Most Outstanding

TigerBlog was filling out his expense reports for the spring yesterday when he stumbled onto an interesting fact.

You know how much it is in tolls from here to Yale? It's over $30. In tolls alone.

And you know how much it is from here to Syracuse?

$1.

That's it. Here to Syracuse and back for a buck.

TigerBlog loves E-Z Pass, for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which are 1) the ease and 2) the lack of having to deal with cash. The only problem is that TB rarely keeps track of how much he's actually spending on tolls, until he goes and checks out his statement.

He's also pretty sure he's supposed to fill out his expense reports as he goes, rather than waiting for the end of the season.

Each month at the department staff meeting, the business office gives out a "Shiny Dime" award to the person who has done the best to fill out the right forms in the right way at the right time. TB has yet to win.

Anyway, TB's expense forms are all related to men's lacrosse, which, if you haven't figured it out by now, is his main sport here.

That fact actually struck him yesterday when he was writing about the men's lacrosse team's bid to the NCAA tournament, and doing so with a pretty strong background in what he was talking about.

If he had gotten into track and field as much as he had lacrosse, then yesterday would have been devoted to how cool an event Heps track and field is and the intricacies of how a track meet works.

Unfortunately, he doesn't really know much about all that stuff. Maybe he could get former Ivy League communications director Brett Hoover to write a guest TB about it, since Brett is to track and field as TB is to lacrosse.

One thing TB does know is that Princeton has more than its fair share of great track and field athletes.

In fact, 20 men and 20 women from Princeton earned All-Ivy League honors at outdoor Heps.

Princeton won the men's championship and finished second on the women's side. For the men, it completed another "triple crown" of winning the cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field championships.

Remember last year when Princeton won 15 Ivy titles? Keep in mind that six of them came from when the women and men both had a "triple crown."

TigerBlog was amazed to see that Conor McCullough won the hammer by 41 feet over the next closest competitor.

He was similarly amazed to see that Eileen Moran won 38 of Princeton's 134 team points on the women's side. Moran, the sprinter, now has more than 100 points at Heps championships in her carer; in fact, TB thinks the number is 130.

And then there's Donn Cabral.

The NCAA runner-up in the steeplechase the last two years, Cabral won that event and the 10,000 meters - that's 13,000 meters, 28 hurdles and seven water jumps between them - to earn Most Outstanding Performer honors for the third time at Heps.

The Princeton track and field programs are a model of stability and success.

Yesterday, TB saw a bunch of men's and women's track and field athletes having a barbeque outside of Jadwin Gym, complete with hot dogs, hamburgers and whiffle ball.

TB might not know much about the sport, but he knows team camaraderie when he sees it. Not to mention overwhelming success.

This weekend was just another example of that.