A Day To Marvel

TigerBlog Jr. completed the "Memorial Day Murphy Challenge" this weekend.

If you don't know, it's a Memorial Day honoring of the late Navy Seal Lt. Michael P. Murphy. To complete it, you have to do a one-mile run and then do 100 pull ups, 200 push ups and 300 air squats before running another mile. 

TigerBlog is proud of his son and his friends, who documented their efforts, which ended with a jump into a northern Virginia lake. It took some effort and dedication, and it was for about as worthy a cause as there is.

Miss TigerBlog ’22 had her own physical fitness effort this weekend, sort of. Unlike her brother, MTB went for a walk.

Hers happened to be down Elm Drive, as she participated in the P-Rade Saturday. 

TigerBlog took both of his kids to numerous P-Rades when they were little. And a bonfire if one happened to occur. And games. And camps. And pretty much anything.

Thinking about them now, it's hard to believe that they were ever little, but they did spend a great deal of childhoods on the Princeton campus, going to more than their share of traditional events before they ever realized their significance.

Now that MTB is an alum, there is almost no Princetoniana that she doesn't know about or embrace. It's part of what being a graduate is all about.

As such, she, like so many thousands of others, spent the weekend back on campus, enjoying the gatherings during the day and the festivities at night. Among the photos she sent was this one:

In case you're wondering, that's, from the left: women's lacrosse alum Shea Smith, women's lacrosse alum MTB, women's basketball alum Lexi Wieger and women's lacrosse alum Kate Mulham.

TigerBlog can't express to you how much he loves that his daughter had the experience she had at Princeton and how much he loves that she now gets to reap the benefits of being an alum, and an athletic alum at that. 

If you recall, TB wrote this after his daughter's graduation: 

"Ultimately, he guesses the main emotion was marvel, if that is an emotion. He sat there and watched his daughter, and he marveled at the magnitude of what she had done her at Princeton. He smiled. He laughed. He also beamed. He even cried a little. He was in awe. Mostly, he marveled."

He brings this up now because today is a day for so many others to experience what he did two years ago. It's Graduation Day, Commencement 2024. 

For the graduates, congratulations. For the athletic grads, well, that's a whole other level of respect.

Every single one of them could have chosen an easier path, either on the athletic or academic side, or both. Instead, they chose to come to Princeton to compete and to learn, and the balance of those two things is not easy.

TB saw it first hand with his daughter. She shed her share of tears along the way. She had her stressful moments. There is no Princeton athletic graduate who didn't. 

They all could have given up. They all could have mailed something in. 

And yet, there they are today, in the stadium, getting ready to collect a diploma that will help define them for the rest of their life. It's the end prize of an experience that will shape them for the rest of their lives. 

To the parents, you also made your sacrifices. Maybe you turned down scholarship money. You likely put vacations or a new car on the back burner to get your young athletes to where they went. 

It's likely that you, like TigerBlog, misses those days greatly. It's very likely you'll miss the times at Princeton, when they played, when you met the parents of their teammates, when you got to build relationships with their friends, when you saw your child in the orange and black.

It's also very likely that you fielded some tearful phone calls or had to help them stay grounded. It's very likely that their tears or their uncertainty crunched you to your own core, and yet you were there when they needed you, in whatever way that ways.

And now they, like TB's daughter, have reached the finish line, a glorious, wonderful finish line. You better believe that TB knows how special all of that is. 

So take your own bows today. You've earned it as well. 

The emotions of that day two years ago have never gone away for TigerBlog. 

They won't for you either.

Today is their day to graduate. It's also your day to marvel.