Women's Lax, Women's Tennis, Track And Field - And Ping Pong

The good people of Dillon Gym are sort of their own subculture.

It's a mix of coaches and campus rec over there, centrally located in the middle of campus. For every one person who wanders into Jadwin Gym, TigerBlog figures 20 or so probably walk into Dillon.

TigerBlog is part of the Jadwin crowd. It's a mix of coaches, administrators and staff over here, a little bit off the beaten path of the University campus, though with much, much better parking.

The Dillon people and the Jadwin people work together in that they are all part of the same department but don't really work together on a day-to-day basis. It's hardly a regular occurrence when one of the Dillonites wanders over to Jadwin or vice versa.

They're not like the Hatfields and the McCoys or anything like that. Far from it. They're just separated by a huge part of the campus, and they don't always get to see each other all the time.

TigerBlog has been a Jadwin person for a long time. In all that time, he can't remember anything like what's currently going on with the McCoys, as it were, where apparently there is a staff ping-pong tournament going on.

TB saw the bracket yesterday, which was Day 1 of the competition, which according to the bracket will lead to a championship match in two weeks. Apparently the big opening round upset was women's volleyball coach Sabrina King's win over men's lightweight rowing coach Marty Crotty.

TigerBlog has only see one of the 27 people in the field play ping-pong. For whatever reason, he'll go with men's soccer coach Jim Barlow to win it all, even though he's one of the 26 he's never seen play. It just seems like something he'd be good at.

He also likes men's lacrosse coach Chris Bates, who would meet Barlow in the semifinals. On the other side, he'll stay with King - though she'd have to get past men's golf coach Will Green - and go with women's lightweight rowing coach Paul Rassam as his other person in the Final Four.

He has no idea if any of these people are actually any good in ping pong.

Women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer isn't in the field. She's busy right now anyway, what with her team at Virginia for this afternoon's opening round game of the NCAA tournament against Penn State. The opening draw is at 4, and the winner plays Virginia Sunday.

Princeton and Penn State are hardly strangers. They meet for the 35th time overall and second time in three weeks, after Penn State won 13-12 in the final game of the regular season.

About two hours before the lacrosse game starts, Princeton will be playing Arizona State in Alabama in the opening round of the NCAA women's tennis tournament.

Laura Granville has the Tigers in the NCAA tournament in her second year. Arizona State coach Sheila McInerney has a little more experience - she's been there for 30 years.

Come to think of it, TigerBlog figures Granville is probably a good ping pong player too.

The other really big event this weekend is Heps track and field, which will take place at Yale.

Princeton's men are the three-time defending champion. The women are looking for their 10th Heps title and first since 2011.

Princeton is loaded with individual contenders among the men and women, most notably Julia Ratcliffe in the hammer throw on the women's side. Ratcliffe has the Ivy League's best throw this season - and the NCAA's best throw, for that matter.

Those are the big events of the weekend.

The ping pong tournament picks up again next week.