HAMMIN' IT UP: On the Sports Road Again

For athletes, road trips are about the game, but when you’re a reporter roving across New England and upstate New York at all hours of the day and night, it’s no longer just about the game—its about the sense for adventure. Over a lifetime of following Harvard hockey and a season-and-a-half writing about it, one experience was still missing before I could feel like I truly understood what it was like to cover Harvard hockey.

I had never ventured out into the wilderness of upstate New York to witness the men’s hockey team’s own version of “The Game.” Namely, I had never driven the six hours to Ithaca, New York, home of the Cornell Big Red and allegedly, the most raucous fan base in ECAC hockey.

This year presented me with a special opportunity, because going to Cornell would enable me to attend two versions of “The Game” in less than 24 hours—provided that my partner, Courtney Skinner ’10, and I were willing to drive through the night to Cambridge in time for kickoff of the Harvard-Yale game at noon the next day.

Some called driving a total of 12 hours for a two-and-a-half hour hockey game dedication. Though covering away games is very important, no one would have faulted forsaking the trip in favor of seeing my last “Game” in Harvard Stadium.

Others weighed in with a more neutral judgment, mentioning that we were “intense” and leaving it at that. A lot of people just thought we were insane and quite possibly compromising the Harvard-Yale experience, but when you put a hockey-loving Massachusetts man together with a girl from southern California and give them a chance to see fans hurl raw fish onto the ice, not going was out of the question.

I don’t see the point in boring you with a full travelogue, because given that driving to Ithaca in the dark leaves little to see anyway, I would have very little to write about.

However, in our first trip to the Harvard-Cornell match-up, we were able to pick out a number of other “firsts” during the roadtrip experience. The biggest of such moments came when the snow began to come down outside of Syracuse, something that can turn a leisurely six hour drive beside pastoral farms into a 10 mile-per-hour crawl down a road where you cannot even identify the lane in which you’re driving.

Encountering one of Central New York’s lake effect snowstorms still could not steal the fun away, because it is easy to look past the delay when your partner’s gets the opportunity to driving in the snow for the first time, quite a big deal for someone who hails from Orange County.

On my own end, I discovered for that “first time” that blasting the same Girl Talk demo CD for three hours is actually really fun.

I would never have known either of these things without making the trip there and back in one day.

Do not misunderstand me. Watching a game at the Lydah Arena is a sporting experience unlike any other. Covering the game itself, one in which Harvard unfortunately lost 2-1, was a memorable experience. It let me see the Crimson skate against one of the most tenacious offenses in the league and witness the intensity of the Cornell fans, each one of whom breathes Big Red hockey and seems capable of following along to coordinated chanting.

But realistically, it was still only a little less than three hours out of our sixteen hour experience. When Courtney and I finally reached Cambridge a little after four in the morning, facing the prospect of waking up in a few hours for a tailgate did not phase us because the weekend sports experience was only half over, and we knew that we had enjoyed the most unique experience thus far.

But sitting in the car in the wee hours of the morning and reflecting on a bunch of newly-created memorable moments, I also began to realize that you do not need to do something as extreme as Courtney and I did, though I firmly believe in taking advantage of those opportunities when they present themselves.

If you’re not engaged in an epic hockey and sports journalistic pilgrimage, road trips are still a special moment, because embarking on them can lead to a number of memorable “firsts” and discoveries about yourself. Especially since we live in an area in proximity to so many schools, road trips involve anything from a trip across the Charles River to a short-drive through New England.

Even if you do not have as good an excuse for following your favorite team as a sportswriter, my simple advice is that you can’t experience the thrill of the sports road trip without doing it yourself.

—Staff writer Robert T. Hamlin can be reached at rhamlin3@gmail.com.