The Passing Of A Princeton Legend

Another Thursday catch-up:

* TigerBlog starts today with the sad news of the passing of the great Jackie Jackson.

A member of the Class of 1978, Jackson was one of the great early woman athletes at Princeton. To this day, she holds the distinction of being one of only three Princeton women's basketball players ever to average at least 14.5 points and 7.5 rebounds for a career.

The other two? Do the names Niveen Rasheed and Bella Alarie ring a bell? 

TigerBlog got to know her when he wrote his book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton, and he's glad he did. There is an entire chapter devoted to Jackson, her early life and her post-Princeton missionary work around the world.

It includes this: 

She came to Princeton in the fall of 1974, when the women’s basketball program was about to start its fourth season. The first three years had seen the Tigers go a combined 15-13, which is more fascinating for the low number of games played each year as much as the record. 

By the time she graduated, she had helped the Tigers to an overall record of 63-22, as well as the first four Ivy League championships.

And this: 

 “We did a lot of international travel,” she says. “I was working with pastors and churches in underdeveloped countries. I enjoyed the exposure to the different cultures. I loved being on the ground with the different people. South Africa was the most interesting. Some of that was from being a history major, I suppose. I interacted with a white South African of British descent and a Black pastor and heard their stories of getting through apartheid. And I saw the poverty, and what they were trying to bring to the people there. And I felt the hospitality, despite their poverty. The goals were different wherever we went. We worked with pastors and asked them what their vision was for their village or community."

 She'll be remembered as a great basketball player and a great humanitarian, as well as the first Black captain of any Princeton women's team.

She was 67 years old at the time of her death. Her loss stings the entire Princeton women's basketball family.

* Andrei Iosivas made it two NFL touchdown receptions in two weeks when he caught a two-yard scoring pass from Joe Burrow in the Bengals' win over the 49ers this past Sunday. To date in his young career he has caught three passes for 14 yards, and he's turned two of those three into TDs.
 

He has been targeted four times, and he just missed making an insane catch along the sideline in the one in which he didn't get a reception. On that play he hauled in an overthrown pass but just barely missed getting a second foot down.
 

The fact that Burrow has found him on two passes near the goal line shows you the faith that the quarterback and team have in the rookie.

* Speaking in the NFL, last weekend's Jets-Giants game was possibly the worst game in the history of professional football.

* November is National Diabetes Month. As part of that event, TB's colleague Elliott Carr had a chance to write a feature story about women's tennis player Leena Bennetto's battle with Type 1 Diabetes.

Included in the story is this:

Playing in a tournament on Vancouver Island, a 10-year-old Leena Bennetto, now a junior on the Princeton women’s tennis team, was forced to retire during a match for the first and only time of her career. Despite making it through the first few matches of the tournament, she had lost weight and struggled with her vision. She felt more tired than normal. Throughout the week she had been pestering her mom about having tennis ball fuzz in her eyes. In the weeks leading up to the tournament, however, she felt fine.

Immediately following her retirement, Bennetto and her mom, Dimple, took the ferry back to Vancouver and went straight to an optometrist. In the moment her greatest fear was having to wear glasses like her brother, Ryan, as the siblings already bore an uncanny resemblance. After the optometrist she went to an Emergency Room, where would receive a piece of life changing news.

Bennetto was informed she had Type 1 diabetes.

It's definitely worth the read. You can see the entire story HERE.

* The women's volleyball team hits the road this weekend at Cornell and Columbia. The Tigers find themselves in second place in the league at 7-3, behind first place Yale, who is 10-0, and ahead of third-place Harvard and Brown, both 6-4. Dartmouth is next at 5-5. 

There are two weekends remaining in the regular season, and the Tigers will finish at home against Harvard and Dartmouth next weekend. While it looks like the Ivy tournament will be headed to New Haven, Princeton can clinch its spot in the field this weekend with a sweep of its matches and one Dartmouth loss. 

*  You do realize that there are basketball games to be played Monday, right? The women are home against Duquesne, and the men are taking on Rutgers in the Cure Insurance Arena in Trenton in the Jersey Jam.

* If you're in Hanover, N.H., this weekend, you can see Princeton football tomorrow night and Princeton men's hockey Saturday night. Of course, if you're in Boston, you can see Princeton field hockey tomorrow and men's hockey tomorrow night. 

If you drive fast, you can see Princeton field hockey at Harvard at noon, women's soccer at Brown at 2 and then the men's hockey game back in Cambridge tomorrow night.