Mike writes:
>But my real intent in making a second post on this subject is to give the
>people considering doing this a second point of view.  I have a friend who
>played for Dartmouth recently, and knowing him, he would certainly not
>support throwing tennis balls.  Why don't you consider how the players
>might feel about this sort of thing, whether they would want to lose the
>chance to keep the pressure on after scoring that first goal or sit around
>for 10 minutes while the rink crew cleans up the ice?
 
Along those lines... every year here at Cornell, regular as clockwork, an
interesting little ad appears in the _Cornell Daily Sun_ a couple of days
before the Harvard game.  It's ostensibly a plea by the players and coaches
of the hockey team to the fans, asking them not to throw stuff on the ice
during the game.  I say "ostensibly" because I'm not sure who actually
writes/submits it, but I know for a fact that Coach McCutcheon gets infuriated
whenever things come flying out of the stands during a game.  As Mike
mentioned, it breaks up the flow of the game, and if the home team has any
momentum going, they're likely to lose it while waiting for the ice to be
cleaned off.  And as often as not, they then find themselves on the wrong
end of a delay-of-game penalty.
 
I was going to send this as a suggestion to Bob Gross, but I'll toss (no
pun intended) it out here as well.  The Dartmouth athletic department needs
to take some steps, and they probably already have, to let the fans know
that they are aware of the potential "tennis-ball blizzard" and that it won't
be tolerated.  It's probably too late for an ad in the campus newspaper, but
maybe flyers could be printed up for the game, with a message from the team
that throwing stuff on the ice will not help the Big Green win the game and
will probably hurt their chances, and a message from the AD that those who
do so will be ejected from the arena.  Making this stick will probably
require extra campus safety officials to be at the game, but it would be
worth the time and expense to make sure this doesn't become a tradition.
And yes, if a thousand tennis balls come flying out of the stands, there's
no way to identify ALL the guilty parties -- but you can nail quite a few.
And while we're on the subject, I hope the Princeton athletic department is
taking steps to be sure that kind of thing doesn't happen at Baker Rink
again.
 
--
Bill Fenwick                        |  Send your HOCKEY-L poll responses to:
Cornell '86 and probably '94        |  [log in to unmask]
LET'S GO RED!!
"They gave him a year's supply of Turtle Wax -- what the hell is that?  Folks,
 I bought a bottle of Turtle Wax ten years ago.  I've still got it.  And I'm
 pretty sure it'll last me the rest of my life."
-- Frank Santorelli, on the consolation prizes on "Jeopardy"