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The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/2000/09/22/w-tennis-travels-to-pennsylvania/)

September 22, 2000

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W. Tennis Travels to Pennsylvania

By ryan | September 22, 2000

The Cornell women’s tennis team will be cut drastically when it opens up competition today in the Cissie Leary Invitation at Penn.

Unlike the SUnity Life Classic two weeks ago all of the squad’s 11 players were allotted playing time, head coach Angela Rudert can only enter four of her players at the Cissie competition.

Traveling to West Philadelphia will be Alex and Daniela DelPrete, Piper Lucas, and Camila Romulo.

All four will compete in both the singles and doubles; the DelPretes will form one of the doubles entries, while Lucas and Romulo will pair up for the other one.

“It’s one of the top invitationals in the East,” said team member Ngozi Amobi. “It’s a really tough tourney.”

Clubs expected at the event include Colgate, Penn State, as well as all of the Ivy League squads.

In the SUnity tournament, Daniela DelPrete and Lucas lost in the semifinals of their respective singles’ flights; Romulo fell in her the first round of the first singles’ flight; and Alex DelPrete earned runner-up honors in Flight 5 of the singles’ competition.

In doubles, the DelPretes lost in the semifinals of Flight 2. And Lucas teamed up with sophomore Nicole Chiu to win Flight 3.

“I think we’re going to do well,” Ngozi said. “We have a much deeper team than last year.”

Archived article by Shiva Nagaraj

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Rahne and the Offense Use Game to Get Back in Sync

By ryan September 25, 2000

What a difference a week makes. After last week, every Cornell football player was shaking his head wondering what happened. Now the team has the inside track to an Ivy League title. The key to this turnaround was the play of junior quarterback Ricky Rahne. Last week he went 28-of-64 for 319 yards. Despite the yards, Rahne would be the first to say his performance against Bucknell was far from sharp. And while he was still not perfect against Yale, (the junior still threw two interceptions) his 17-for-30 for 212 yards and two touchdowns was a significant improvement from a week ago. The bigger improvement may have been his clutch passing, especially during the final drive. Rahne went 2-4 on the Cornell possession, with one completion for a first down on fourth-and-six at the Yale 37 yard-line, and the other a 15-yard toss to senior co-captain Joe Splendorio which ended up being the game-winning touchdown. The drive recalled memories of the Rahne from the 1999 campaign. “I felt a little bit more in rhythm. I felt like I was seeing things better,” Rahne said, comparing his performance against Yale to the loss to Bucknell. “I hope that I would be better with the completion percentage this week, since last week was about 30-percent,” he added with a smile. But Rahne was quick to point out his flaws. “Those two picks, those are still bad plays. We can’t have four turnovers and expect to win every game.” Rahne attributes this improvement to a good week of practice. “I had a much better week of practice. If I have a good week of practice, I’m going to feel much more in rythem in the game. I don’t think I had a very good week of practice heading into the Bucknell game. I think the rythem was much more from going back to basics and concentrating on that during the week,” he said. One of the major areas of improvement was Rahne’s ability to hit the outlet receiver in the backfield. This often let the Red pick up 5-10 yards which helped in the battle of field position and keeping drives alive. But Rahne said that his perfromance improved just as the entire offense played better. “As an offense we worked together a lot better. That means I took my right drop, linemen blocked the right guys, how they were supposed to, running backs picked up the blitz well, and receivers ran their routes at the right depths and made their cuts at the right time. That makes all the difference,” he said. In addition to the offense being more in sync, Rahne had other advantages on the Yale defense. While Yale had Than Merrill and Todd Tomich, two first-team All-Ivy players from a year ago in the defensive backfield, Cornell had a height advantage. And on the last play of Cornell’s final drive Rahne was able to use this to perfection. “Joe [Splendorio] is 6-5, 225-pounds, so that is a size advantage in the NFL. On that last play I threw it up a little bit because I know Joe can jump and I know he is big. So you are going to use that to your advantage,” Rahne said. So even though it was not a perfect performance by the keystone of the offense, the Red can rest easier knowing that Rahne appears to be returning to his excellent form of a year ago. “I definately threw the ball better than I did last week,” he said with a grin.Archived article by J.V. Anderton
Football Stuns Yale 24-23

By ryan September 24, 2000

Cornell rallied from a 20-10 deficit to knock off last year’s Ivy League champs Yale, 24-23, in front of a raucous Homecoming crowd at Schoellkopf Field. The Elis missed a short field goal as time expired that would have won the game. Cornell now stands at 1-1 overall, but 1-0 in the crucial Ivy standings. Read more about Cornell’s emotional, come-from-behind win in Monday’s Sun.Archived article by Sun Staff