To our Lynah Faithful and Alumni and Friends
Hello Everyone,
This past week has been stressful and emotional for everyone, and with the NCAA announcement to cancel the post-season tournament, our hockey team is not excluded. Yesterday, it was very difficult to speak to our team and watch young men cry as their chance of achieving their dreams disappeared. In my 34 years of coaching, nothing has been more painful than yesterday’s meeting. In sports, the season starts with an unknown. Everyone invests with all their heart and soul, without knowing what the end result will be. That result can hurt, due to the disappointing fact that there are so many uncontrollable factors in every season’s journey. Despite this, our team is all about pursuing this emotionally taxing journey. This is what brings the excitement and passion to hockey and all sports. During the season, a player doesn’t know if he is going to get in the line-up, be a top scorer, or be on the best ranked team in the nation. One thing that is important to our program is its culture. Our culture is to pursue that unknown together, as a team. We work extremely hard to pursue our goals. We don’t worry about how our play is judged by others, based on wins and losses. Our players judge themselves upon how hard they prepared, and how hard they played. Even when a setback hits our program, we understand that the only option is to stick together as a team and get back to work, without fear of the unknown to begin another journey.
To our Lynah faithful, alumni, and every fan who cheered for the Big Red – I am so glad you had the opportunity to watch these young men play hockey this year. They are a special group that truly committed to getting better each day and were never worried about how people judged them. They worked to pursue a dream, without fear of failure. This team is a very close group who are selfless, played with pride for each other, and were proud to wear Cornell University’s colors in front of the best fan base in the country made up of all of you. Working for many years with many different teams, you start to get a sense of which teams are destined to accomplish great things. This was one of those teams. They accomplished an Ivy League Championship, ECAC regular season Championship, a fourth consecutive NCAA bid, and a number one seed in the NCAA Tournament. We were feeling really good about entering the tournament healthy and playing with a passion and a hunger to win both the ECAC and the National Championship. Despite not having this opportunity, I am very proud of what our program accomplished this season and of the season as a whole.
I feel very fortunate and privileged to coach these young men. I am very proud of my team, our staff and to be coaching at Cornell University. Thank you so much for being a part of our team’s success this year and LET’S GO RED!
Mike Schafer