Friday The 13th

Welcome to Friday the 13th.

TigerBlog saw the original movie "Friday The 13th" on May 9, 1980, the day it was released. He may have jumped out of his seat at the very end, which remains the single-most startled he's ever been in a movie theater. 

Why is Friday the 13th considered unlucky? TB turned to Wikipedia for some answers and found this:

It is possible that the publication in 1907 of T. W. Lawson's popular novel Friday, the Thirteenth, contributed to popularizing the superstition. In the novel, an unscrupulous broker takes advantage of the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on a Friday the 13th.

Do with that information what you will.

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This Friday the 13th marks the home opener for the Princeton field hockey team, which takes on Miami (Ohio) at 5 on Bedford Field. The Tigers went 1-1 on their trip to Louisville last weekend.

Princeton went into that weekend ranked 15th. Louisville was ranked seventh. North Carolina was ranked second.

On the field, the Tigers knocked off the host Cardinals 1-0 and then lost 2-0 to UNC. So where would Princeton be ranked this week? 

How about 15th? 

Of course, the rankings don't matter at all as far as the NCAA tournament is concerned or really anything. They're just for show. Still, you're 15, you beat seven, you lose a close one to two and you stay 15? 

Oh well.

Miami and Princeton, by the way, played once before, back in 1984, a game Princeton won 5-1. The RedHawks, who have reached the NCAA tournament every year since 2017 and who are the preseason MAC favorites, are 3-1 on the season with wins over Bucknell, St. Francis and Indiana and a loss to Iowa.

After the game today, the Tigers will head to Penn State for a game Sunday. That game will match U.S. Olympic teammates Beth Yeager of Princeton and Sophia Gladieux of Penn State. 

Princeton is more than Yeager, though. Aimee Jungfer, a senior, scored the goal in the win over Louisville. Defenders Ottilie Sykes and Gracie McGowan have played every minute of every game. Princeton has also started three freshmen in both of its first two games and seen three others get on the field quickly, with as many as five on the field at once. 

Admission at Bedford Field today is free.

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The women's soccer team defeated Drexel 2-1 last night on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium with just an incredible second half. Princeton trailed 1-0 at the break on a goal five minutes in and then tied it on a Drew Coomans goal a little more than a minute into the second half and won it on Summer Pierson's goal with 17 minutes left.

Both Princeton goals were assisted by Heather McNabb, who led a ridiculous Tiger offensive display in the second half. Had the ball bounced a little bit differently, Princeton could probably have had five or six more goals. Princeton was outshot 5-4 in the first half and then outshot Drexel 11-4 in the second. 

Meanwhile, in Colombia, Pietra Tordin scored one of the United States goals in a 3-2 win in the Round of 16 at the U20 Women's World Cup. The U.S. advances to the semifinals Sunday night against Germany. 

Canada, with another Princetonian, Zoe Markesini, was eliminated in the Round of 16.

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TigerBlog's series of feature stories on Princeton's three Olympic gold medalists from Paris continues this week with his piece on Nick Mead, which you can read HERE.

Mead won gold in the men's rowing fours, after finishing fourth with the eights in Tokyo three years ago. Fourth is not a great place to finish in the Olympics, and it definitely impacted Mead as he first had to decide whether or not to continue training for Paris.

Here's what he had to say about it:

“My first thought crossing the line was that I would never forget that feeling. You think of everything you could have done differently before that. It was one second out of five-and-a-half minutes. One second. That’s rough. And it’s not like you could say ‘okay, next year.’ You have to wait an entire Olympic cycle. You’re immediately full of regret. Could I have trained differently? Harder? Rowed better? Maybe it was my diet? Everything that factors into those tiny margins goes through your head.”

As you also probably know, Mead and Katie Ledecky carried to the U.S. flag at the Closing Ceremonies last month. To say that his experience in Paris went better than his experience in Tokyo is a bit of an understatement.

The third entry in the series will be next week, with TB's entry on Maia Weintraub, a current junior on the fencing team. 

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TigerBlog will be on the bus to Penn State Saturday morning, so he'll be missing out on the Princeton-Navy men's water polo match that starts at 9:30 in DeNunzio Pool.

He will be stopping in to say hello to the Navy head coach before he gets on the bus. The Navy head coach? That is of course the great Luis Nicolao, who coached at Princeton for 20 years, coaching the men and the women to a combined record of 844-312, with 18 conference titles and seven NCAA tournament appearances. 

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Congratulations to Dana O'Neil, who has now followed TigerBlog's lead and left the journalism world for life in college athletics. It sure took her long enough, of course. 

O'Neil, whose husband George is an athletic trainer at Princeton, is joining Villanova's Department of Athletics as Senior Associate AD for Strategic Communications. 

TB, by the way, fixed Dana and George up way back when.