Six Kids, Four Dogs, One Cat, Ten Championships

TigerBlog has never put a bumper sticker on any of the cars he's driven through the years.

He's okay with those magnets that have the school name or a club or something. He's had two of those.

Were he going to go down the bumper sticker route, it wouldn't be one of those catchy/funny things or about how his kids are either honor students or beat up your honor students or endorsements of presidential candidates. Nope. It wouldn't be any of them.

Or really anything.

And if he did get a decoration for his car, he definitely wouldn't go with the increasingly popular ones that he sees all the time, with the little depictions of the father, mother and each child and pet, each with a little soccer ball or golf club or instrument or something.

It's not that he's opposed to traditional family values. Far from it. There's just something about those that he finds unnecessary. It's like a year-round version of the Christmas letters that people send out detailing how happy they are and hoping that you are not.

TB was at a light the other day when he noticed that the car in front of him had the longest string of those little stickers he'd ever seen. He actually took a picture of it and then counted it all up.

The totals? One father, one mother, six children, four dogs and one cat.

The driver, presumably the father, was the only one in the car at the time, and TB surmised that he was relishing the quiet.

Since then, TB has shown the picture to a few people, all of whom have cringed in fear of what that would be like.

As an aside, it also made him wonder about the legality of taking a picture of someone else's minivan and then using it publicly.

Anyway, TB wanted to ask the driver what his life was like, but then the light turned green. The minivan turned right, leaving TB to assume that his house was to the left.

Add up the kids and the dog and leave out the cat and you have the number of Ivy League championships that Princeton has, now that the men's golf team defeated Yale by five strokes to win the league title for the first time since 2006.

TB isn't a golfer at all. He's played it enough in the past to realize how frustratingly hard it is to be good, and he knows how easy it is to give away a stroke here or there.

A five-shot win over the course of three rounds is insanely close. A final score of 883-888? Insane.

Even more insane is a one-shot loss over the same three rounds, and that's how close the Princeton women came to making it a sweep. Harvard ended up winning, defeating Princeton 909-910.

That's a combined 1,809 strokes, with one separating the two teams.

Princeton did have both individual champions, as Kelly Shon won the women's title in a playoff and Greg Jarmas won for the men.

The fact that the women came so close stings, but it doesn't take away from what a great weekend it was for the Tigers. It's especially more impressive considering that last year, the men finished fifth and the women finished sixth.

As for the total number of championships, Princeton now has 10. It marks the 21st year that Princeton has reached double figures in Ivy League championships, including each of the last five.

Harvard has reached double figures in Ivy titles five times total. No other team in the league has ever done so.

The Crimson currently have seven Ivy championships for the academic year, with seven remaining. Neither Princeton nor Harvard is in the baseball or softball championship series, so they are competing for two track and field titles and three rowing titles.

Winning 10 Ivy championships each year is a lofty goal, one that Princeton doesn't take for granted.

The men's golf team put Princeton over the top for 2012-13.

The women came close to matching it.

TigerBlog will call it a great weekend of golf for Princeton, one that was a razor-thin margin away from being perfect.