Graduation Day

TigerBlog walked into the Webster Bank Arena in Fairfield Sunday morning, and the first person he saw was Sacred Heart University men's lacrosse coach Jon Basti.

The sight of Basti took TB back awhile. Not to the last four years, when Basti was TigerBlog Jr.'s coach. Nope, it took him back to the West Windsor fields of, what was it, 12 or so years ago?

That's where TBJ first met Basti. It was Princeton boys' lacrosse summer camp, and Basti was a coach there when TBJ was first starting to play.

In fact, TigerBlog still has an email Basti sent him after one of those camps. It said:
"Your son is a great kid. His passion for the game is fantastic. He has been very lucky to be around some GREAT people his whole lacrosse life and it shows because he knows how lucky he is."

If there's ever been a time when TigerBlog had trouble staying in the present, it was this past Sunday at the Webster Bank Arena. The occasion was graduation day, where TBJ was one of 1,122 undergrads who received a diploma.

For TigerBlog, as the ceremony went along, he found himself more and more replaying the video that exists in his head of the road TBJ took to get there.

And so much of that road happened on the Princeton campus. Even meeting his future college coach when he was 10 or 11 or so.

There are a lot of kids, well they're not kids anymore, like TBJ. They're the children of people who work at Princeton, and they spent so much of their young lives on the Princeton campus, where they were introduced to so many different people and experiences.

And all of that came flooding back to TigerBlog Sunday. It was a bit eerie actually.

He thought back to all of the nights that he'd leave Princeton, go get TBJ and his friend Matthew and bring them back to Jadwin Gym so they could be ball boys for Princeton basketball. Matthew, by the way, graduated from Chestnut Hill College a day before TBJ did.

He thought back to TB's earliest heroes - Bill Tierney, Chris Young, Brian Earl, Jason Doneger, Ryan Boyle. He thought back to all the great pictures he has of his son from when he was little, especially the one where he sat courtside at Jadwin with a headset on next to Tom McCarthy, while he was doing his old ESPN radio show.

And the one where TBJ had a "Princeton Football" sweatshirt on, while also wearing a headset, in the radio booth at Lafayette before opening day of the 2000 football season. Again, with Tom McCarthy.

That was the day when TigerBlog brought TBJ to the game and had no idea how the then-three-year-old would be during the three hours or so that his dad was on the radio. As it turned out, he just sat there for three hours and watched the game.

Ah, but as Joni Mitchell wrote, the seasons they go round and round. And so they have.

And so there he was Sunday, in a cap and gown, a graduate - magna cum laude, if you'll allow his father to brag a bit. That wasn't easy for TB to digest either.

A college graduate?

He's been to a lot of Princeton graduations, and he always enjoys them. He can't remember the last time he didn't go to Nassau Hall to be part of the commencement ceremony.

His favorite part is always the recessional, when the newly minted Princeton alums make their way back past Nassau Hall, to meet family and friends and classmates for hugs, pictures and goodbyes.


The best pictures from that day, at least from TB's perspective, are the ones of the seniors from all of the different teams. There's such a sense of accomplishment in those pictures, a recognition that they successful navigated four years together as students and athletes.

The awful rain, cold and wind Sunday deprived TBJ and his men's lacrosse teammates of a similar photo op outside the arena. In fact, it cancelled the big post-graduation picnic that was planned.

As a result, TigerBlog found himself sitting across from his son in a diner in the first hour after he graduated college. TBJ celebrated with a turkey club.

TigerBlog looked across at him and thought back to all those old days, all the times at Princeton, all the miles and miles and miles they'd driven together to go to Princeton games, or to go to his own lacrosse games.

TBJ said what every college graduate always says - that the last four years have simply flown by. Pretty much anyone that TigerBlog has spoken to about the fact that his son graduated has said the same thing: Wait, he was a senior already?

He was. And now he's a grad.

Lastly, as TB drove him back to his off-campus house, he thought back to the day he'd dropped him off at Sacred Heart for the first time, how he wanted to tell him everything he'd need to know to last him four years, how he wanted to give him advice and cover every possible scenario that could possibly come up.

Of course, that would have been impossible. Instead, all he told him was that he loved him and was proud of him.

This time, he wanted to go back in time, talk about all of those memories that had been rolling through his head all day. He wanted to remind him of all of it, remind him of the times that their relationship had revolved largely around Princeton Athletics and youth lacrosse, laugh about this game or that game.

He wanted to remind him of all of it. He wanted to stay anchored in the past for just a little longer, before his son passed through yet another milestone, another step forward that made those days just a little further in the past.

He wanted to make sure his son hadn't forgotten any of it, and that those days were just as important to him as they were to his dad. 

And just like the day he dropped him off, he didn't say any of it. He kept it in his mind, where it belongs.

A lot has changed through the years. A lot has changed in the last four years.

Back in the present, his son went inside to clean and pack, ready for the next chapter, and beyond, no longer remotely the kid he was in his father's flashbacks.

"I love you," TB said as he dropped him off. "And I'm proud of you."

He's a good kid.

Even if he's no longer a kid.