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Best Sports Event Seen
David Finkelstein, Alum
Columbia College 1986


Actually, this was an event heard and not seen. The momentous occasion when Columbia College's soccer team made it to the finals of the NCAA championships in my final year at CC. It was a game played down south: on the day, or rather early evening, an eerie quiet descended around the dorms as practically everyone huddled 'round radios to listen to the live broadcast piped in via our very own student radio station. I too huddled 'round with roommates in Hartley Hall, beers clutched in sweaty palms as we moved in tandem with the commentary--left pass to the forward, right cross to the striker. You could hear a pin drop across campus as we held our breaths with each shot on goal--all tantalizingly close, ricocheting off the cross bars or sliding just wide of the goal mouth. And when the opposing team scored the only goal late in the second half, the great John Jay moan reverberated across the campus, matched by howls of despair from windows of the little dorm cousins around it. It was both depressing and very uplifting in equal measure--though we lost, for a long moment you could feel the whole place united in silent admiration for our championship team.

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