All Cornellians should, at some point, familiarize themselves with Lynah Rink.
The 16,700 square foot, 4200 seat, state-of-the-art arena is the epicenter of Big Red spirit, home of the famous Cornell Hockey Team. The site is the setting of countless Cornell traditions, and once hosted the New York Rangers to boot! As the website boasts, “many rinks in the nation are larger in seating capacity, [but] few are known to be louder.” While no one doubts the dedication of the Big Red fan base during hockey games, they are less likely to show up for public skates, though the blame is not entirely their own.
Lynah Rink hosts public skate times for only one hour a day, four days a week, and during the middle of the school day, according to its Facebook page. The sessions are scheduled for 12pm-1pm on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, and 11:45am-12:45pm on Tuesday, with no times after class hours or on weekends. This schedule is prohibitive for most Cornell students, who, if not physically in class, will likely be preparing for or traveling to class during those times. In fact, the times are so unfortunately placed that one might even surmise that the timing is deliberately inconvenient.
Lindarose Piccolo, a junior in ILR, agreed: “It’s inconvenient as a recreational skate. 11 to 1 is prime time for classes…and, if not, people are having lunch during that time.” She also questioned whether students should have to pay for rental skates and rink access, commenting, “You would think if they were offering a free skate they would take a deposit [for the skates] and just let [students] skate for free.”
The Cornell Review reached out to Rink Manager Phil Graham about the availability of skating times, but he did not respond to our requests for comment. Previously, Mr. Graham has replied to student inquiry, stating that all available ice slots are filled.
In addition to the lack of public skating sessions, Cornell has no intramural hockey league. Though Cornell hosts intramurals for many sports, including volleyball, golf, flag football, basketball and soccer, it does not for hockey, despite having the facilities to do so in Lynah Rink.
However, this was not always the case; in past years Cornell boasted a robust intramural hockey program, despite the fact that many of those early hockey players had no Lynah rink. Before 1957, Cornellians ventured onto Beebe Lake, skating and playing hockey in the blisteringly cold Ithaca winters. Yet today, with a magnificent rink on campus and Beebe Lake still intact, there is no intramural hockey league whatsoever.
While the elimination of hockey is conspicuous, there has been a dramatic decline in Cornell’s intramurals generally. One Wikipedia page on the subject states “With only the Old Armory to serve as a court, intramural basketball alone mustered 600 students – which was about 10% of the students at Cornell – playing on 59 teams spread across 12 leagues.” At this time (1927) nearly 4,000 (two thirds of) students participated in intramural sports. It is hard to even conceptualize such a level of intramural participation on campus today, even with a nearly threefold increase in the size of the student body. Yet the decline of intramurals at Cornell, both in hockey and generally, has gone unmentioned in campus discourse, despite being part of a larger decline in collegiate intramurals at many schools and part of the movement of athletics to the collegiate periphery.
The decline of intramural sports is frustrating because such recreational activities are strongly linked to positive effects on both physical and academic health. As the nation struggles with an obesity epidemic, it is easy to see why intramural sports programs are eminently desirable. Students that participate in intramural sports will be more active and therefore less likely to develop weight problems.
Less obvious, perhaps, are the academic benefits of intramural sports, though they are real enough. One paper found that students who participated in intramural sports “were 12% more likely to report an A versus C average…and 11% more likely to report a B versus C average than nonparticipants.” This specific data on collegiate intramural sports is strengthened by a widespread base of research and data on the beneficial effects of physical activity on academic performance.
It is a well known phenomenon that universities will spend luxurious amounts of money on athletic facilities that will be used by only fractional percentages of the student population. Cornell could easily set itself apart from other universities by allowing and encouraging its students to make use of Lynah Rink. Yet, its current public skating arrangement seems designed to discourage students from attending, and its intramural hockey team has fizzled into nonexistence, not to mention the decline of its intramurals generally.
Students pay an average of $59,282 of tuition a year; they ought to have better access to Cornell’s athletic facilities. It’s time to revamp Lynah Rink’s student services, and the intramural sports system too.
If you think Lynah Rink should open public skating hours after classes and on weekends, sign our petition here!
