With the immense popularity and tradition of success of Cornell’s varsity hockey program, one would expect Cornell to also offer an intramural hockey league. In fact, until 2009, Cornell had a rich history of intramural hockey, and enjoyed wide participation from students throughout multiple leagues.
Intramural hockey will not return to Cornell until public outcry forces Cornell to devote more resources to it, according to Director of Intramural Sports and Noyes Recreation Center Scott Flickinger. In an interview with the Review, Flickinger said that barriers to resuscitating intramural hockey include safety, staffing, and behavioral concerns.
Recent Budget and Staffing Issues
The vibrant program was cut amidst widespread budget cuts in 2009. According to Flickinger, who arrived at Cornell in 2015, the program was ripe for elimination because student misbehavior had made it a headache for the Athletics Department. He said, “Students would come in, be drinking, [having] fights. And then, at one point, some of the teams tore out some of the sinks in Lynah.”
When it was canceled, intramural hockey still had broad support at Cornell, and the athletic department had plans to bring it back. A 2009 Cornell Daily Sun article quoted this message from the athletics department:
INTRAMURAL ICE HOCKEY: Due to several cutbacks across the entire Athletic Department, we are not able to offer ice hockey this year. We have explored many strategies to continue to offer this extremely popular activity, but unfortunately the operation costs and staffing needs are simply too high at this time. If you’d like to add your name to a list of participants who would like to have this sport added in the future, please send us an email.
Cornell students were so desperate to play hockey that some began attending Ithaca College’s intramural floor hockey events. As it happens, Flickinger was working in the athletics department at Ithaca College, and recalled his “supervisors calling [him] at night like, ‘Hey, there’s some Cornell kids trying to play hockey here. Like they can’t play hockey here.’”
Budget cuts to the athletics department have continued. Over the years, the Intramurals department removed the Graduate Assistant and the Assistant Director positions, leaving just two professional staff in the intramural sports department: Director Scott Flickinger and a professional intern. Lynah Rink’s professional staff has decreased as well.
Professional staff cutbacks present a significant problem, said Flickinger, “especially at night, because a professional staff member would have to cover. That’s me. I love intramurals, don’t get me wrong, but 11 to 12 o’clock at night, a couple times a week? That’s kind of rough.” According to the Cornell Daily Sun, Lynah Rink’s last night manager, Dave Nulle, retired in 2008 and was never replaced.
Safety and Officials
Flickinger also pointed to issues related to student safety, describing a national collegiate shift away from what are considered “high risk” sports. High risk sports require more care, and are a greater liability for the university. The university would need to have an EMT or an AT (Athletic Trainer) on hand if hockey were being played, according to Flickinger. Among the sports that have disappeared at Cornell because of this safety reckoning are intramural wrestling, skiing, snowboarding and broomstick polo. Some sports, like flag football and soccer, are played with altered rules to enhance safety.
Many schools have been able to develop intramural hockey programs while addressing safety concerns. University of Notre Dame operates a successful intramural hockey league out of its Compton Family Ice Arena. The league is governed by USA Hockey’s non-checking rules, which are broadly used for non-competitive hockey at all age levels. At Princeton University, players can play at Baker Rink in a league carefully regulated to ensure skill-balanced teams. Dartmouth College’s Thompson Arena is home to a five-league system, including a women’s league and a house league. Princeton and Dartmouth both employ no checking and no slap shot rules. Some Dartmouth leagues have additional modified rules. Cornell could adopt some or all of these rules, including a skill-sorted multi-league system. Cornell should certainly be able to field multiple leagues; its student population is more than twice the size of any of the aforementioned schools.
When asked if hockey could be played with modified safety rules such as no wind up shots (slap shots) and no body contact (checking), Flickinger agreed, “something like that can exist.”
Additionally, he allowed that a multi-league format would enable him to form team groupings of greater skill parity, which is safer. However, he cautioned, “if we have that, now we need the personnel to be there because we’ll have to have professional staff members there. Lynah Rink has to have professional staff members there as well.”
Hiring officials to referee the games and enforce the rules is a necessity, but challenging, according to Flickinger. While there is already a referee shortage, the problem is doubly difficult because the intramural department is unable to recruit officials from outside Cornell. “Those positions have been designated as student positions.” Flickinger would have to train officials “in house,” meaning he’d “have to also increase [his] subset of rules knowledge because hockey’s not [his] given sport.”
However, the lack of intramural hockey at Cornell forces many students to seek hockey outside Cornell, which may not employ the same safety standards. One such league is the AB/BC men’s league that plays out of The Rink in Lansing, about a 10-minute drive from Cornell. Ithacans and Cornellians aged 18-65 compete in two divisions based on skill. The AB division is somewhat ironically organized by Cornell Associate Professor of Astronomy Alexander Hayes.
Asked about safety concerns for students that play in these leagues, Flickinger said “the university does not particularly see that specific subset as a priority to bring back onto campus.” Due to struggles with ice time, staffing and the pandemic, “we’re in a maintenance/survival mode right now,” said Flickinger. While the AB/BC league is a great asset for Ithacans and Cornellians that wish to play, it is quite inaccessible to students that don’t have cars and has no safety oversight from Cornell whatsoever.
Broader De-emphasis of Intramurals?
Asked if the budget cuts reflected a de-emphasis of the intramural program at Cornell, Flickinger pointed again to national trends and blamed declining student participation. “There are more time-invested things for students to do,” he said, including joining fraternities and sororities, interest groups, professional clubs, and fellowships. A school like Cornell is also very academically competitive, making Cornell “lucky” that it still has 3,000 students willing to participate in intramurals.
Further, Flickinger attributed declining intramural participation to the “boom” in club sports. Club sports have the advantage of maintaining the varsity “feel” while reducing the time commitment necessary, said Flickinger. However, Cornell has always been a competitive school, and plenty of other schools still run successful intramural programs despite the rise of club sports.
Perhaps it is the “feel” of intramural sports that has changed. Every year since at least 1946 the Athletic Department has published an intramural handbook, detailing the scheduled sports, rules and previous winners of intramural tournaments. For example, the intramural department compiles the records of fraternities across sports to pick an annual “All Sport Champion” from among the fraternities. The handbook had an All-Sports Champion fraternity listed for every year since 1928, with the exception of 1944 and 1945, which are ominously labeled “War Year.” Since the pandemic, however, there have been no new All Sports Champions listed.
The handbooks also used to highlight the awards process, providing some recognition to intramural winners. The 1995-1996 handbook, for example, had pictures of championship teams bearing giant trophies and a dedicated section describing the awards. It had in-depth pages of statistics and records of all the championship teams and individuals from the previous year. The 1994-1995 “Foul Shooting Contest Champion” was Chris Roellke, with an impressive 88% accuracy. McFadden Hall won the 1994-1995 coed Residence Hall Volleyball Championship. And Delta Delta Delta’s Erika Johnson dueled her way to the 1994-1995 fencing title.
Conversely, the 2022-2023 handbook is digital, and restricts itself to just the rules and procedures of the sports. There is a brief section describing how the All Sports Champion is selected, nothing more. The All Sports Champion has been reduced to a single division, scratching the separate All Champions titles for the individual divisions. In theory, any group can win, but there has never been a year in which a fraternity has not won.
The extensive records of champions and statistics has been removed, though a tab on the website has the (now) singular All Sports Champion list. There is a link to a confusing and rather unreadable chart detailing the point breakdown for the 2018-2019 All Sport Champion competition, in which eight out of the twenty-three sports used as criteria are labeled as “rained out,” “season canceled,” or “no participants.” In short, intramural culture at Cornell is not what it once was.
Promotion
Reviving intramural hockey would likely require substantial promotion for several years. Cornell would have to get the word out to prospective players, so they could bring their equipment to campus and organize teams. Building anything resembling the intramural program of the past would require a sustained effort.
According to Flickinger, promotion at Cornell is difficult, because “there’s no central building where [he] can get that concentration of individuals and eyes on that to see.” What would be considered the “center of campus”–Ho Plaza and Willard Straight–is nothing like the vast student unions seen at many other schools. The intramural department has turned to other tools to reach students, like the website IMleagues and the semesterly ClubFest. Additionally, they utilize the LGBT Resource Center, Women’s Resource Center, and FGLI (First Gen, Low Income) Resource Center, said Flickinger.
Struggles with General Athletic Funding
Universities with large athletic programs have a few income producing sports such as football, basketball and hockey that generate so much revenue that they can cover the costs of an entire athletics department. However, Cornell has not had a national championship football team since 1916 and, given Ithaca’s remote location, Cornell teams—other than hockey—do not draw high-volume crowds. To encourage undergraduate attendance, Cornell has subsidized admission fees for its home games.
The main source of Cornell’s Athletic Department revenues has been money generated per credit hour of physical education classes. Until 1978, Cornell required four semesters of Physical Education to graduate. In response to student complaints, the University Faculty reduced the requirement to only two semesters, cutting the department’s tuition revenue in half.
Meanwhile, in 1972, Congress adopted Title IX which required equal educational opportunities for women interested in sports. However, women’s sports generate far less revenue than traditional men’s sports. These two factors placed great financial pressures on the Athletics Department, resulting in a higher dependence upon alumni donations and fundraising. Many sports have been reduced from varsity to club status or simply eliminated. Cornell Sprint Football is the clear consequence of this rule: a low turnout sport that has avoided death only due to unmatched alumni support.
Although some programs like Cornell Outdoor Education became successful in such fundraising, Cornell’s intramural programs have not conducted a similar effort to generate earmarked donations. For example, in the March 2022 Cornell Giving Day, the Outdoor Education program raised $130,418 from 290 donors, but donors were not provided with the opportunity to designate gifts to intramural hockey or to intramural sports at all. Instead, Cornell’s intramural program is financed by entry fees charged to participating team members.
How does change happen?
None of the current efforts to spark life at Lynah Rink have prompted a response from Cornell. Any change will only be brought about by broader outcry, particularly from alumni. “You would have to have a very loud voice,” said Mr. Flickinger, “And that loud voice can’t just come from me, it’s gotta come from you all. And it’s gotta come to a point where it hits them in the money bag.”
There’s only so much he can advocate for on his own, says Mr. Flickinger. “I need somebody louder than me to go in and say, ‘You need to sink resources into this because this is what we want.’”
Bringing back intramural hockey and expanding student access to Lynah Rink will require spreading awareness of the issues surrounding intramurals and Lynah Rink, especially to alumni and donors. Many alumni are simply unaware that current Cornellians do not have the same access to these activities that they enjoyed as students. A good start would be simply providing the opportunity for alumni to donate to intramurals on Cornell’s Giving Day page.
Sympathetic alumni donors can withhold their money or make their gifts conditional on changes to the intramural system and Lynah Rink. Although the Athletics Department has a few centralized fundraising staffers, they support the individual coaches who are responsible for generating gifts to support their teams. Most sports, including Hockey, have “booster organizations” that provide a donation network. Intramurals do not have that kind of support, meaning that donors who wish to expand access to Lynah will need to express their desires directly to Cornell.
Today’s students can help too. Those who find themselves concerned by these developments should write to the Cornell administration and let them know how important Lynah and hockey are to Cornell. A statement from Cornell’s student athletes, current and former, would be especially powerful. Cornellians should spread the word to their friends, family, and other students. Until Lynah Rink is again a place for all Cornellians, Cornell will be less than it could be.
“There is a recognition here that physical training is on a par with academic training here at Cornell University.”
Andrew Dickson White,
Cornell’s First President,
October 18, 1883,
Old Armory Dedication
