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Not Quite Chariots of Fire
September/October 2005
by R. Ryan Hartnett ’07

Arms brimming with skates, sticks, gloves, and helmets, Dave Denton '07 and the rest of the Pierson College coed intramural hockey team made their way up Science Hill to Ingalls Rink, late on a bitterly cold night last winter, for the championship game against Ezra Stiles College. The puck didn’t drop until 11:40 p.m. Pierson jumped out to an early lead. The music of a few Pierson members of the Yale Precision Marching Band, along with cheers and jeers from a crowd of, well, at least 35, echoed around the 3,486-seat arena. At game’s end, Pierson skated away with a 5-3 victory.

“Master G [Harvey Goldblatt] came out onto the ice, waddling around taking pictures,” says Denton. “We all did victory laps with the Pierson flag. It was like something out of The Mighty Ducks."

It was Yale intramurals at its best. Each year, former high school varsity superstars join with those who were always picked last for kickball to compete in everything from ping-pong to squash to inner-tube water polo. What every college seeks, besides a good time, is the Tyng Cup—the silver trophy awarded to the college that racks up the most intramural points over the year.

Pierson may have won the battle that night, but Ezra Stiles won the war, taking the Tyng Cup for the third year in a row. Pierson and Timothy Dwight have each won a record 11 Tyngs, but Ezra Stiles is knocking on the door: despite being 30 years younger than its competitors, Stiles now has 10 Tyngs, 9 of which it captured in the last 18 years.

Stiles master Stuart Schwartz speaks fondly of the trophy as he sits at his desk, and he is anxious about the possibility of it ever leaving the bookshelf behind him. Last May, Stilesians celebrated their three-peat with cake and champagne in the dining hall, beneath the memorial moose. Schwartz joined the celebration not just as the master, but also as a player in touch football and softball. When he’s not playing, he’s often seen on the sidelines with his miniature dachshund, Bandy, who is known for his ability to dribble a soccer ball.

Schwartz is continuing an intramural tradition nurtured by former master Traugott Lawler, on whose watch Stiles won six of its Tyng cups. From his first year as master in 1986, Lawler says, he hand-picked the college’s intramural secretaries, looking for energetic, organized students who would doggedly recruit players. Their first lesson: never lose a game because you don’t have enough players.

“I would insist on no forfeits,” says Lawler. “It just seemed to me to be shameful and crummy for your opponent to show up and not get a game.” And avoiding forfeits was also a matter of strategy: with so many sports and a small talent pool of busy students, a good portion of IM success lies in just showing up.

Danielle Lovell '06 of Jonathan Edwards College knows all about the effectiveness of a determined IM recruiter. When she was a freshman, she says, “my two intramural secretaries figured out that if they just said, 'Danni, we need you or we’re going to forfeit!' I would come to every game. I felt needed. I felt part of the community.” Today, Lovell plays almost every sport, and it is the rare afternoon when she can’t be found wearing JE green on the field, in the pool, or on the court. For her participation and contagious enthusiasm, Lovell was named national intramural player of the year last spring by Sports Illustrated on Campus.

While Lovell speaks proudly of her individual accomplishments, she also longs to bring the Tyng Cup to Jonathan Edwards. Can she and JE take the crown from Ezra Stiles? Or will the Stilesian powerhouse tie the 11-cup record? You won’t see it play out on ESPN. But for a few dedicated college masters and students, the nine-month IM season is the one that really matters.

Sports Shorts

Pitcher Craig Breslow '02 was called up by the San Diego Padres on July 22 after three years in the minor leagues. The former Bulldog captain pitched one and two-thirds scoreless innings in relief—and slept in a nicer-than-usual hotel—before returning to the Class AA Mobile Bay Bears the next day. Recalled to the Padres on July 29, Breslow is the first Eli in the major leagues since Ron Darling '82 retired in 1995.

Penn and Harvard are the Ivy football powers to beat this year, Ivy sportswriters say. In the league’s preseason media poll, Penn was picked to win the conference, but defending champion Harvard was a close second. Yale, predicted to finish fourth, starts its season at the University of San Diego on September 17.

Women’s tennis coach Chad Skorupka resigned this summer to become the head coach at Wake Forest, where he had been an assistant prior to coming to Yale. Skorupka’s teams had a 58-24 record during his four years at Yale and won the ECAC fall championship in 2002. Assistant coach Katie Granson, a recent standout player at Duke, has been named interim head coach.

Yale trumped MIT, in what was described as a “nail-biting final,” to win the 2005 college championship of the American Contract Bridge League in July. Eight college teams had qualified for the Atlanta tournament through online matches in the spring, including Yale’s Marc Glick-man '05, Jonathan Bittner '07, Randall Rubinstein '06, and law and management student Christina Craige. If you must know, Harvard was eliminated in the quarterfinals.

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