That's Seven Straight

Well this was a crazy weekend for Princeton Athletics. 

How crazy? It'll take TigerBlog a few days to get to everything. 

First, he'd like to start with the least crazy outcome there was: Princeton won the Ivy League women's opening rowing championship.

It happened on the Cooper River in Pennsauken yesterday morning, and the Tigers won in every way possible. 

The Ivy League championship is given to the team that wins the first varsity 8 race. That was Princeton, who did so in 2.5 seconds over the second-place Penn boat. 

The Ivy League's automatic bid goes to the team with the most points between the first varsity 8, second varsity 8 and varsity 4A. That was Princeton, who has now qualified for every NCAA championship since the meet began in 1997.

The overall points totals? That was also Princeton, who ran rowed away from the field.

Here's what Princeton head coach Lori Dauphiny had to say about the day:

"These women have fought and trained throughout the year. It's so fun to see the success of everyone throughout the program. There were close races throughout and everyone performed at their best level. I couldn't be prouder of all of them."

They should be proud of her. 

The Ivy League title was the seventh straight for Dauphiny and Princeton. Do you want the list of coaches in Princeton women's athletics history who have won seven straight Ivy League titles? 

Here it is: Chris Sailer (lacrosse), Beth Bozman (field hockey), Cindy Cohen (softball) and now Lori Dauphiny (women's open rowing). Bozman has the record, with 10 straight.

That's everyone. When you consider how many great coaches have come through Princeton women's athletics, that's really elite company. To build a program with that level of consistency is incredible.

It's also not easy. You need some luck — injuries, etc., can derail things quickly. You need the athletes.

Maybe more than anything, though, you need the right culture. The roster turns over and over when you go on a run like the one Dauphiny has put together, and you have different personalities, different styles, different challenges. 

What can be constant is that winning culture. It's not easy to build, and it can be destroyed easily. If you think that championships just happen, they don't. 

Not that she needed this year's championship, but you can't have a conversation about the greatest coaches in Princeton women's athletics history without including Dauphiny. It's not just the current streak that launches her into that discussion. It's the full body of work she has had at Princeton for as long as she's done it.

She also doesn't get in the boat, so the credit has to go to the rowers themselves. In the case of this year's Ivy championship first varsity 8, it would be: Zoe Scheske, Joely Cherniss, Ella Barry, Katherine George, Margot LeRoux, Samantha Smart, Anne du Croo de Jongh and Katharine Kalap with Sara Covin as the coxswain.

By the way, that lineup consists of two freshmen and seven juniors. The two freshmen are Cherniss and Smart, both of whom are from California. The rest of the lineup includes three athletes from England and one from the Netherlands, in addition to New York, Pennsylvania and another Californian. 

While the women's open rowers were winning another title at the Ivy championships, the men's heavyweight and lightweight teams competed at the Eastern Sprints in Worcester. 

The lightweight first varsity 8 finished third, behind Harvard and Penn. 

The heavyweight first varsity 8 finished an excruciatingly close second, finishing 81-thousandths of a second behind Brown. The Tigers did win the Rowe Cup, given to the team with the highest point total at Sprints, for the 10th time overall and first time since 2016.

Up next for the men, and the lightweight women, will be the IRA national championships, which begin May 31 in West Windsor on Mercer Lake. The NCAA championships begin that same day, in Bethel, Ohio.