CU Athletics, Olympics Disappoint

You know, I never thought that I'd be saying this (especially in this space), but God bless the Columbia men's basketball team. For the past five days, the discussion of their amazing upsets over Princeton and Penn last weekend has dominated all other sports-related discussions on this campus. And really, after four years trying to grasp at anything to cheer about on this campus, that really is a refresher.

But, because I'm a pessimistic jerk by nature, I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that despite this little blip on the radar screen, this has still been a winter of letdowns. Just like those old SNL skits about Debbie Downer (she'd remind you about the likelihood of food-borne bacteria in turkeys on Thanksgiving), I'm here to crush your little celebratory spirits, so here we go...

With a seemingly stable coaching staff instilled in both the men's and women's basketball programs and even the peak of global athletics barraging us at all hours of the day on NBC's Olympics coverage, we should be overflowing with athletic excitement. Um, well, do you feel anything? I've been checking ESPN.com every day for the last week to see how Spring Training is going, and even though the sight of Johnny Damon in the Yankee pinstripes makes me want to gag every time I see it, it's still the biggest sports rush I've experienced in weeks.

So why is this? Well let's start with the most obvious letdown of this winter: Columbia women's basketball.

Now, I know that maybe not everyone out there has the deep emotional ties to this program that I do (following them around the Northeast Corridor for a winter will do that to you), but this is a story that deserves its due. Plagued by erratic coaching over the last three seasons, this is a team that desperately needs to pull itself out of the doldrums and do so as quickly as possible. Yet for numerous reasons, including an inexperienced roster, continually changing game plans, and a lack of confidence against their Ivy League peers, the team has simply not been able to put it together. At all.

As a regular at the bottom of the Ancient Eight standings all season, the Lions have managed just one conference win (against fellow bottom-dweller Yale) and their 1-9 Ivy, 5-18 overall record is well on its way to being far worse than their final standing last season, when the still-mysterious departure of then head coach Traci Waites rocked the program.

As a senior this year and former beat writer for the team during my sophomore year, I have seen elements in many of these girls' play, especially juniors Megan Griffith and Shasta Henderson, which can be explosive and could easily down some of the most decorated players in the league. After three years of trying to explain this program's inability to produce, I'm out of reasons. Although Sarah Beato is the only senior on the team and most of the girls have many more chances for Ivy redemption ahead of them, it's still sorry to see them falter for yet another miserable season.

I just really wish I'd gotten to see them pull through it all.

So, to add on to that, now we've got this whole "meltdown in Turin" thing to deal with. Whether it was Bode's over-hyped suckitude or the fact that we know everything that happened in the main events before primetime even rolls around, it has been pretty much unanimously decided that this is one of the most lackluster Olympic games in recent history.

(Just for a little background info here, Olympics time is usually the highlight of my every-other year-cell phones are turned off to block out distractions, intense internet searches give me the lowdown on every obscure event and tears are shed when Bob Costas informs me of how the Estonian curling team had to sell peanuts on the street to pay their way to Italy. It gets me every time.)

But, after eleven lackluster days of frosty fortitude, the best we have to show is three gold medals in a sport that we invented, then forced on the rest of the world (snowboarding), and three more in the speed skating events, where we were expected to rake in the gold. And no matter how much they try to hype up ice dancing and the women's long program, the sight of a 95-pound teenager spinning really just doesn't get my adrenaline flowing.

Only four days of competition remain and unless Bode Miller comes back to ski the men's giant slalom in three seconds, Apolo Ohno literally catches on fire during the 500-meter race AND Emily Hughes lays a ghetto beatdown on Sasha Cohen, my winter is shot.

If you need to find me, I'll be holed up in my room, concentrating on my thesis without distraction and counting down the hours until MLB's opening day.

Lauren Clark is a Barnard College senior majoring in urban studies. Send any comments to to sports@columbiaspectator.com