It isn't often that the Yale Hockey Team makes it to the ECAC tournament and it's not often that I make it to their home "field," Ingalls Rink, which is too bad. It's a great place to see hockey: compact, intimate, intense.
I did make it over there last weekend, walking over from my house to see the Bulldogs beat up on Brown: 4-2 Friday night and 2-0 Saturday, to advance to the next round, up in Albany.
"The Yale Whale" (the building is really shaped like one) seats only 3,486 fans, which is a problem of late, given the excellence and popularity of this year's team. Hey, why don't they just move the games across town to the New Haven Coliseum? Oh wait, never mind...
It's true they are doing some extensive renovations of the old place, but I don't see much room for a lot of extra seats. Between periods the other night I was reading the big board outside, listing the improvements upcoming. Here's one I couldn't help but notice: "new vomitory entrance to visiting team bench."
I guess I shouldn't have been taken aback. Hockey is a violent sport. Vomit is part of the game.
But still: a vomitory? And no vomitory for the home team? What kind of business is that?
So I asked Steve Conn, the always helpful Yale Associate Athletics Director, what was up with this vomitory. He did a little research and informed me that this vomitory is not a place for hockey teams to vomit.
He sent me the three definitions of vomitory:
1) something that induces vomiting.
2) an aperture through which matter is discharged.
3) one of the tunnel-like passages of an amphitheater or stadium between the seats and the outside wall or passageway.
Conn said the third definition is what applies for Ingalls. "It's not what you're thinking," he told me. "It just means the visiting team can go from the lockers to their bench."
Oh. You see what you can learn when you go to Ingalls and start nosing around?
Anyway, I had a fun time at the games. The Yale and Brown bands entertained during all of the time stoppages, interspersed with some hits from the overly-loud recorded sound system. I could've done without the latter noise, except I did enjoy the Doors' "Peace Frog," with its immortal line: "blood in the streets in the town of New Haven." Jim Morrison wrote that after he got beat up by the cops at the old New Haven Arena, the town's original hockey joint.
It all adds up. doesn't it?