Roster Changes

Welcome to the first Friday in July.

It's worth mentioning that July is the only month of the year that has no Princeton Athletic events. Opening day, of course, is seven weeks from today, when the women's soccer team hosts Monmouth. By two months from today, six Princeton teams will have combined to play 14 games. 

It's a quick turnaround from one year to the next. 

A stark reminder of that fact came yesterday morning, when TigerBlog woke up to a whole lot more emails than he usually does. 

TB will get into that in a minute. First, remember when you used to wake up and read the newspaper? 

From the time he was around, eight maybe, until his mid-40s or so, TigerBlog started every day, or at least 99 percent of them, with a newspaper or two and a bowl of either Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies. The newspaper would be waiting outside his door when he woke up. Do kids still have paper routes? 

One of his favorite parts of the newspaper was the transactions section, which documented pretty much any move that any professional team or college made. A baseball trade? Football cuts? A new basketball coach? 

It was all there in the transactions section. When TB first started out at Princeton, it was a very big deal to get all of the department's new coaches in those transactions.

With that in mind, TB goes back to all the emails he had yesterday. It was sort of like mass transactions, Princeton style.

When any team makes a roster move of any kind — addition, subtraction, new athlete, someone withdrew, whatever it is — an email gets sent out to a distribution list of several people in the athletic department. TB, and the rest of those in communications, are among those people.

The new athletic year will bring one email for every incoming athlete. All of those emails arrived yesterday. They all say the same thing: "Roster Changes," and then have the sport abbreviation in parenthesis. After that is the player's name and the reason for the email.

In this case, they all said "added." Just like that, you're officially part of the Princeton Athletic tradition.

If you've been reading TB for a while, you know that he's fascinated by freshman athlete orientation each year. Each new Princeton athlete sits there, with no idea of what direction the next four years will take. The possibilities are limitless, as are the variables.

This year, TB didn't have to wait until everyone is back on campus for that experience. He got it through the emails.

It's hard not to scroll through all the names and think about where they are now and what they're doing. They're with their high school friends, doing their summer jobs, doing their summer workouts. They are connecting with the others on their team in their class, mostly on group chats, following up on recruiting visits, as friendships that will last forever are in their embryonic stage. 

Think about that. Think about all the current friendships that are solidified and locked in for a lifetime after meeting as Princeton Athletic teammates. Those friendships all had to start somewhere. This is where the next generation of those friendships is beginning, symbolically in all those emails. 

There are some names that TB has heard before. Most of them are brand-new names. Many of them will become very familiar to TB and to all Princeton fans during the next four years. 

It's always an interesting sight to see new players in the uniform numbers that previously were worn by players who just graduated. It takes some time to get used to all that.

For now, though, at least to TB, they're pretty much all just names on a whole bunch of emails. TB doesn't usually like seeing his inbox flooded like that, but in this case it's for a worthy cause. 

The new year is coming. 

But don't think about that now. Just have yourself a great, and safe, summer weekend.