24

TigerBlog was going through his Saturday routine - which can be summed up in two words: "youth lacrosse" - when he received a text message from Craig Sachson, Princeton's rowing contact.

The message said simply "24."

It took TB less than a second to figure out what Sachson was talking about. His message - 24 - was an indication that Princeton's men's lightweight rowing team had won the IRA national championship.

Sure enough, that was in fact the case. For the record, Princeton broke the Cooper River course record with a time of 5:36.07, nearly one full second better than runner-up Navy.

For Princeton, it was the second straight men's lightweight national championship, accomplished with a boat that had only two seniors in it. One of them, Jack Leonard, shared the 2010 Roper Trophy as one of the top senior male athletes.

The win was a great one for the lightweight rowers themselves, and for first-year head coach Marty Crotty. Back in 1998, Crotty was one of the best rowers in the national championship heavyweight boat, making him one of the few people to win a national championship as a coach and athlete. That list is even shorter when you narrow it to doing it at the same school.

In fact, how long is that list at Princeton? Well, Crotty has now done it. Greg Hughes, who won two national champions as a lightweight rower and then coached the lightweight men to last year's national championship has done it.

Who else? Bob Callahan has done it in men's squash. Emily Goodfellow did it in women's squash.

TB thinks that's the whole list. Is he forgetting anyone?

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, the "24" text message. Sachson's point in the message was that the lightweights had won and therefore extended Princeton's streak of having at least one team or individual national champion to 24 straight years.

This time, it went pretty close to the wire. The only athletes left to compete for the 2009-10 academic year are track-and-field athletes at the NCAA finals, where an individual championship is a possibility but not exactly a sure thing.

Much has been made here about the streak of winning the Ivy League's unofficial all-sports points championship each of the last 24 years, and not as much has been said about having a national champ each year.

Still, it's a remarkable accomplishment for any school, especially a non-scholarship school. Yes, you could point out the obvious, that Princeton's national championship streak is confined to six sports, and Princeton starts out with a huge advantage in two of those.

The sports that make up the streak are rowing, squash, swimming, fencing, track and field and lacrosse. For a few years, the individual championships of Yasser El Halaby kept it going all by themselves.

Rowing and squash are smaller communities, as are fencing and lacrosse, for that matter. And Princeton should be ultra-competitive in those sports, given its tradition, facilities and expectations.

Still, to go 24 straight years without having one in which everyone came up a little short is remarkable. To be able to have at least one team or individual national champion for that long is an amazing streak.

So congratulations to the men's lightweight rowers.

And thanks to them, for bringing Princeton to 24 - and counting.