Ivy League Sports

In the early years of Ivy League women’s athletics, many students played more than one sport. But as youngsters across the country and indeed around the world have specialized earlier in a single sport, with more rigorous training and more accelerated competition, the vast majority of Ivy athletes now concentrate on one sport year-round. One of the 52 Ivy League men and women who still played more than one sport in 1998-99 was Yale’s Sue Barnes. Despite not being a star in either of her two sports, field hockey and ice hockey, Barnes is a leader on her teams and in the New Haven community.

Barnes grew up playing sports in London, Ontario, starting with tee-ball at age four on a team coached by her parents. She discovered a particular affection for ice hockey in the fifth grade, though she also excelled in cross country, field hockey, softball, and track at the varsity level in high school.

When she arrived at Yale in fall 1996, Barnes decided to concentrate on ice hockey, while getting settled into her studies as a geology major and balancing on-campus jobs. That spring, however, she decided to try out for the field hockey team. Coach Marisa Didio remembers watching Barnes in tryout sessions and, while conceding that she was raw physically, being impressed by “the mental aspect of her play. . . . You could see how she approached each exercise mentally and you could see her game sense, how she carried a hockey ball similar to a puck. You knew she understood tactics.”

Making that team has meant that Barnes plays field hockey from late summer through early November, then turns to ice hockey through March 1, and after working through spring break, returns to spring field hockey practice until just before final exams. In the summers, Barnes works with the Yale branch of the National Youth Sports Program, which provides activities for underprivileged kids in the community.

Though not a headliner on her teams, Barnes’s contribution was essential. In 1998, she started 14 of 19 games for a field hockey team that finished second in the Ivy League and was the squad’s third-leading scorer. The coaching staff chose her for its Coaches’ Award, as the person who best represents the values of the program. Shortly thereafter, in the ice hockey season, she tallied eight goals and ten assists while playing in 27 of the team’s 29 games, and in the spring of 1999, she was chosen as the final Yale field hockey captain of the century.

“The bottom line is impact,” Coach Didio says of Barnes. “I don’t think Barnesy just impacts her teammates. I think she impacts her coaches, and the entire team atmosphere is made better. It becomes a better environment of setting goals and reaching goals simply because she’s a part of it and motivates everyone.”