The Olympic Roster

Jackie Young was the overall No. 1 pick in the 2019 WNBA draft out of Notre Dame.

She grew up in Princeton. Well, the one in Indiana anyway. 

Young is one of 12 players on the U.S. Olympic women's basketball team, it was announced earlier this week. Young is one of two players in the WNBA who averages at least 16 points, six assists and 4.8 rebounds per game.

The other who meets those numbers is also the only player in the league with those three plus at least 1.5 steals per game. Who is that? Caitlin Clark, of course.

As you probably are aware, Clark is not on the U.S. Olympic team. All TigerBlog will say about that is that he would have loved to have been in the meeting where that decision was made.

Had he been there, he would have tried his best not to say anything until they came to him and said "should we put her on the team?" His response would have been simple: "Of course. Duh."

Meanwhile, in the Olympic selection good news of the day, or yesterday, Princeton (the one in New Jersey) had yet another athlete selected for the upcoming Games in Paris next month. This time, it was Beth Yeager, who was one of 16 players named to the United States field hockey team for the Summer Games. 

If you saw all of the content on Princeton field hockey Instagram, then you know the timing was incredible. The account had been hacked, of all things, and it had been down for nearly a month before it suddenly reappeared yesterday, just before the announcement. 

It wasn't all that shocking that Yeager made the team. She's been on the U.S. national team since she was a high school senior, and she recently made her 50th appearance in Red, White and Blue.

She was a huge part of the team as it navigated its ways through the rough Olympic qualifying process. It started for her when she decided to take off from Princeton after two years and two first-team All-American selections, devoting herself full-time to this pursuit.

It wasn't an easy choice to make. The Princeton field hockey team saw her in the airport on its way to Northwestern last fall, when Yeager was on her way to Charlotte for training. One of her best attributes as a player is that she's as good a teammate as she is a player, and you could tell that she loved being around the Tigers, even only for a few moments.

The first stop in qualifying was the Pan Am Games, where the winner got an automatic bid. The U.S. reached the finals — but fell 2-1 on a late goal to Argentina. 

That left one more path, at the Olympic qualifying tournament in January. There were two of them, actually, one in Spain and one in India. There were eight teams in each, and the top three at each location would reach Paris. 

The Americans, playing spectacularly, beat three teams ranked ahead of them, including the host country, to reach both the final and the Olympics. 

That success guaranteed the United States a spot in the Olympics. It didn't guarantee anyone on that roster a spot in Paris. 

It wasn't until Monday that Yeager found out that she was one of the 16 who had been selected. She used words like "relief" and "stress" and ultimately "excitement" to describe the emotions of the moment.

USA Field Hockey put out a great intro video for the team:

The U.S. team is in Group B, with Game 1 on July 27 against Argentina. The group also includes Australia, Great Britain, Spain and South Africa. 

The complete list of Princeton athletes who will be at the Olympics won't be finalized until the last of the team trials is complete. There are some athletes who already have their plane tickets, though. 

Yeager's selection brings to, TB believes, 21 current or former Tigers who will be competing in Paris. For now. That's a tremendous number.

If you're wondering, the most Princeton has ever had at an Olympics was 19, at the most recent Summer Games in Tokyo. 

And yes, there will be very, very extensive Olympic coverage this summer from Princeton Athletics. Get ready to follow.