Sports journalist
I will be continuing my four year old blog, …On Being a Sports Girl, on WordPress. I have been able to migrate the majority, if not all, of my older entries (from 2003-on) onto this host as well.
I will be continuously making changes to this main page, so do not be surprised if the physical look of this site changes several times in the next few days.
And yes, all of this work on the site means I’ll be blogging more often. I hope.
In my humble (and often incorrect) opinion, there are three great holidays in the course of any given year:
1) Super Bowl Sunday
2) My Birthday
3) The First Day of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Continue reading
Call me lazy, convict me of a lack of creativity. I keep trying to write blog entries on a regular basis, but I get home from work late and exhausted, thus no energy to write an entry. But I know I have to continue to write, no matter what, if I ever want to be a good blogger. So here I am, with my weekly links, which is the blogging equivalent of a sitcom’s clip show. I promise I’ll write something of substance soon.
–The Departure Factor is a real theory–or at least Boston University men’s hockey coach Jack Parker thinks so. Coach Parker made his team pretend their home playoff game against the University of Vermont was an away game by switching pre-game rituals, locker rooms, and the tunnel the team entered the ice from. It worked, and the Terriers ended up taking the series. By the way, after Saturday evening’s game, I am more convinced than ever that college hockey may be the best sport ever created. I dragged myself out of bed, laryngitis and all, to see this game, and was I glad I did. Continue reading
Preteen me started out as a biased, novice, ignorant sports fan. When I became a fan of a team, an event, or an athlete, I became a supposed fan of that sport. In other words, I liked, therefore I was. I was a fan of the in-school pep rallies we got to have every late January because the Bills went to the Super Bowl, thus I was a fan of football. I became a fan of Steve Young’s striking good looks, thus I was even more a fan of football. I was a fan of my dad dragging me to Rochester Amerks games when he was able to score free tickets, thus I was a fan of hockey. I wanted to be Kristi Yamaguchi, therefore I liked figure skating. I liked the hoards of hot guys in indoor track, thus I joined the track team.
Here’s the converse of becoming a fan in that fashion–you absolutely despise other events, teams and athletes, but you can not tangibly explain why. I hated the Dallas Cowboys, because they were the arch enemy of both Steve Young and the Bills. Never mind that the early-mid 90s Cowboys were amazing on both sides of the ball, were crazy dominant, and probably were not the dirty cheaters my father pinned them to be. I hated them with every ounce of hate a twelve year old could muster. They caused the Monday after the Super Bowl to be the saddest day at school–every time you spotted a stray streamer in the #52 School gym from Friday’s “Go Bills” pep rally, you got choked up. I liked the Amerks, but I couldn’t tell you why I was booing the Hershey Bears–I couldn’t tell you if they were actually any good, what college teams the players came from, if they had a good defense. As for indoor track – I liked the hot guys, but my running form was awful and I couldn‘t tell you what half the events were–plus, when my coach tried to get me to practice hurdles, I often tripped over them not for lack of vertical leap (hey, I had been a gymnast, thus I had vertical leap to spare,) but because I was staring at the guys on my team. It’s not just me–think of a Boston University or Boston College student whose first introduction to hockey is in college. They hate the other school’s team, although most of them, at first or ever, can tell anyone else exactly why they should hate them. Continue reading
Ah, the Beanpot. The only hockey game all year that the TD Banknorth Garden sells out.
For the second year in a row, I had the opportunity (aka, Chris and I had enough “Terrier loyalty points”) to attend the Beanpot. For my Upstate New Yorkers, the Beanpot is a four university hockey tournament that has been going on for 55 years. It features Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern, and Harvard. The tournament takes place the first two Mondays of February, with two games each night. There is a women’s hockey Beanpot, a baseball beanpot, and even a Rice and Beanpot, but the most well attended and well known is the men’s hockey Beanpot, played at the Fleet-Banknorth-Boston-Garden-Center.
The last thing that y’all Upstate New Yorkers need to know about the Beanpot is that Boston University has won more times than the other three teams combined. Bostonians snidely call it the “BU Invitational.” (And as a good Binghamton alum, I always respond to that by asking, “But I don’t see any Bearcats around.”)
While I can’t contribute much beyond what everyone else in the blogsphere has already, I bring you my thoughts from my second in-person Beanpot final.
I like the Boston University band. They are a traditional, large, hard-core athletic pep band. They play upbeat, horn-led, traditional peppy songs. It’s interesting to compare other schools with the BU Band, which is easy to do at the Beanpot. The Harvard band knows five songs total, but I like their fight song and often have it stuck in my head, so they get props. The Northeastern band had the bright idea to include their cheerleaders, but that always makes me nervous, because they place them in front of them, in the front row of the upper most section at the Garden, which has an unacceptably low guardrail. The Boston College band has recently come to the realization that they are a Top-40 station, and played, among other TRL like material, Ridin’ Dirty by Chamillionaire. I don’t have a problem with that…but how does that pump up a crowd? I mean, “They see me rollin’, they hatin’, they’re trying to catch me ridin’ dirty?” (Mind you, I didn’t have to look up these lyrics, that’s how horrible my musical taste is.) I mean, gosh, I know BC tends to play dirty (hello, Gerbe!), but the band shouldn’t be pointing this out in a song.
A young woman at a sporting event alone (Chris had class during the consolation game, and so I ended up at the Harvard-Northeastern consolation game alone) who has knowledge of the game astounds any male over the age of 50. Case in point: I take a wrong turn and end up on the lower box level of the arena. As I’m trying to get to the escalator that will take me where I should be, I pass one of the Boston University players warming up. There were two middle aged men in front of me on the escalator, and they were staring at the player, astounded that he would be out in public stretching. They turn to me and ask me if I knew what team the player was from. I told them, including name, number, year and position without flinching, and they looked at me like I had three heads. But yes, I’m used to this.
It amazes me that the Garden still will acknowledge that the Celtics play there. They had tons of advertisements on the ribbon board and Jumbotron during breaks in the action for the remaining Celtics games. I mean, when the Bills were low they weren’t even this bad. 18 losses in a row? They haven’t won in over a month? How is that supposed to woo me to finally attend a Celtics game? Can they just totally revamp the team, starting with the pronunciation of the name? It’s the Boston Celt-ics! See them wear kilts! See the dance team Irish dance!
I love the second to last row at sporting events. You are either with the die-hards or the careless. There is no in-between in the last two rows. I have fond memories of the second to last row in Rich Stadium, because that’s where my seat was when I saw the 49ers-Bills game (including the one and only Steve Young of course) back in 1998. You know you’re dedicated when you are in the last two rows of any game–in particular football games–because you so want to see this game that you are willing to have that poor of a view.
Why is Budweiser served at hockey arenas? If I ruled the world, all beer in hockey arenas would either be Labatt Blue or Molson Canadian (aka the official beers of Hasenauer family functions–only the most Canadian of beers for the most Canadian of accents.)
Am I correct in remarking that college hockey coaches raise heck over calls a thousand times more than NHL or AHL coaches? In my years of watching hockey with my dad back in Lake-Effect-Snow-Land, I do not remember John Tortorella flinging his arms about regarding a call like the wild-wacky-inflatable-arm-waving-tube-man. Yet college coaches argue every call so spastically and physically that it’s a wonder one hasn’t flipped over the board while doing so yet.
Speaking of Lake-Effect-Snow-Land, here is an off-topic comment: yes, 100 inches of snow is a ton of snow. However, trust me when I say that the people of Oswego, Fair Haven, Sterling and Red Creek, NY know how to deal with it (I would know–I spent summers with my grandparents and aunt in Fair Haven during my childhood.) And really, there are people in those towns who aren’t even batting an eye at this amount. It’s Lake Effect–it’s unpredictable, it’s crazy, and it lasts from October till April. Gotta love it!
If I were BC Athletics, I’d tweak the maroon in their uniforms and other apparel. It’s not consistent and, in its worst form, it resembles a muddy brown. That gold is nice, and is much too vivid to pair up with a maroon with too much brown in it.
Last but not least, I would like to wholeheartedly thank the management of the TD BankNorth Garden for having the foresight to include two Dunkin Donuts in their arena. The championship game didn’t start until 8:15pm, had TV timeouts, and went into overtime. The only thing keeping me going at the end was coffee (or coffee-flavored cream, as I tend to make it.)
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to listen to the news reporters go crazy over 3 inches of snow. Now, when I was a girl, I walked back from school in valleys created from 3 1/2 feet of snow being plowed. Freaking out about 3 inches and some freezing rain will always seem like overkill to me.
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