Why You Should Apply to the Hockey Beat

You can apply to be on The Cornell Daily Sun hockey beat here.

It’s a Saturday night. It’s been snowing steadily for a few hours now, so when my car skids slightly in the parking lot as I pull out, it’s expected. Nothing crazy yet, though.

I drive, slowly, to the nearest McDonald’s that my phone directed me to. It’s definitely coming down now. I pull into the drive-through. A sign, written on loose leaf paper, is taped along the side of the window:

Closed due to weather.

Okay, cool. I drive a bit further down the road, make the slowest left turn of all time into a gas station just before closing time. I grab some snacks and a caffeinated Coca Cola for my travels.

A full tank of gas, and I’m off.

Until I’m not.

The drive from Hamilton, New York to Ithaca is not a particularly long one — just around 66 miles, about an hour-and-a-half drive. It’s late, though, like it usually is after a hockey game. Cornell had lost to Colgate by an ugly 6-3 score. Mike Schafer ’86 was not entirely thrilled to be talking to me postgame — he just wanted to get out of there.

As did I.

But as my tires jerked across the road, my knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel, I eventually pulled over in a little town with just a couple of flickering street lights, a vacant fire station and a post office that looked straight out of the 1950s.

My car wouldn’t make it up a hill.

“Holy s***,” I said. “I’m gonna die out here.”

I was too far from Hamilton to turn back and have it be safe and worthwhile, but Ithaca seemed eons away. On the phone with my dad, panicking as the spotty service cut in and out, he told me that I just needed to keep moving. There was not a single hotel open within 20 miles of me.

So, I went. I celebrated when my car began to move over 20 miles per hour. I had to pull over twice. It was past 2:00 a.m. when I collapsed onto my bed in my Collegetown house. The game had ended and I had filed my story before 11 p.m.

Have I convinced you yet?

Traversing rural New York during a blizzard is just one of the countless memories I’ve collected while covering Cornell men’s hockey for The Sun. Once October hits, my Fridays and Saturdays are spent happily at Lynah Rink — or in Hamilton, reluctantly — as I sit in the press box and watch the game I’ve loved for as long as I can remember.

“I’m never going to Colgate again,” I swore to my friends upon telling them my harrowing tale of travel.

That was a lie. I went back — twice(!) — in March to watch Cornell sweep the Raiders advance to ECAC championship weekend in Lake Placid. Then I went to Lake Placid, and Cornell won the whole thing.

When you’re standing on some of the most historic ice in the country — in the very rink where the ‘Miracle on Ice’ occurred in 1980 — and watching the team you cover hoist a championship trophy, you tend to forget about the little grievances that you were met with along the way.

In all, I’ve been to three NCAA Tournaments, two ECAC championships and dozens of regular season games at and away from Lynah. I’ve seen three NCAA regional final appearances and two Whitelaw Cups lifted. My track record is pretty good, and I have the team to thank for that.

But between all of the stories filed, interviews conducted, and championships won and lost, there are the little things that make student journalism so special. There are the coffee runs before (and after) games to power through and media meals consumed in press boxes, but also the conversations with coaches and players, including some incredible chats with Schafer as I sat on the couch in his office.

Covering Cornell hockey has been one of the most formative parts of my college experience. I’ve clocked thousands of miles on the road to report on the team, slept in suspect motel rooms, and gotten dressed up in business professional attire at a rest stop in Cleveland, Ohio on my way to the NCAA Tournament.

But how can you even think about all of that when the team ties a game shorthanded and then wins it in overtime to advance to the title game?

When the team scores with 10 seconds left to upset one of the top schools in the country? When the team knocks off the defending national champions? When the team wins the Whitelaw Cup — twice?

Cornell hockey has a flair for the dramatic. Often, the headlines write themselves.

But at the end of the day, someone needs to write them.

At The Sun, we’re looking for a team of reporters to help cover both men’s and women’s hockey for the 2025-2026 season. Myself and Eli Fastiff, fellow Senior Editor and Co-Director of the hockey beat, will be graduating next May, and we’re ready to help guide a new group of hockey reporters so that these experiences live on once we leave.

Being a part of our team means a lot of things — it means you’ll hear a lot of my rambling about the Pairwise ratings and other college hockey semantics, but it also means you’ll get a front-row seat to two of the top college hockey programs in the country.

Multiple times per week, you’ll get to talk with some of the best coaches and athletes out there and tell their stories. You can geek out with me about power play strategy, the forecheck and odd-man rushes. But whether or not you want to be a sports reporter, covering Cornell hockey equips you with skills that are indubitably important once your time at Cornell has concluded. 

So much of what I used during my internship with the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets this past summer I learned from covering Cornell hockey. You’ll become a better writer, a better communicator and develop pristine time management skills (yes, you can put it on your resume).

But it’s never really been about that. At least, not for me. I’m eternally grateful that I’ll have four years of incredible experiences from this role, from getting stuck in blizzards to traveling almost seven hours for the NCAA Tournament to 10-hour days at Lynah Rink. I wouldn’t trade a second of it.

I want to share more stories with our audience than ever before. More than anything, though, I want to share some of the formative experiences that covering hockey has given me with a new crop of student journalists, all while chronicling what will be a pair of historic seasons for both Cornell men’s and women’s hockey.

So, join us. You won’t be disappointed.

You might just need to make sure your car has snow tires.

You can apply to be on The Cornell Daily Sun hockey beat here. Applications are due Sunday, September 21 at 11:59 p.m. For any application questions or hockey-related inquiries, you can reach the Hockey Beat at hockey@cornellsun.com, or contact Co-Directors Jane McNally and Eli Fastiff at jmcnally@cornellsun.com and efastiff@cornellsun.com, respectively.

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