Sprinting To Start The Weekend

Today is Orange and Black Friday.

Well, every Friday here is Orange and Black Friday, at least going back as far as Phyllis Chase used to wear orange and black to work every Friday.

This is Year 1 of the post-Phyllis Chase era, as she retired at the end of the last academic year after a long career as the travel coordinator for the athletic department.

Walking into the business office these days is a different dynamic, with the new faces of Brendan Van Ackeren and Jessica Guerriero now on board. Jon Kurian and his old face are still there as well.

As an aside, Jon Kurian was nicknamed "the new guy" when he first started here, and it stuck long after he wasn't the new guy, though very few people here remember when Kurian was called that. One of Phyllis' hobbies was making collages of pictures from each year's Christmas party, and the amount of turnover from one year or even a few years is drastic when looking at those pictures.

Meanwhile, Van Ackeren, the brother of former Princeton distance runner Trevor Van Ackeren, played football at Lehigh. Guerriero is a Seton Hall graduate.

As Princeton is opening the football season at Lehigh tomorrow, TigerBlog asked the natural question of Van Ackeren: Which team is he rooting for in the game?

TB has a long history of rooting against his alma mater, fond of it as he may be.

Will Van Ackeren root for Princeton or Lehigh tomorrow? He won't know until kickoff.

TigerBlog will be rooting for Princeton, though it's a tough task for the opener.

Lehigh is one of the top teams in Division IAA, and the Mountain Hawks are playing Game 3. Lehigh has defeated Monmouth and Central Connecticut, jumping out to 14-0 first quarter leads in both games.

Before that game kicks off tomorrow at 12:30 (at one of the great places to watch a game, Lehigh's Goodman Stadium), there's the matter of a few events on campus.

The Farnsworth/Princeton Invitational for men's tennis starts today and runs all weekend.

The men's soccer team hosts No. 12 Georgetown tonight in Game 4 of the team's five-game run through the Big East to start the season. Game 5 will be Sunday at Villanova.

The women's team, by the way, is at No. 3 UCLA for the first of its two games in California. And there are two home field hockey games this weekend, including the first Ivy event for Princeton this year, tomorrow's game against Dartmouth.

And then there's the start of sprint football season.

TigerBlog watched head coach Steve Everette's video on goprincetontigers.tv, and you have to give him credit for being an optimist.

Princeton hasn't won a CSFL game in 14 years, but Everette is encouraged by his team this preseason. Mansfield is one of the three newer teams in the league, along with Post and this year's addition, Franklin Pierce.

Each year brings with it the hope that the team will finally be able to break that losing streak, and yet it hasn't happened to date.

Who knows? Maybe it'll be tonight.

TB understands Everette's optimism. He's always wanted to be there for the one night that the team does win, and any game he's gone to, he's always thought that it was going to be the one.

Hey, those guys definitely deserve at least one.