The Bomber football team finished the season 12-1 and made a trip to the national quarterfinals.
The Bomber football team finished the season 12-1 and made a trip to the national quarterfinals.
The 2022 Cortaca Jug game was historic, featuring two 9-0 teams for the first time in the rivalry’s history, and culminating in front of 40,000 fans at Yankee Stadium.
In the lead-up to the game, senior Sports Media majors Matthew Sosler and Nicholas Lubrano began creating a film that would ultimately detail the Bombers’ undefeated run through the regular season.
Seniors Matthew Sosler and Nicholas Lubrano (3rd from right and far right) attended every game to create the documentary. (Photo submitted)
Utilizing footage from the student-run Creative Media team, archival Cortaca Jug footage from WICB and ICTV, and broadcasts from the 2022 IC football season, the pair worked tirelessly to tell the story of the entire season, with a special focus on team’s experience at Yankee Stadium.
Lubrano initially pitched the idea for the film during his course Narratives in Sport Documentary, which he took in the spring 2022 semester with Mead Loop, professor of journalism and director of the sports media program. But because that assignment called on the students to pitch a mock documentary, Loop encouraged Lubrano to pursue the idea in the capstone course Senior Workshop in Sports Media during the fall 2022 semester. That’s where Lubrano enlisted the help of Sosler.
The pair attended every game the team played during the year, which gave them the opportunity to travel to Chicago when the Bombers followed up a 10-0 regular season with a run to the national quarterfinals of the NCAA playoffs. They also interviewed current and former coaches and players
You can watch the full documentary “Cortaca 2022: All Roads Lead to the Bronx (And Beyond)” here.
“They can be proud of creating the definitive documentary on the Cortaca rivalry and a historic 2022 season,” Loop said.
Lubrano, who also works as the Sports Director for WICB, was grateful for all the places the documentary took them, particularly to Yankee Stadium, where the professional atmosphere gave the pair a chance to further develop professional skills, one of the many experiential learning opportunities that were available to students during IC in the City weekend.
“Being in Yankee Stadium gave us a good sense of what sporting events look like at these big venues and what media is expected at these big venues,” he said. “It was a really good professional experience that a lot of schools aren't going to give you. But at IC, you're exposed to a higher level of professionalism, and you're expected to have a higher level of professionalism.
“The opportunities that Cortaca provided were massive,” he continued. “My first Cortaca as an IC student was at MetLife in 2019. And I remember sitting in the seats with people who I just met a few months prior. Those were the same people who I was working with at Yankee Stadium three years later.”
“This Ithaca College football season was something that honestly, when you put everything together, probably won't happen again,” Solser said. “To be able to document that meant a lot to me.”