A Night At The Tewaaraton

TigerBlog and Grant Ament go way back.

To most college lacrosse fans, Ament is the Penn State attackman who shattered the NCAA record with 96 assist this year while leading the Nittany Lions to the Final Four. To TigerBlog, he'll always be the kid who played with and against TigerBlog Jr. starting in fifth grade.

In fact, somewhere on TB's computer, he has a picture of the two of them after they won a tournament the day after Christmas when they were both in sixth grade. He also has the memory of the epic game between TBJ's Lower Bucks team and Grant's Central Bucks team the following spring in the Southeast Pennsylvania playoffs, which Lower Bucks won 5-3.

Back then Grant was a kid who clearly loved to play lacrosse and who would work hard at becoming the best player he could. TB thought his size might hold him back a bit as he got to the highest levels, but that wasn't the case for him - or for another smaller kid who grew up about 20 minutes from where Grant did.

You know him as Princeton's all-time leading scorer, Michael Sowers, who also played with and against TBJ back then.

Those small kids were two of the five finalists for the Tewaaraton Award, given to the best college lacrosse player each year and presented last Thursday at the Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian and not very far from the U.S. Capitol building.

TigerBlog went to the ceremony for the first time this year. One of the first people he saw when he walked in was Grant Ament.

He hadn't seen Grant for a long time, maybe back to when Grant was in eighth grade. When he saw TB as he walked towards him, Grant gave him a smile and a hug.

"You've impressed me," TB said to him.

He has, too.

When TBJ first started playing, who would have guessed that the little kids who were just starting out would go on to be so successful years later. That Lower Bucks-Central Bucks game that TB mentioned featured 12 players who would go on to play in college, for instance.

Including, as it would turn out, a Tewaaraton finalist.

There was a reception before the formal program, and that was essentially a who's who of the college lacrosse world. TB saw a lot of friends, including his good friend and counterpart at Loyola, Ryan Eigenbrode, who was there with Pat Spencer, the Greyhounds senior who was one of the two favorites, along with Grant.

The ceremony was a great balance of the five men's and women's finalists with a tribute to the game's Native American roots, which fit the venue, and its history, with celebrations of some of the game's greatest all-time players, who were honored with Legends awards.

There are awards given each year for players who might have won the award had the Tewaaraton been presented prior to 2001. Princeton could win a few of those in the coming years. 

As for the 2019 winners, TigerBlog thought it would be Sam Apuzzo of Boston College on the women's side, after she won last year and led the Eagles back to the NCAA championship game this time around. The winner, though, was Maryland goalie Megan Taylor, who 1) led the Terps past BC in the NCAA final and 2) made 14 saves in a 15-7 win over Princeton in midseason and was very impressive doing so.

On the men's side, the winner was Spencer, the NCAA's career leader in assists and its second all-time leader in points.

There is no voting that was released, but TB would assume it was close between Spencer and Ament, with some votes for Yale face-off man TD Ierlan mixed in.

TB knew the only way Sowers was going to win this year was if the committee asked him to choose the winner, because, as he's said before, there is no player in the country TB would rather have than Sowers.

Still, this wasn't his year for this honor, which traditionally has valued players from teams who make runs deep into May. Hopefully that will be Sowers next year.

As for this year, there was a great turnout by his Princeton teammates in support of the junior attackman. That's the kind of team player he is.

Sowers will enter his senior year as the Division I leader in career points with 255, despite having played four fewer games than second-place Jeff Teat of Cornell, who has 241 points, and six fewer than Grant, who has 240.

Sowers is 45 points away from becoming the 16th Division I player ever to reach 300, and, if he matches his total of 90 points this season, he'd reach 345, which would be seventh-best in history.

In addition to his teammates, Sowers had a big following from his family at the Tewaaraton event. TB's hope is that Princeton makes a good run next year, which will allow everyone who was there this year to be back next year.

Hopefully to see him win.

He's unlike any player TB has ever seen play lacrosse. That's for sure.