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Click to see The Sun's guide to Monday's life and news.

In 1896, the International Olympic Committee began its revival of the ancient Greek games in Athens, Greece. Since the inception of the modern games, Ivy League athletes have been competing for their countries against people from all over the world. Three Cornellians made the trip to the 1904 Games, which has led to a legacy of over 80 athletes competing for the elusive gold medal.

Brett Hoover, an Ivy League and Olympics enthusiast, worked on compiling a list of all the Ivy undergraduates who had competed in the Olympics since its rebirth, noticing the extensive history of the two organizations.

“No other league can say they had people in the 1904 Olympics, because no one else did. So that’s part of it, that our history starts at the very origins of it,” Hoover explained about the high prevalence of Ivy Olympians.

To the Editor:

Re: “Intramural Hockey Axed in Budget Cut,” Sports, Sept. 1.

Playing intramural ice hockey and then downing our nightcap — a Ruloff’s pitcher — was one of our favorite pastimes in college. So you could imagine our dismay when we discovered that the Athletics Department axed our beloved sport.

More than the disappointment that Cornellians will no longer have the privilege of playing on Lynah’s legendary sheet of ice, the end of intramural ice hockey shatters the heart of a revered Cornell institution.

Let’s not kid ourselves. While the name Ivy League came from an early sports conference, these days “Ivy” conjures thoughts of academia, not athletics.

But that doesn’t mean that an Ivy League school cannot produce some of the finest athletes in the world.

In fact, Cornell itself has produced a prominent list of professional athletes.

One famous Cornellian is running back Ed Marinaro ’72. As great a runner as Marinaro was, he is probably better known for his time on television than for his time on the gridiron.

Though it might be one of the less-known –– and less believably titled –– club sports at Cornell, the Underwater Hockey Club is indeed a Cornell club as improbable as it sounds. Team member Miriam Goler ’09 called it, “… an absolutely ridiculous sport, but ridiculously fun and [the club has] a wonderful bunch of people.”

While investors on Wall Street and Joe Six-Packs on Main Street continue to fret about the current state of the international economy, my focus has turned to the Cornell Athletic Department and its lack of both sound financial judgment in determining hockey ticket prices and of mathematical fairness in choosing line numbers.

If this crisis on Cornell’s campus somehow became a core issue with voters in swing states, and I moderated a debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, I think it would play out like this:

Alva: Good evening from Bailey Hall on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; I'm Mitchell Alva. Welcome to this fourth presidential debate, sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Ned Harkness, the coach who turned the men’s hockey and lacrosse programs into perennial national title contenders, passed away Friday morning. He was 89.

“Ned was a legend, not just at Cornell but in the hockey world,” Men’s Hockey Coach Mike Schafer ’86 stated in a press release. “As a coach, he had a positive impact on a lot of lives. He was a pioneer of the winning hockey tradition here at Cornell. Today is a sad day for Cornell hockey, for college hockey, and for all those that Ned has touched in his life.”

Harkness was at the helm of Cornell’s only two national championships in hockey — 1967 and 1970. The 1967 title also capped off the only undefeated, untied season in collegiate hockey history.

If you’ve been wandering around in a “Hunt for October” induced daze (I have), wondering why you feel like you’re forgetting something — scratch your confused head no more. What’s been nagging so persistently at your baseball-and-football-suffused conscious is exciting, especially for dejected Mets fans who have nothing to look forward to as far as October baseball is concerned (uh-oh). The best part is, you’re going to kick yourself when I tell you…

It’s hockey season … DUH.

That’s right, after about three weeks of preseason games that went unnoticed by many “hockey fans,” the season began yesterday, overshadowed by the thrilling quest for the postseason in the National League and the start of postseason as a whole.