Attendance: lacrosse vs. hockey at Cornell

[ben03]

hey john,
last time i checked they haven't completely shredded the bill of rights … this is still a forum, no??? if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
lay off ::wtf::

[Jim Hyla]

[Q]ben03 Wrote: hey john,
last time i checked they haven't completely shredded the bill of rights … this is still a forum, no??? if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
lay off[/q]Yeah, they haven't done it yet. That's why John gets to say what he wants:-D . I happen to agree with him. We all have our own priorities. For some it means sports and wasting our time on this forum:-P , for others, who knows. The idea is to respect each person's, and to try and show them why yours is so much fun; not to just complain when they don't do what we do.

[Ken \'70]

[Q]Jim Hyla Wrote:

 [Q2]ben03 Wrote: hey john,
last time i checked they haven't completely shredded the bill of rights … this is still a forum, no??? if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
lay off[/Q]
Yeah, they haven't done it yet. That's why John gets to say what he wants [/q]


Ahem, put a copy of the Bill of Rights in your pocket and next time there's a slow moment at a lacrosse game take a peak at it.  Come on people, you're Cornellians, you're smarter than this.

[Robb]

[Q]cth95 Wrote:
Another was that lacrosse is just not that common and is about the only sport that I knew almost nothing about.[/q]
You know more about squash, polo, fencing, equestrian, and crew than lacrosse?  How is that possible?

[cth95]

Ok, I should have said one of the only relatively mainstream sports that I know almost nothing about (am actually learning a lot from these posts); i.e. never learned it in gym class like volleyball or badminton, for example, and it wasn't a common school sport or televised much like baseball, hockey, football, soccer, and basketball or even golf or tennis (which I have played at least a little of all of these).  My main point is just that I don't think lacrosse gets a lot of publicity so it is not on people's minds and if they do hear about it they probably are not as familiar with the rules as they are with other sports so it is harder to follow and get into.  I think it is a great sport and we are fortunate to have such a good team.  That's why I thought maybe some of you with more knowledge could think of a way to generally expose and educate the students.  By the way, I do know more about crew because I rowed as a freshman but unfortunately had to work in the other years.  

[Liz '05]

[Q]Robb Wrote:
You know more about squash, polo, fencing, equestrian, and crew than lacrosse?  How is that possible?
[/q]

Little (sorority) sister on the team (plus friends from home that play), sorority sister on the team, kid down the freshman hall that went to Junior Olympics and let us play with his sword, many many friends from home that rode, and I rowed.  Not too hard :-)  Then again, there was also a lacrosse player across the hall, and my town's a lacrosse town, so I've got a very flimsy excuse.
I still agree with cth and say that better publicity towards the students would help.

[Jordan 04]

No proof to actually back any of this up, but a thought....

I'd imagine lacrosse also suffers a bit from the fact that its "hotbeds", Long Island and the Maryland/Baltimore, are regions in which pro sports -- no, not MLL, but the 4 major sports -- dominate the sports pages.  

So either: a) You're not from a lacrosse region and therefore don't give a damn about lacrosse, or b) You're from a lacrosse region, but you're more concerned with why the Yankees are 12-18 than you are with your buddies' game on Friday afternoon, c) play it and care about it.

Maybe I'm generalizing too much on personal experience.  For 18 years I lived 4 miles from Manhasset High School, and I never saw a minute of any lacrosse game anywhere until my days on the hill.   Now I sit here thinking about planning trips to Maryland and/or Princeton and/or Philly for the next 3 weekends.  Sometimes it just takes seeing a game...

[Scott Kominkiewicz]

Being a parent of 4 active kids, I rarely attend collegiate sports.  When they were younger and not involved with their own teams, we would frequently attend college football, basketball, and hockey games, and sometimes lacrosse.  But now, we're overwhelmed with practices and games.  Including coaching, practices, and training sessions, I've calculated that our family has about 450 sporting-event commitments in a year.  

My point is that recreational and high school sports are now much more intense, and it's keeping would-be college sports fans away from games at their nearby campuses.  That's the excuse I have for "townies" in college areas.  I guess that's what I am when I attend Princeton and Rutgers events.

I have no clue why college students are so apathetic.  Lacrosse in April or May?  Football in September and October?  My friends and I missed very few football and lacrosse games when we were on the hill in the early 80s.  I remember lax attendance at around 3,000-4,000 per game.  We also saw a lot of hockey and basketball. Oh well.

[Al DeFlorio]

[Q]Scott Kominkiewicz Wrote:
I have no clue why college students are so apathetic.  Lacrosse in April or May?  Football in September and October?  My friends and I missed very few football and lacrosse games when we were on the hill in the early 80s.  I remember lax attendance at around 3,000-4,000 per game.  We also saw a lot of hockey and basketball. Oh well.[/q]
That's the way it was in the 60s, too, Scott.  Football games were a big social event.  You gave 'em a CUAA book coupon and got in.  Lax was less well-attended until Ned took over the team in 1966 (but Lower Alumni Field couldn't hold 3-4,000, and never had to).  Ditto hockey until 1963-4 (except for Harvard and one Michigan game), shortly after which you had to queue up at Lynah's doors to get a spot inside.  (Fraternities moved up dinner times so you could get to Lynah by 6:30 for an 8pm game.)  Large crowds even went down to the west shore of the lake (not the inlet; races were two-miles in those days) for crew events, where Cornell excelled.  Very large crowds came to Barton for basketball games--literally packed to the rafters for Bill Bradley.  The indoor Heps were always a sell-out.  

I guess times change.  Wrestling seems to be drawing well in their new home.  National-level success certainly helps.

[Hillel Hoffmann]

[Q]Hillel Hoffmann Wrote: Attendance at Cornell games has declined much more rapidly then attendance at all other Ivy schools, with the exception of Pennsylvania. Cornell had only one 1,000+ home crowd all year -- the Princeton game seen above (I don't know how attendance was tonight against Hobart). Otherwise less than 500 people showed up per game. Cornell has been passed by the likes of Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, and Harvard when it comes to lax attendance. That steams me, because it's happening at a time when the team is playing at a sustained high level.[/q]
With last weekend's games in the books, the final attendance numbers are in for intraconference games... and the results are staggeringly bad. I see I wasn't quite right about which Ivy schools had passed Cornell in average home Ivy attendance. And, of course, the sample size -- 3 games -- is small. But using league games as a measure at least filters out teams' highly variable interconference schedules. Check it out:

Average home attendance per intraconference men's lacrosse game
1. Princeton: 1,650
2. Dartmouth: 1,627
3. Yale: 1,308
4. Brown: 1,125
5. Cornell: 701
6. Harvard: 609
7. Pennsylvania: 329

[Source: ivyleaguesports.com]

Kudos especially to Dartmouth, Yale and Brown fans. Yale drew more than 2,000 people for the Cornell game -- in chilly March no less, before anyone had a clue that Yale would be competitive or that Cornell would be a force.

I had always wondered what it felt like to be a Harvard hockey fan -- loving a particular sport (a sport that had deep cultural ties with the institution's region); knowing that the team was a national power with a roster loaded with genuine stars; and yet seeing students and the community fail to turn out in commensurate numbers except for the biggest games. Now I know how it feels. And it sucks.