It seems, in a way, a bit backward, but if it works it works!  

While most high school students wrap up their school year and head off somewhere for a summer camp, Nathaniel Poole has moved back to Ithaca and will wrap up his school year online.  

Poole – who plays on the Long Island Gulls 16U hockey team – lives on Long Island from the time he starts training camp in August until the Nationals wrap up in April. This year, the time spent in Ithaca will likely involve a lot of congrats and high-fives, because the Gulls left Las Vegas carrying the trophy recognizing the team as the best 16 U team in the nation. The team went 5-1 in the tournament, wrapping up the title with a 2-0 victory over the L.A. Junior Kings.  

One of Poole’s teammates is fellow Ithacan Cooper Dennis, and according to Nathaniel, the two have been sharing ice time since they were three years old. They played together in the Ithaca Youth Hockey Association, and have woven in and out of one anothers‘ hockey lives for years, playing for elite travel teams based in Syracuse and Rochester. 

I asked Nathaniel how he landed on the Gulls’ roster, and he said, “The Rochester-based team I was on played the Gulls seven times in a season, and their coach set up a Zoom meeting as a recruiting visit. We had plans to go to dinner in an hour, but that meeting lasted two hours and we missed dinner. I’ll never forget it.”  

While playing that demanding schedule – that sees the Gulls play all over the Northeast and New England before competing in the States in Buffalo and the Nationals in Las Vegas – the players live with “host families.” Poole stated, “Many of the families have kids around eight years old, who play on the Gulls’ Mite team.” That arrangement, he said, was a win-win, given the 16 U players have a good living arrangement while the younger kids got a front-row seat to what was to come if they stayed on that path.  

Going forward, the two IYHA alumni will likely go in different directions again, with Dennis looking to move into Junior Hockey (the step between travel and collegiate hockey) while Poole thinks he will be in Long Island for another season. Asked about where he might want to play in college, Nathaniel said, “I am staying open to everything, but I have a big family tree that went to Cornell, and I’ve always loved Cornell.” 

Speaking of Cornell, congrats to the men’s lacrosse team on winning its third straight Ivy League title by beating Dartmouth 15-10 to finish at 5-1 in the conference. While it will ultimately be nice to have another banner to commemorate another Ivy championship, the more immediate benefit lies in the fact that by finishing first, the Big Red will host the Ivy League Tournament this weekend. As the #1 seed, Cornell will play #4 Penn at 8:30 Friday evening, after #2 Princeton and #3 Yale will face off prior to that match up, and the winners will meet on Sunday, with the big prize being the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. No doubt Cornell is looking forward to the rematch, as it was Penn that handed the Big Red its only conference loss of the season, coming out on top in an 11-10 double-overtime thriller in Philadelphia on March 30th.    

Some side notes: The Ivy title is Cornell’s 32nd. Senior C.J. Kirst had another explosive day at Dartmouth, scoring four goals and adding three assists, adding to an already eye-popping resume. Kirst’s seven-point day marked the seventh time this season Kirst has tallied five or more points, and the 25th time he has done so in his illustrious career.