A Lot Of Athletes

A guy goes in for his physical, and he asks the doctor if she saw the eclipse. The doctor said she missed it, and the guy says the next total solar eclipse will be in 2079, when he'll be nearly 120 years old.

"Will you be around for it?" the doctor asks.

"Depends how good a doctor you are," the guy says. 

That was an actual conversation from TigerBlog's physical Tuesday, by the way.

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There will be 15 Princeton teams who compete this weekend. Don't believe TB? See for yourself HERE.

Two of those teams will be the men's and women's track and field teams, who will host the Larry Ellis Invitational.

Larry Ellis, if you don't know, was the first Black head coach ever in the Ivy League. Hired in 1970 to coach the men's track and field team, he would serve in that position for 22 years. Before he coached at Princeton, he was the head coach at Jamaica High School in Queens, where he coached Bob Beamon (look him up if you don't already know), and before that he served in the Korean War.

Ellis, who was also an Olympic coach, was part of one of the most insightful moments TB has ever experienced. TB was walking down the Jadwin balcony when he saw Ellis and one of his athletes outside of his office, and TB heard the athlete ask the coach what he needed to do to be able to get to a certain time in his event.

And what did Ellis answer? With all the wisdom of the world, he said simply "run faster."

As anyone who ever met him could confirm, he was an extraordinarily kind man. He was a real gentleman, to quote a coach Ellis brought to Princeton in 1977 — Fred Samara.

Larry Ellis passed away in 1998. The Larry Ellis Invitational originated one year later.

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Of all the athletes who will be on this campus this weekend, one who bears watching is Dartmouth softball freshman pitcher Jensin Hall, who has been the Ivy Pitcher of the Week three of the last four weeks. Hall earned her most recent honor this past week after striking out 17 Brown Bears in a Big Green win.

The Ivy softball race is a good one, with Columbia currently on top at 7-2, followed by Yale at 9-3 and then Princeton and Dartmouth at 5-4 and Harvard at 6-6. The path to the NCAA tournament goes through the Ivy tournament, in which the top four teams will play.

Princeton and Dartmouth will play twice tomorrow, starting at 12:30, and then once more Sunday, at 12:30.

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Here's something TigerBlog didn't realize about Karlie Samuelson when he wrote about her and the London Lions yesterday: She's Devin Cannady's sister-in-law.

Cannady, one of the great scorers in Princeton men's basketball history and an NBA player himself, is married to Katie Lou Samuelson, Karlie's sister who is two years younger and herself a professional basketball player. 

By the way, if you haven't seen the shot that Holly Winterburn hit to give London the win in the game the other day, look it up — and then imagine this had happened in an NBA playoff game or an NCAA championship game.

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TigerBlog's longtime friend Matt Ciciarelli is a former Princeton baseball contact for the Office of Athletic Communications, but he hasn't been to Clarke Field in quite some time. He said he might come by for the Monmouth game, but it was moved up a day to Tuesday, which made it tougher for him.

What was the draw? The son of a friend of his plays for Monmouth. Turns out his name is Trey Porter, and it turns out that Ciciarelli missed out on something incredible by not being at the game.

First of all, Porter made his first start of the season Second of all, he made this catch:

Hey @SportsCenter we have a home run saving catch for you from freshman Trey Porter in today’s @MUHawksBaseball game at Princeton.

Watch the rest of the game here: https://t.co/N3rPRsHZF7#sctop10 #FlyHawks pic.twitter.com/Pz0DJI8WnC

— Monmouth Hawks (@MonmouthHawks) April 9, 2024

It doesn't get much better than that, does it? Apparently it does: It was only the No. 3 Play of the Day on SportsCenter.

As for the Ivy baseball standings, they also have Columbia on top, at 8-1. Behind the Lions, only four games separate second from eighth and only three games separate second from seventh. The race for the tournament spots will be intense.

Princeton currently sits tied for third with Penn at 5-4, one game behind Cornell and one game ahead of Yale. Princeton has three this weekend at home against Harvard (doubleheader tomorrow at 11:30, single game Sunday at noon) and then three with home against Penn followed by three-game trips to Yale and Columbia

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There is a lacrosse doubleheader in Providence tomorrow, with the women's game at noon and the men's game at 3:30. By the end of the night, one or both (or neither) of the Princeton teams could have clinched an Ivy tournament spot.