Miss Anything?

So anyway, during its trip to Costa Rica, the men's lacrosse team ... just kidding. TigerBlog figures six entries about the trip might have been enough.

Besides, he missed a lot when he was in Costa Rica.

Most notably, Henry Hill died.

There are very few people who could die and have almost their entire obituary reference a movie, rather than the actuality of what happened in his/her life. Hill was one of them.

As far back he could remember, Henry Hill wanted to be a gangster. And he was. And then it was all over, and he was an average nobody, had to live the rest of his life like a schnook.

Hill, of course, was the central figure in the movie "Goodfellas," which, by the way, is as good as any movie on any subject ever made. When Hill's death became known, TB had more than one person say that they didn't know there was a real Henry Hill and that the movie was mostly true.

In fact it was.

Robert DeNiro's character was named Jimmy Conway, though in real life his name was Jimmy Burke (whose family didn't give permission to use his real name). The same was true for several of the other characters' names, though the event were fairly well documented by Nicholas Pileggi in the book "Wiseguy" and reproduced in the movie by Pileggi and Martin Scorsese.

Hill was the one who provided the details for the book, published in 1986, after he'd entered the witness protection program.

If you've seen the movie, it's easy to think of it as fiction. It's hard to imagine that people actually lived their lives like that.

Also from the movie, it's easy to root for these guys, or at least see them as the good guys Henry, Jimmy and Tommy, in much the same way that Tony, Silvio and Paulie were the good guys in "The Sopranos."

As TB said, Hill's obituary referred way more to the movie and to quotes in the movie, with very little of Hills subsequent life. It was almost as if Ray Liotta, who played Hill, was the one being talked about and not Hill himself.

TB was also in Costa Rica for the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the start of the NBA finals, Chris Young's return to the Major Leagues and the season finale of "Mad Men."

He also missed the NCAA track and field championships, which were a spectacular success for the Princeton participants.

There were six Princeton athletes - five men and one woman - who were in Des Moines, and all six earned All-America honors - three first-team for finishing in the top eight and three second-team for finishing ninth through 16th.

The event was actually re-shown on ESPNU over the weekend, so TB got to see some of it. The best part, actually.

First he saw Greta Feldman charge from the back of the pack to fifth in the final 300 meters of the 1,500.

Then he saw the steeplechase.

Princeton had not had an NCAA outdoor track and field champion since Tora Harris won the high jump in 2002. There had not been a national champion in a running event since way back in 1934, when William Bonthron won the mile.

All that changed last week when Donn Cabral won the 3,000-meter steeplechase, winning, in fact, by more than five seconds.

The steeplechase is fairly grueling, with its four hurdles and one water jump for each of its seven laps. Grueling, though, doesn't really bother Cabral, as anyone who watched his workouts every afternoon through the Jadwin Gym windows can attest.

With the NCAA title behind him, Cabral can now focus on the Olympic Trials, coming up in two weeks. He's already run the Olympic A qualifying standard, which gives him a leg up to make it to London.

So far this year, the top 20 times in the world in the steeplechase break down this way: 17 from African runners, two from Spaniards and Cabral.

It's been a long, long year for Cabral, whose training has been insane since he was running at altitude in Utah last summer, through cross country, indoor and now outdoor track.

His first goal was the NCAA steeplechase title. Check.

His second goal was London.

Stay tuned.