It's Another Thursday

It's Another Thursday ...

* TigerBlog posted a feature story on a subject that has always made him think. What's it like for Princeton athletes in the year or two after their playing careers end?

Maybe it's because he's witnessed it so many times through the years. It's next year. The same team is playing. The recently graduated are back to watch from the stands, not to compete on the field.

What must that be like? 

For his story, TB spoke to four athletes who have graduated in the last two years: Weston Carpenter of the men's lacrosse team now at UConn Medical School, Hannah Davey of the field hockey team now in sales in a tech company in London, Trevor Forbes, a football player now a consultant, and Kyla Sears, a women's lacrosse player who is also a consultant. 

Here is one quick quote from each of them:

“It hasn’t been that long,” Sears says, “but it feels like a lifetime ago.”

“It’s a really strange feeling,” Davey says. “It’s weird. When we graduated, we’d all been there so long together, it felt like Princeton field hockey was going to end when we left.”

“I can’t believe,” Carpenter says, “that I was a college athlete this year.”

 “It was weird,” Forbes says. “The first time I went back to a game, I was thinking ‘I should be in pregame meal now. I should be in the locker room now.’”

 That gives you a sense of what it means to be in that situation.

You can read the whole story HERE.

* The women's soccer team will host Michigan tomorrow night at 7 on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. It's the fourth time in the last eight seasons that Princeton has played at home in the NCAA tournament. 

That says a lot about the program that Sean Driscoll has built. It's the 15th NCAA appearance for Princeton women's soccer, which says a lot about the program's history as well.

Both the Ivy League and Big Ten have set records this year for number of teams in the NCAA tournament, with four Ivies (that actually ties the record from 1999 and 2001) and nine B1G teams. This will be the first meeting between Princeton and Michigan in women's soccer.

They do have two common opponents this year: Rutgers (Princeton tied, Michigan lost) and Penn State (Princeton lost, Michigan tied). Michigan is 3-5-2 in its last 10 games.

* Speaking of the B1G, TB's former Ivy college and longtime friend Chuck Yrigoyen once suggested — jokingly — that the league rebrand from "The Ivy League" to "The Big Ivy." 

It has a ring to it, no? 

* When TB went to vote the other day, he went into his polling place and was asked his name. The woman looked it up and then said "can you confirm that you live on so-and-so street?"

This struck TB as a bit odd. He told her that she should mix it up. Say "do you live on Main Street" when the person actually lives on Fifth Ave. Then she could catch people who were trying to cheat.

* The women's volleyball team finishes its regular season at home against Dartmouth (tomorrow at 7) and Harvard (Saturday at 5) this weekend in Dillon Gym. Next week, the team will be at Yale for the Ivy League tournament.

Yale, currently 12-0, will be the No. 1 seed. Princeton is currently 9-3, with two losses to Yale and one to Harvard, who is tied with Brown at 7-5. After that, it drops back to Dartmouth and Cornell at 5-7 each, meaning there can still be multiple ties for third and fourth. Regardless, Harvard and Brown are in the Ivy tournament, since they're both 4-0 against Dartmouth and Cornell.

One win this weekend guarantees Princeton the No. 2 seed. 

* The NCAA cross country regionals will be held tomorrow in Bethlehem, with the women at noon and the men at 1. Princeton's men are ranked second in the region behind Villanova, while the women are ranked fourth. 

The top two teams in each race get an automatic spot in the NCAA championships. Teams who finish behind those spots may get at-large bids.

* Looking for something to go to in Princeton this weekend? 

In addition to the women's soccer and women's volleyball, there's also a lot of hockey, four games worth to be exact. The women will host Mercyhurst tomorrow at 3 and Saturday at 1, and both of those games will be followed by men's games later in the day. 

Tomorrow night it'll be Yale at Princeton, with face-off at 7, followed Saturday at 7 by Princeton-Brown.

There is also home swimming and diving, with the men against Columbia tomorrow at 5 and the women against Rutgers Saturday at 11 am. 

Of course, there's also football Saturday at noon against Yale. That game is at noon, not at 1 pm. Again, that's a NOON kickoff.  

TB will remind you tomorrow.