A Perfect 11

The funniest person TigerBlog knows is a year older.

That makes her 11.

When it comes to a mix of perfect comedic timing, a keen sense of the absurd and enough sarcasm to make any father proud, Little Miss TigerBlog is just naturally hilarious.

Not that the ability to generate laughs is her only strong suit. No, as 11-year-olds goes, you can't ask for much more than you get from LMTB.

In addition to her sense of humor, she's also smart, friendly, athletic, courageous and hard-working. The ride at an amusement park hasn't been invented that she won't go on; when she was nine, she stood up on a stage and sang "Happy Birthday" to try out for a community theater show, simply because it was something she wanted to try.

Whereas her brother thinks it's his birthright to attend Princeton, LMTB gives a different answer when asked where she would like to go to college: Cambridge.

She looks just like her father, something that caused her late maternal grandfather to remark on the day she was born that he hopes doesn't "bite her in the ass on prom night."

LMTB, unlike her brother, wasn't born wanting to play sports. Still, she's come around to it, and she has tried five different sports to date - lacrosse, tennis, soccer, basketball and her newest ... field hockey.

TigerBlog sees the 1,000 or so student-athletes at Princeton, from 38 different teams that play 18 different sports, and wonders how they all ended up in the sports they did.

Why is one a soccer player and another a football player, while someone else runs and another plays tennis? TB has mentioned this before, and his thoughts are basically unchanged from two years ago.

Are many of these athletes interchangeable, or are skills so specific to one sport that it was only natural that each particular athlete ended up where he or she did?

If athletic ability was interchangeable, would the majority of athletes still play the sport they do because that's the sport they love, or would they trade it for another sport? And if so, why?

Little Miss TigerBlog had never picked up a field hockey stick until a few weeks ago, when TB got her one after she signed up for an introductory camp at a local high school, largely because there wasn't much else going on that week.

So what happens? It turns out that she really liked playing. And, to make it better, she did pretty well at it.

What was it about field hockey that appealed to her? Why does her brother like having lacrosse balls launched at him while trying to hit a baseball was never something he wanted to do?

As for field hockey at Princeton, Katie Reinprecht, Julia Reinprecht, Michelle Cesan and Kathleen Sharkey are all taking the year off from school to train with the U.S. national team in hopes of reaching the 2012 Olympics.

Princeton will still be looking for its 17th Ivy title in 18 years during the 2011 season. In addition, the Tiger schedule still has basically the entire Top 10 on it.

The season begins in little over two weeks, on Friday, Sept. 2, the same day that the men's and women's soccer teams and the women's volleyball team also play.

The last few weeks of August bring with them a sense that the quiet times at Princeton are almost over, and the biggest sign of that will be later this week, when the first fall athletes arrive on campus.

After that, it'll basically be non-stop until the beginning of June.

This time of year also brings with it LMTB's birthday. This year, she sent her dad a link to exactly what she wanted, which is somewhat different than TB would have done at the same age.

Like most everything else she does, it was a gesture that her dad couldn't help but laugh at. Or be proud of.

Like TB said, he couldn't ask for much more out of an 11-year-old.