ithacation

To give you an idea of my hallmates freshman year on the only all-male hallway in the Court-Kay-Bauer Community, I, standing 6 feet tall, was very likely below the median height for my hall of thirty guys. How could this be? Well, there are definitely plenty of tall people at Cornell, but my floor’s statistics were slightly (read: very) skewed by the fact that we had six basketball players, three rowers, two football players, and other athletes calling Court 4C home.

My hallmates and I would go to basketball games freshman year and chant “COOUUUURT FOOUUUUR CEEEEEEEE” after our fellow residents made shots. We soon realized this got way too redundant because so many of these guys were a) starters and b) really good at basketball. From then on, the cheer was done less often than every half-minute.

In the years since life in the “Court Resort”, I’ve followed my basketball-playing hallmates’ successes as they captured the Ivy League title and reached the NCAA tournament in the past two years. This past Sunday and Monday, the team made an appearance in the Madison Square Garden Holiday Tournament for the first time in about thirty years. Not only did they make an appearance, but they won the championship in impressive fashion: first with a buzzer-beating three-point shot in overtime against Davidson (that ended up on ESPN’s Top 10 Plays of the Week!) and then by some very aggressive play against St. John’s, a perennial presence in the MSG Holiday Tournament. While I wish I could’ve been court-side at the Garden to watch the Red fight to victory two days in a row, I was able to watch the games from home on the MSG network. I think the whole world of Cornell sports fans was elated (to say the least) when the championship trophy was in the Red’s hands. It was Cornell’s first defeat of a Big East team in forty years. I can’t wait to see where the ’06-’07 residents of Court 4C (pictured above after a game in early 2007) take the team next. Let’s Go Red!