Sports writer - Grant writer
No one knew where I went to college until the basketball players started stealing condoms and dealing drugs.
I am not exaggerating. I have lived in Boston for five years, and only twenty percent of those I run into have actually heard of Binghamton University, the State University of New York branch I graduated from. That is, until the university hired men’s basketball coach Kevin Broadus, and his prize recruits started finding themselves in the back of police cars. Continue reading
"Even SUNY Programs Need 2 Dance" (Photo: Pressconnects.com)
Now the rest of the country knows my little school. Binghamton University won the America East Men’s Basketball Championship yesterday, securing their first NCAA Tournament bid. Over 5,000 fans packed into the Events Center to watch the game, and the ESPN2 announcers couldn’t heap more praise onto my trusty little alma mater that could.
“I’ve covered a lot of games,” said one of the announcers. “But this has to be one of the most electric atmospheres I have ever seen for a game.”
The artsy, older girlfriend of the emo guitarist I had a crush on who lived on the second floor of my residence hall and I got into an argument one day back my senior year of college at Binghamton University. We were in a friend’s car, and we were all about to go our separate ways after a Sunday afternoon brunch; I, to a Bearcats men’s basketball game, artsy girlfriend to a poetry reading, and the rest of the group to study – which meant watch cable TV with books open on their laps, the number one symptom of senioritis.
As the car prepared to turn into the gym parking lot, artsy girlfriend said to us all, filled with self-importance, “I wish people wouldn’t go to the basketball games. Binghamton doesn’t need sports.”
I took the bait. “Oh, of course we do. It puts the university on the map to the general public.”
“I didn’t hear of Binghamton through sports, ” huffed artsy girlfriend.
“Well, neither did I, but we also live in New York State. What about those in other parts of the country? They don’t know Bingo from Adam.”
“Well,” she pointed to me. “I don’t want those people, people that only find out about colleges because of their basketball teams, to come to my university. They don’t contribute anything.”
If you thought yesterday’s featured Icebreaker tournament player last name was fun (Ben Blood from North Dakota), may I interest you in the entire Michigan State roster?
They have a freshmen defenseman named Tim Buttery. Yep, as in the dairy product. They also have a senior forward named Tim Crowder (rhymes with chowder), a freshmen forward with the last name Warda (like how Bostonians say “water”), and their senior assistant captain’s last name is Gentile (which hockey is not.)
You may think I am a horrible person with no heart by pointing these names out. I argue otherwise. As someone whose last name is affectionately known as “The German Monstrosity,” who still sometimes has to spell it to herself after almost 27 years, I can be critical of others’ last names because we’re all buddies in the “Bad Last Name Club.” At least these guys’ names are spellable. At least they don’t have random silent vowels thrown in their last name just to make things difficult. When I got engaged last week, one of the first things people asked me (after “When are you getting married?”) was, “Are you changing your name?” I didn’t skip a beat when answering: “What, are you kidding me? You think when given the option I’d keep The German Monstrosity?” You’ve got to be serious. It’s more gone than Brett Bennett. I might not be getting married until after this economic depression is finished, but heck, let’s start the last name change now. My French-Canadian-ness gets confused often for Italian-ness, and now I’ll have an easily spellable Italian last name to go with it, instead of a way too long German word that literally translates to “rabbit killer.”
But I digress. Continue reading
(Or The Skating Monk takes on Semi-Threatening Underrated Cat-Like-Animals)
When I was a Brownie Girl Scout, my troop partook in the Strasenberg Planetarium Sleepover. The name of this program pretty much explains it – roughly 50 Girl Scouts take over the planetarium for an overnight and stay up late watching every show in the planetarium’s rotation. You then get two hours of sleep in the planetarium lobby, where they then wake you up at an ungodly hour by blasting “Here Comes the Sun” and handing you a Wegmans donut and orange juice before forcing you out so they can open for a more profitable event. As you can tell, it was the highlight of the year, especially when your troop eschews camping, like mine did. (We didn’t like getting dirty. Or ticks. Or dampness.)
On a late March Friday evening, I took part in the Great Garden Sleepover Party, or as everyone else knows it as, the Hockey East Semifinals. I was there from 5:15pm – five minutes into the first semifinal game between the University of New Hampshire and Boston College – until the bitter end of the Boston University versus Vermont game – with a final whistle at 1:05am. Such an evening epitomized college hockey for me – spirited, crazy, and a true sports fans dream.
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