You Have To Be Happy For ...

You have to be happy for ... 

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Jenn Cook.

The head women's lacrosse coach at Princeton has her team back in the NCAA tournament after a one-year absence. The Tigers take on Drexel at Boston College tomorrow at 4, with the winner to play the second-seeded host team Sunday at noon.

It's not easy to be the one who takes over for the legend. Sports history is filled with those who tried and didn't succeed. Cook took over for a Hall-of-Fame coach, Chris Sailer, who coached the Tigers for nearly 40 years. 

Putting your own stamp on a program is difficult, but this is clearly Cook's team. She and her staff — Associate Head Coach Kerrin Maurer and assistants Molly Dougherty and Kayla Wood — have navigated through all kinds of hurdles this season, not the least of which was the weather that seemed to pour down rain on the team every chance it could.

The Tigers went 6-1 in the Ivy League, winning their final six league games after dropping an 11-9 game to Yale back on March 2. That Yale game, the league opener for both, turned out to be the Ivy League championship game, since the Bulldogs went unbeaten.

Still, Cook had her team in the Top 20 all season and with an RPI that had Princeton comfortably in the NCAA tournament on Selection Sunday. Now comes the reward — a game against a Drexel team that also received an at-large bid. The Dragons, 13-6 overall, lost to Stony Brook 9-6 in the CAA final this past Saturday.

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The women's water polo team, especially the 13 players who are from California.

Princeton will be in Berkeley for the NCAA tournament beginning tomorrow at 7 Eastern (4 Pacific). The Tigers are the No. 7 seed, and they will open against Hawaii, the No. 2 seed, whom the Tigers played in their season opener back in January, when Hawaii won 10-6.

Princeton has 13 players from the state of California, and they will get to end their season playing essentially at home. The team has four seniors, of whom three are Californians — CiCi Stewart, Meera Burghardt and Bella Moscoe. The fourth is Kaila Carroll, from Connecticut. 

It has to be pretty special for a senior to finish her career in the NCAA tournament in her home state. 

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Lisa Van Ackeren.

The Princeton softball coach was named Ivy League Coach of the Year. If you're keeping score, that's her fifth time as the award-winner in the eight years it has been given. 

That's impressive. 

Princeton had three first-team All-Ivy selections: Sonia Zhang, Julia Dumais and Lauren Sablone (whose three-run home run with two out and two strikes in the bottom of the seventh last weekend against Cornell gave the Tigers their share of the league title and the host role for the tournament).

Speaking of that tournament, it began yesterday with a stunning end to Game 1, as Harvard got a two-out, two-run home run in the seventh to force extra innings and then put up eight runs in the ninth to win 12-4. Princeton's game against Dartmouth started about an hour late, and the Tigers rolled 4-0. 

Today's schedule has Princeton-Harvard at 10, followed by an elimination game between Yale and Dartmouth.

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Jon Basti.

The head coach of the Sacred Heart men's lacrosse team and his Pioneers played in the NCAA tournament's play-in game yesterday at Albany. It was the first appearance in the NCAA tournament for the program.

Basti, who regularly worked Princeton's camps when Bill Tierney was the head coach and who was TigerBlog Jr.'s coach at SHU, has always run a program that was to be admired in many ways. His players all graduate. They stay out of trouble. They win the league's GPA awards. They are always active in the local community.

This year, they've added another dimension to that culture, romping through the MAAC at a perfect 9-0 and then winning the league tournament last weekend. 

If you happened to be watching after the Pios won the title game and saw Basti's interview, you now know everything you need to know about him. His emotions were genuine and worn on his sleeve, as always, and he spoke directly from the heart about what this meant and about how many people he had to thank. It was heart-warming. 

Nice guys, it seems, can finish first. 

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Mike Ford.

The former Princeton player who won Ivy Pitcher of the Year and Player of the Year signed a Major League contract with the Cincinnati Reds. Ford's salary, prorated for the rest of the season, would be $1.1 million.

Ford has hit 36 MLB home runs in 627 career at-bats, including a career-best 16 home runs last year with Seattle. 

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And finally, there's Nicole D'Andrea DeNiro, one of the unsung heroes of Princeton Athletics with her work in the equipment room. Nicole recently got married, and then got married again this past weekend (the ceremony was in April, the party was this weekend). 

Again, couldn't happen to a nicer person.