Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 34)

So you’re headed to Boston for the U.S. Gymnastics Championships. Welcome!

I am in the TD Garden five days a week. My commuter rail train to work comes through the lower level of the Garden (called North Station,) meaning I’m there at least once a day, usually twice. That makes me uniquely qualified to give you some tips and tricks for navigating the Championships and the area surrounding it. And trust me – you need them.

Warning: The TD Garden is a construction zone.  – The Garden is in the midst of a multi-million dollar project to build a retail, restaurant and hotel complex in front of it. Massive skeletons of buildings now block the view of the Garden itself, making it a little confusing to navigate the area if you are not familiar with it.

Therefore, follow the signage for the Garden and don’t necessarily look for a giant building that says “TD Garden.” Two of the three entrances to the building itself have wooden plank covered walkways that can get very crowded before an event or at rush hour.

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Leave some extra time to enter the arena. Some of the entrances to the arena itself (from the concourse) are closed due to the construction. Depending on the size of the crowd, they may open some doors in the stairways to facilitate quicker entrances. If they don’t, you will walk through the North Station concourse towards the ticket office in the middle. Right next to that will be an entrance to the arena itself. (Don’t worry – there are signs.)

Now, for the important stuff: food and coffee.

Coffee

Coffee status: excellent. – Do you like to drink coffee? Well, there might not be any better place in the country to hold this meet. (Except Seattle, of course.)

There are five coffee shops within steps of the arena, including two inside the North Station concourse (which you have to go into to enter the arena.) Okay, so four of them are Dunkin’ Donuts. Boston is obsessed with Dunkin’ Donuts, thus they are on every street corner. There are also Dunkin Donuts in the actual arena as well, bringing this count up to six.

The best Dunkin’ Donuts in the area is on Canal Street, so I recommend hitting up that location for your quality coffee needs. They also offer on-the-go ordering via the Dunkin’ Donuts app, which is key if you intend on getting your coffee in the early morning. Because that Dunkin’ is so good and well run, it often has long lines filled with construction workers ordering for their entire crew, making on-the-go ordering very helpful to those of us who just want to grab an iced coffee and run. That Dunkin’ closes at 6pm or 7pm every night, so that location will be able to carry you up through the evening sessions.

Don’t like Dunkin’? Don’t fret. One of my favorite independent coffee shops in all of Boston is also a stone’s throw from the Garden. Boston Common Coffee is expensive, but if you truly love coffee and good pastries, it is worth every single penny. They also have the BEST yogurt parfaits on the globe. It tastes like the most decadent dessert you’ve ever eaten, but it is actually good for you, with high quality Greek yogurt, house made granola and fruit. I think they run $5 a pop, but if you can splurge, I recommend it. They have a large seating area with wifi, so if your trip to the Championships has to be a working vacation, Boston Common Coffee will be your go-to. It was a favorite for many fans and skaters during the World Figure Skating Championships in 2016, and it will definitely gain a ton of fans during gymnastics as well.

Food & Drink

Bodega Canal (57 Canal Street) makes a heck of a margarita. The Mexican restaurant took the place of a favorite pre-game hangout of my friends, the Grand Canal, and really improved the interior, creating great seating areas for small and large groups. When it’s nice, they open the huge nearly floor-to-ceiling windows which creates such a cool scene on an otherwise dull part of Canal Street. I’ve heard amazing things about their food as well.

If you like beer, you have to at least try Boston Beer Works (112 Canal Street). It’s been a favorite of mine since I moved to Boston 14 years ago. It has multiple locations throughout the Boston area, and I think I may have tried them all except for Lowell at this point. They make all of their own beer, and can get very creative with flavors. During the summer, they sometimes have a Watermelon Beer that is one of my favorite beers of all time. It’s more tangy than sweet, and is really refreshing if the weather is hot. The standard Fenway Pale Ale is a solid choice. If you are a fan of French fries, as I am, their sour cream and chive fries are wonderful, amazing and addicting.

Need a slice of pizza? One of the most famous pizza places in all of Boston is Halftime Pizza, which is right on Causeway Street. It’s a no frills spot that will fill your pizza, pop and beer needs. Its hours vary and it’s not often open post-event, but for a quick bite pre-event or in-between sessions, you can’t go wrong.

Honorable mentions: The Fours, which has been posting some intriguing specials all summer – we’re talking nice dinner salads and some unique sandwich combos; Tasty Burger, which is brand new and adjacent to one of the Garden entrances (this is a perfect place if you have youngsters in tow) and Qdoba, not the best food in the world, but quick and (if you make the right choices) healthy-ish. 

Tonight is another installment of the biannual Red Hot Hockey game at Madison Square Garden. This matchup between Boston University and Cornell has been taking place since 2007. For the first five installments, I volunteered for the planning committee. I helped out in any way I could, and got to do some cool things in the process, including handing out Zamboni rides and running around with an All-Access pass to the maze that is Madison Square Garden (before and after its recent renovation.) 

Another fun aspect of the committee was getting to work on the game program. In 2011, I was given the opportunity to write the BU feature. I interviewed Jack Parker about the 1971 and 1972 BU teams and their clashes with Cornell. The program is not available anywhere online, so I thought in honor of the first Red Hot Hockey I’m not attending, I would share that feature. 

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For the Boston University national championship teams of 1970-71 and 1971-72, the biggest obstacle they had to overcome wasn’t a change in goaltender or adjusting to a new rink. It was Cornell University.

“Cornell has always been one of our biggest rivals,” said Boston University head coach Jack Parker. “It was and still is, a huge college rivalry.

Parker first got a taste of the BU-Cornell rivalry as a student-athlete at BU. The Terriers and Big Red found themselves pitted against each other in the most grand of spaces. In 1966, Parker’s first season playing at the varsity level, the two teams met at the 1966 Boston Arena Christmas Tournament, ECAC and NCAA Championship games. In the holiday tournament, the two teams found themselves knotted 3-3 after two overtime frames in the venue now known as Matthews Arena. Despite going toepick to toepick with the Big Red in the holiday tournament, the Terriers fell to them in their remaining large scale games that season, allowing Cornell to end the season as both the conference and national champions in games only a week apart.

When the Terriers earned their first national championship in 1971, they won the regular season conference championship to make their way to the national tournament. They won the regular season title with an outstanding 28-2-1 record, with one of those lone two losses being on January 23rd to Cornell at Lynah Rink. The 5-1 loss to Cornell in January signaled a change in goaltender for the Terriers, and the change was quite influential on their way to the national championship.

Canon, New York’s Dan Brady and classmate Tim Regan had been a part of a unstoppable goalie rotation, protecting the net of an underrated freshman team. (At the time, the NCAA did not allow freshmen to play on varsity squads, giving BU a “B” team, a freshmen team that saw its own game action.) But when both goalies jumped up to the varsity level, then head coach Jack Kelley had something else in mind.

“They were both terrific goaltenders,” recalled Parker, who was coaching the freshman team at the time. “I think Jack Kelley had the opinion that he wanted a starting goaltender, and Timmy was our number one guy for quite a while. Then he faltered, and it might have been at Ithaca, I think, and Danny had the chance to play.”

Brady stayed in net through the rest of the season, and came out ahead of a 6-5 offensive battle between Cornell and BU in the ECAC Tournament Consolation game – a game that allowed the Terriers to get their revenge for that January loss, since the game ended Cornell’s season.

“Brady was a star of that season for us, and went on to win the most valuable player of the NCAA Tournament,” said Parker. Brady stayed strong in the Terriers’ 4-2 win over the University of Minnesota in the championship game played in Syracuse, New York.

A bit of a championship hangover plagued the Terriers as they began play in the autumn of 1971. Not only did they come into a season as the hunted, not the hunter, for the first time, they had to adjust to a new arena. After some frustrating delays, Walter Brown Arena finally hosted a game on November 27, 1971. While the convenience of having a rink on campus as opposed to across town was much appreciated, some particular aspects of Walter Brown seemed to slow that edition of the Terriers down. “We returned many of our guys from the year before, but we got going late. We weren’t playing up to our capabilities. Things had gotten too convenient for the guys.” remembered Parker.

The Terriers’ slow start was still a start many teams would have loved to have. They didn’t suffer a loss until December 30th – a tight 3-2 loss to Cornell in the Syracuse Invitational Tournament. In their next sixteen games through the rest of the regular season, the Terriers only fell three time: once to Clarkson, once to Boston College, and once again to Cornell in their final game of the regular season. Their 15-4-1 conference record would prevent them from defending their regular season championship, so much hung on the ECAC Tournament.

BU defeated Rensselear and Harvard in the first two rounds of the tournament, but found them facing regular season champion Cornell in the tournament title game at the Boston Garden.

The Terriers did not have the previous year’s star goalie to assist them in the 1972 tournament. “(Danny) played most of the games in the 1971-72 year as well, but then got hurt. Timmy had to come in and bail us out.”

Also playing against the Terriers in the ECAC championship game was what would seem to be a positive – playing at the Boston Garden. “It was not as if playing there was a huge advantage,” recalled Parker. “Cornell brought a lot of fans down, they travel very well. and do to this day. For us playing in Boston was not a huge advantage. Against any other team, yes, it would have been, but against Cornell it wasn’t. They were very familiar with the venue, and had played ECAC tournament games many times in there.”

The Terriers overcame their change in goaltender and overwhelming Cornell fan spirit to defeat Cornell in the ECAC Championship game, 4-1. A mere week later, the two teams faced each other again in the same exact venue to decide the 1972 NCAA Championship. Terriers Ron Anderson and Rich Jordan had two goals a piece to give BU the 4-0 win, and earn them their second straight national title.

Regan had 29 saves in the shutout, and found himself, just like his classmate the year before, the tournament MVP. “Low and behold, Timmy goes on and wins the MVP of the 1972 game,” said Parker. “I think its ironic that they ended up splitting the games, like they did that freshman year, and then splitting the honors as well. (Regan and Brady) were both terrific goaltenders that any program would have loved to have, but we were lucky to have both of them.”

Parker believes that winning the national title in their fourth game against the Big Red that year was statement making for the program. “BU-Cornell was the biggest rivalry in college hockey at the time. It was the biggest eastern college rivalry for sure. So in 1972, not only were we national champions, but we had beaten our biggest rival doing so.

“It was foretelling, because in the next two national championship games we played, we faced our biggest rival at that time – Boston College in 1978, and then Maine in 1995. But it really started off with that win over Cornell. Cornell was always our big rival, and it continues to be a big rivalry for me to this day.”

Even forty years later, the 1970-71 and 1971-72 teams are the benchmark for the best teams in program history. “Those teams were really measuring sticks for the best BU teams ever,” said Parker. “In this day, those players would have long gone to the NHL by their senior year. They were quite talented.”

Parker believes that Red Hot Hockey is a great forum to reignite one the rivalry that seemingly defined what Boston University hockey is. “Cornell is proud of their tradition, and they are always building upon that. There is no question that Jack Kelley laid the groundwork for what BU Hockey is, and likewise, there is no question that their Ned Harkness laid the groundwork for what they are. They have had a great history, and they continue to have a viable, successful program.”

A few weeks ago, Eric Olsen from Helix Education was interested in a comment I had made in a Facebook group we are both members of. I was sharing my boss’ thoughts on how to address crisis events on social media, which is a bit different than what other deans and higher educators tend to do.

Eric asked me to appear on his podcast to talk further about the strategies I’ve come up with over the past decade or so of managing communications for my office (a Dean of Students office at a large university.) Listen to it now! (I hope I sound okay.)

Helix Education is a marketing and technology firm that works primarily on enrollment growth in higher education. I really like their visual work: you can see sample of it on their website. While enrollment is not something I work with directly, it constantly colors my work: if enrollment doesn’t meet their goals, I don’t have students to communicate to.

They currently have this online game called Enrollment Growth Hero, where you get to play the role of an eager administrator trying to get their marketing plan signed off on. Yes, you get to experience a funny take on the obstacles any higher education administrator might face when hoping to get sign off on a large project. Also, you might even win some coffee along the way (which is key to anyone who works in higher ed.) You can try it out here.  (Please note: This is a sponsored link. If you play the game, I may receive some sort of compensation.)

This week, I was interviewed for a piece that may run on public radio in the next few months about why I pursued a side hustle on top of my full-time job. For the first time, I think I was able to best clarify exactly why I have, even though the odds are stacked against me.

To me, turning away from a sports writing career – even if it is part-time – is dishonoring every thing that got me to where I am today. Before I wanted to become a sports writer, my career goal was to teach dance at my neighborhood dance studio or be a daycare teacher at the daycare two streets down. Before the age of 11, I never aspired to more than that. I never thought I would get anything more than a high school degree. Despite being a good student and in gifted and talented classrooms, I never thought I could do more than that.

When I discovered that people wrote about sports for a living and got paid for it, I was amazed. I loved to write and I loved sports. There was a job that involved both things?! I was obsessed with finding the details. I soon realized to pursue it, I would have to go to college and I would probably have to move away from home.

Ooof. Not only had no one in my immediate family gone to college (and I only had one cousin out of my 20+ who had at that point in time), no one – and I mean, no one – moved away from Rochester.

Even though those two facts gave me pause, it stuck in my head that it was something I might want to do. Two things happened: I became obsessed with the Sports Illustrated coverage of Super Bowl XXIX (Steve Young’s Super Bowl MVP campaign) and the release of Christine Brennan’s Inside Edge. They happened almost exactly a year apart, but those two items moved sports journalism into a career I might want to pursue, to one I had to pursue. Those two chronicles pushed me over the edge. I was completely envious of all the writers involved, and I needed to find the chance to join them.

So I fought my way to college, took out horrendous loans to do so, and started towards that career – only to allow myself freshman year to be convinced that I didn’t belong in sports journalism. But I was already in college, a place I fought so hard to get to, and I wasn’t going to leave. I got a degree in history, then moved to Boston to earn a graduate degree in education, and then ended up working in one of the largest student life offices in the U.S.

The dream of a sports journalism career got me to places I never, ever thought I would go.

So when the opportunities arise to pursue that dream, I take them. Even if it is just freelance or part-time. Because I love it and because if it hadn’t been for that dream, I wouldn’t be where I am today. 12 year old me was inspired to find more out of her life, and I need to honor that girl’s dream in whatever way I can.