornell's last Ivy title came in that building in it's last or next to last season using Barton prior to the Alberding financial affair.  She claims she's only missed about 20 home games of football in 50 years so that would give her about 250 games seen at Schoeklkopf.  Now that's somebody who win, lose or draw, supports a team.

[Tom Pasniewski 98]

[Q]jeh25 Wrote:

 [Q2]Shorts Wrote:
 the backdrop of traditional-looking Vet. school buildings, the trees along tower road, and the top of the Wilson Synchrotron building has a much more college-campus/outdoorsy feel [/Q]
One minor nitpick. Those are CALS buildings, not Vet School Buildings.  

Stocking Hall houses the best food science program in the world. However, at a time when Rutgers, Ohio State and UC-Davis are throwing money at their facilities or faculty, Cornell chose to renovate Bailey Hall instead....  

Wing Hall, with its' infamous Wing Wing, is home to microbiology and Riley-Robb is home of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (and is named after a relative of a certain frequent poster.)

Capt. Pendantry exits stage left....

[/q]

This post really takes me back.  I want some Dairy Bar ice cream.  A food science class was amongst the best I took at Cornell (I'm an Aggie but not the Texas kind).  Yes, the Wing Wing and I did not know that Robb was the Robb in Riley-Robb.  Thanks for your family support to a great building.  I have many memories from inside there teaching students the ways of computing which became outdated as soon as the class ended

[Tom Pasniewski 98]

Well, I'll be speaking at length with the man who 'owns' Bailey Hall - Professor Maas as he addresses the Cornell Club of Boston today.  I plan to pose the question in the Q and A session rather than directly to him so all can see how he feels about Bailey Hall.  Seriously, I knew the building manager during my time there - Professor Maas 'owns' that building.  Building mangers are good people to know.  

And since marching band is a sport at Cornell, let me just say that the best damn marching band facilities in the Ivy League belong to Cornell especially with the renovations that are starting next week.  Take that scatter-brain bands.

[billhoward]

[Q]Tom Pasniewski 98 Wrote:

 Well, I'll be speaking at length with the man who 'owns' Bailey Hall - Professor Maas as he addresses the Cornell Club of Boston today.  I plan to pose the question in the Q and A session rather than directly to him so all can see how he feels about Bailey Hall.  Seriously, I knew the building manager during my time there - Professor Maas 'owns' that building.  Building mangers are good people to know.  

And since marching band is a sport at Cornell, let me just say that the best damn marching band facilities in the Ivy League belong to Cornell especially with the renovations that are starting next week.  Take that scatter-brain bands.[/q]

Cornell has the *only* marching band in the Ivy League. All the rest of small groups of musicians performing minimalist satire (set to music) that no one could understand even if they could hear the PA announcer. If the rest of your league doesn't take marching bands seriously, then you should be the one more or less serious band. Just as at Stanford, when the rest of the Pac 8, Pac 10, Pac 12, whatever it's up to now, considers marching bands to be dead serious, then you should be the opposite.

Also: Any band is better than none when it shows up for a sporting event. For instance Cornell's band at the Princeton lacrosse game. You don't think the Tiger marching-around band will show up next year in Ithaca?

[Lowell '99]

[Q]You don't think the Tiger marching-around band will show up next year in Ithaca? [/Q]

Nope.  If they didn't go to their own home contest, there's no way they'd go to Ithaca for lacrosse.  I haven't seen them travel for hockey in 9 years.  They just go for basketball and football.  Rumor has it they missed last Saturday's game for a (cough, hack, smirk) wedding.

[billhoward]

[Q]LowellFrank Wrote:

 [Q2]You don't think the Tiger marching-around band will show up next year in Ithaca? [/Q]
Nope.  If they didn't go to their own home contest, there's no way they'd go to Ithaca for lacrosse.  I haven't seen them travel for hockey in 9 years.  They just go for basketball and football.  Rumor has it they missed last Saturday's game for a (cough, hack, smirk) wedding.[/q]

... and the month before, the band played softly outside the Princeton chapel at the baby's christening.

[RichH]

[Q]Tom Pasniewski 98 Wrote:

I agree with the wrestling center - not overly done in its appropriateness for the sport.[/q]

With all due respect to the current student-athletes now benefiting from the new center, I disagree.  The facilities that existed prior to the new wrestling palace were not insufficient.  Newman Arena was still relatively new, there had been a major expansion to training facilities in the field house, and nothing associated with the wrestling program had been in a state of disrepair or had seemed inadequate to compete at a high level.  

The track and field facilities of the Kane complex were desperately needed; before the Kane complex existed, the outdoor track teams were using Ithaca College's facilities.  The Reis Tennis Center was definitely a "need" despite its remote location to the center of campus.  I just didn't see having the nation's first wrestling-only center as a "need" when 1) perfectly adequate facilities existed and 2) other facilities are still in need of upgrades or replacements...the swimming and diving facilities first and foremost (as discussed elsewhere on this forum).  Sure, it's a great recruiting tool for one particular sport that Cornell is already strong in, and that is a plus and something to be proud of...but looking at the big picture for the good of CU Athletics, I think money could've been more wisely spent elsewhere, rather than making sure we have a new building with plasma monitors in the opulent lobby.  I do realize that initial funding was made by a wrestling alumnus, but that doesn't change my overall opinion of the financial drive details.

I guess having a former wrestling coach in charge helps.  I doubt there was a lot of Big Red Tape to deal with for anything they wanted.  I wonder what that opulent lobby is named, anyway...

[billhoward]

I disagree with your disagreeing (about your thinking maybe there were better priorities than a new wrestling facility).

Think of the money for the wrestling complex as seed money for a better Cornell. An alumnus / wrestler did a good dead for the sport. If it wasn't for the wrestling complex, was he instead going to give the same amount to the general fund? Or would it just have stayed with him?

Here's what's going to happen (I hope):
- They money came in, the wrestlers got a better place to wrestle
- The wrestlers (already good), got a lot better, enough to bring Cornell to national prominence.
- That didn't go unnoticed elsewhere among Cornell's graduated sporting alums.
- Next year, some lacrosse alum sitting on the Cisco shares he cashed out in sping 2000, decides the lacrosse team needs the same treatment, only with a retractable or inflatable dome. (Like Princeton's Class of 1952 field, only the field and spectators are not affected by rain or snow.) Come 2007, Cornell reels off the first of five straight NCAA titles.
- Ken Dryden, not to be outdone, rallies funds for a better Lynah (and also for a 3,000-foot expansion of Tompkins County airport, allowing non-stop Vancouver-Ithaca flights for Cornell's newest hockey pipeline).
- The Cornellian widow of a now-departed, well-heeled jock, decides that the won-loss disparity between Cornell's men's/women's teams needs to be addressed vis-a-vis the success of Pricneton's and Harvard's men's/women's teams, and plows funds into women's athletics at Cornell. Cornell beat's Princeton for the women's lax title and Harvard for the hockey title.
- A dozen other alumns (three of them on the Forbes 400), noticing the increased excellence in sports that comes with better buildings and endowed chairs for coaches, decides to - gasp - try the same thing over on the academic side of Cornell. Cornell Class of 2012 has a record number of applicants coming on the heels of Cornell's second place showing, behind Amherst, in Newsweek's survey of the best American colleges.

[Chris \'03]

What bugs me the most about the wrestling center is that apparently it's not even adequate to host more than one visiting school. Anything larger than a duel match and it's right back over to the field house. Why build a brand new, state of the art, first of its kind, best sound system on campus (?!), plasma screens, facility when it doesn't even have enough locker rooms or space to host even two visiting schools?! Would it have killed them to pass on the luxuries to make the facility functional for all the wrestling program's needs?

[ninian '72]

One addendum about Bailey:  Musicians regard the building as a treasure acoustically.  The problem is that good acoustics for music - with some reverb - aren't good for speaking, which requires deader acoustics for clarity.  As I understand it, part of the renovation will address this problem by allowing the sound to be fine-tuned for the type of event scheduled, making the space better suited for a wide range of events.