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November 18, 2003

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Icers Stay at No. 11

By wpengine | November 18, 2003

For this first time this season, the same team remained in the top spot for consecutive weeks, as North Dakota retained the nation’s top billing despite a split with No. 5 St. Cloud St. The Fighting Sioux earned 20 first-place votes and 568 points in this week’s USCHO.com poll.

Boston College moved up one position to No. 2 this week, after a 2-2 tie at No. 4 UNH and a dominating 4-1 win at ninth-ranked Massachusetts. Maine also rose a spot to No. 3 after a pair of convincing home victories, defeating Northeastern on Friday before dispatching of UMass Lowell on Saturday night. UNH and St. Cloud State rounded out the top five. The Wildcats dropped two places to No. 4 after tying Boston College and having its defense crumble in a 7-4 loss to Providence.

Colorado College and Michigan assumed the sixth and seventh spots, respectively. The Tigers remained steady at No. 6 after having the week off. Michigan, which found itself in the top five last week, dropped two spots to No. 7 with a weekend split against Ohio State.

Denver, Massachusetts, and Boston University stayed put in the eighth through 10 spots. The No. 8 Pioneers earned a tough three points on the road at Alaska-Anchorage, while Massachusetts lost to Boston College before winning at Providence. Meanwhile, the Terriers fought Merrimack to a 2-2 before throttling Merrimack the next night, 6-1.

Cornell remained just outside the top 10 after a three-point weekend in the North Country. The Buckeyes of Ohio St. rose two spots to No. 12 after a split against Michigan, while ECAC member Harvard continued its slide, falling to 13th after a loss to Princeton and a win over Yale. Michigan State moved up one place to No. 14 after splitting with Miami. Minnesota-Duluth and Brown rounded out the poll, with the two teams tied for No. 15.

For the first time this season, three Ivy teams — Cornell, Harvard, and Brown — are ranked in the top 15. Another Ivy team, Dartmouth, just missed cracking the list.

The No. 11 Red, which stayed put in this week’s poll after a tie at Clarkson and a 2-1 victory at St. Lawrence, will play host to Bowling Green and No. 12 Ohio St. this coming weekend.

Archived article by Alex Ip

Related

Grapplers Hunt for National Crown

By wpengine November 19, 2003

On the wall of fame in the Friedman Wrestling Center hangs the world’s only extraterrestrial singlet. Next to it, a note from former Cornell wrestler and current astronaut Ed Lu ’84, who took the spandex uniform to outerspace in 1997: “Cornell wrestling can now claim something that no other team can,” he wrote. “It’s truly out of this world.” Though the singlet’s brief intergalactic trip brought the wrestlers international notoriety, the team has its sights set on a more earthly goal this year: winning a national championship. “We have three guys on the team who could win it this year, and a few more ranked in the 10 through 12 spots who could place,” said head coach Rob Koll. “Those guys are taking us to the next level.” Last season served as the springboard Koll and his athletes needed to vault into the national spotlight. From November through February, the team traversed the country taking on some of the sport’s toughest competition. In dual matches, the Red beat perennial powerhouses Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa State, and Michigan. The grapplers also placed sixth at the prestigious national duals and won the Ivy League tournament. A 10th place finish at NCAAs iced the cake. Though proud of the accomplishments, neither Koll nor his wrestlers felt satiated. Now a clock above the Friedman Center’s main mat shows exactly how much time remains until they return to nationals in the spring: 138 days, 16 hours, and 48 minutes. Koll wants to take advantage of each second. “This year, we’ll focus on making practices shorter and more effective,” he said. “We want to maximize the time our guys spend here by drilling on an individual basis and specialize on what each wrestler needs to do to improve.” The team, particularly several key returning starters, will benefit from the new regimen. At 125 pounds, two-time NCAA qualifier senior Alejandro Alvarez will look to finish his career on the podium at nationals, while junior Travis Lee hopes to win his second straight national championship after moving up to the 133-pound weight class. Sophomore All-American Dustin Manotti will return to the mat at 149 pounds, and 174-pound junior Tyler Baier hopes to make the All-American squad as well. Finally, senior 197-pounder Matt Greenberg looks to cap his final season on the Hill with a medal in March. Some of the country’s best high school wrestlers will also compete for spots on the roster. According to Intermat, a national wrestling poll, Cornell brought in the sixth best recruiting class in the country this year — far better than any Ivy competition and close behind several Big 10 and Big 12 schools. Despite the great outlook, tough competition and personal tragedy may make this a tough season. “Penn has everyone back, and Harvard is tooled up this year,” said Koll of the Red’s most prominent Ivy competitors. “Across the board, the Ivy teams will give us much tougher competition.” Nationally-ranked opponents Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Lehigh, not to mention a slew of Big 10 and Big 12 teams will also test the team’s mettle. The team’s biggest challenge may come off the mat, however. On Sept. 22, the wrestlers lost Scot Elwood ’06, one of their teammates who died after inadvertently hopping a fence bordering Fall Creek Gorge. “Scot was a great guy, and he would have reached his goals both on and off the mat,” said Koll softly. “His death was tough on the guys, but we want to learn from it so that we know he did not die in vain.” Though painful, the tragedy inspired the team, and it knows that best way to honor Scot is to concentrate on the task at hand: winning. “Every single one of our guys could win, but you have to be perfect that day,” concluded Koll. “I expect nothing less than a national championship, and we’re working toward it.”Archived article by Everett Hullverson
Senior Tandem Sits Atop the List

By wpengine November 19, 2003

The annals of sports history are full of great one-two combinations; players great in their own right, but who together made each other exceptional. Ruth and Gehrig, Montana and Rice, Stockton and Malone, Gretzky and, well, anyone. Now Cornell may have a pair of its own to add to the list with the names of Johnson and Markle. Seniors Senter Johnson and Jeff Markle are the driving force behind Cornell polo’s impressive success these past three years. Winning starting positions on the team during their sophomore year, the two have quickly become one of the most respected and feared combinations in collegiate polo. Johnson and Markle led the Red to victory in the Eastern Regionals last year, and their impressive play earned them both All-East selections. Much of the success Markle and Johnson have enjoyed stems from the fact that their individual games complement each other so well. Johnson’s ability to hit the ball and out-stick virtually any opponent has made him Cornell’s go-to man for scoring. “I look at Senter as a player whose one job is to score our goals and finish off anything that comes into the offensive end,” said Markle. “If he had to put it into the goal, I’ll take him over anyone else’s teammate in the country.” Yet, as Johnson is quick to point out, much of his goal scoring success hinges upon Markle’s solid playmaking and control of the center of the field. “I’d say Jeff is a much better technical player. He makes every play consistently better, and without Jeff playing and controlling the game, I can’t stay up front and score goals,” explained Johnson “They’re both quite accomplished players and they feed off each other,” commented head coach David Eldredge ’81. “If one of them is doing well, the other one usually does well and the two tend to pick each other up very quickly.” Eldredge went on to describe the dilemma the duo poses to opposing teams. “People are going ‘Oh my God,'” said Eldredge. “‘I just took out who I thought was their best player, but then there’s this other player in there making just as good a play.'” Another strength that makes Johnson and Markle such a deadly combination on the polo field is the almost instinctive level of communication that exists between them. Each reads the other’s movements and understands the other’s reasoning as if it were his own. “Pretty much a hundred percent of the time I know what Senter’s doing,” stated Markle. “I can tell you what he’s thinking and I know what he’s going to do, and that’s a huge help when you’re playing against other teams.” With such great talent comes great expectations, and the one thing that is most evident in Johnson and Markle is confidence. “If we play our game and stick to the kind of polo we know we have to play, we should beat any team,” stated Markle. Johnson echoed his teammate’s sentiments, making their goals for the year clear. “Every game we look at individually, we should be able to win,” he said. “Anything besides winning a national championship will be a disappointment.” Cornell lost by one goal in the national championship match last year to Colorado State, and the defeat has left a lasting impression on the two. “It’s always tough to lose by a goal because you think back on each individual play,” said Johnson, “but it gave us a lot of motivation to win this year.” “The what-ifs start creeping into your head,” commented Markle. “This year’s just a matter of making it happen.” While Johnson and Markle will try to dispel the “what-ifs” of last year’s defeat, there is no question where Johnson and Markle stand among the elite athletes of Cornell and of the nation. They’re at the top of the list.Archived article by Paul Testa