A chance at pride, a year’s worth of bragging rights and a mouth with all 32 teeth were on the line as Binghamton University’s club ice hockey team took on SUNY Broome’s on Thursday. But this year — for the first time in the rivalry’s 40-year history — there was something bigger for these two squads to compete over: the first President’s Cup trophy.
Organized jointly between BU President Harvey Stenger — a longtime hockey fan and men’s league player — and SUNY Broome President Kevin Drumm, the event helped to bridge a gap between two of the area’s largest institutions and raise school spirit.
“SUNY Broome and Binghamton University are great partners in many ways and our relationship continues to grow,” Stenger wrote in an email to Pipe Dream. “Adding an athletic competition seemed like a fun idea. Hockey looked like a good place to start.”
Senior captain Chris Emerson applauded the efforts of both schools in seeing the President’s Cup through to fruition, especially for a pair of schools that would otherwise have never met in a meaningful game. While BU’s club team competes with other NCAA club programs like Cornell and Syracuse, SUNY Broome competes in the National Junior College Athletic Association, facing other junior college opponents and occasionally Division II or III schools such as LeMoyne or SUNY Cortland.
“It’s kind of cool that both presidents are interested in hockey and that both schools have programs near,” Emerson said. “We don’t really play each other because we’re in different leagues … so its kind of cool that people from all over the Binghamton area can see hockey between these two teams.”
And they came in droves. In front of nearly a full-capacity rink at the SUNY Broome Ice Center, hundreds of fans showing allegiance through their beanie caps or sweatpants cheered as BU fought its way to a 2-1 win over the Hornets.
As with most rivalries, the atmosphere seemed concerned with just about everything but unity. The Bearcats racked up 30 minutes in the penalty box as fans cheered on the scuffles, and Baxter found himself strained for dance moves against SUNY Broome’s hornet mascot by the game’s end. But Jamie Nyce, a sophomore majoring in cinema, a spectator at the event and transfer student from SUNY Broome, saw the lighter side of the fiercely competitive matchup.
“It’s just a good competition between two schools, being so close and so connected,” Nyce said. “I think just them playing together brings out a good crowd.”
A crowd so great that it was easy to forget that the matchup was between a pair of club teams — a section of the campus community that sometimes gets overlooked at D-I schools like Binghamton, despite that fact that BU has over 3,000 participants in club athletics alone.
“I know athletics at Binghamton kind of takes a backseat sometimes,” Emerson said. “So it’s kind of cool that we can get some kind of excitement into a club sports game.”
BU’s victory now puts its season mark at 5-10 as entering-favorite Broome falls to 12-6 on the year. With the loss, Hornets players will have to carry out the daunting task of wearing BU apparel around their campus for one day next week. Great as that may be, Nyce believes that something even bigger than the first Presidents Cup may have been raised for BU after Thursday night.
“I think if they keep doing things like this, more people will keep coming,” Nyce said. “And I think it could bring a lot of BCC students to transfer over to BU.”