Family Champ

Was it a rough Saturday for Mikey MacDonald?

Or did the 2015 Roper Trophy winner for best senior male athlete just smile at the inevitability of it all? After all, it's very rare when you put up numbers that nobody will ever approach.

On the other hand, did it have to be his sister?

This past Saturday, MacDonald moved from sixth to seventh all-time in career points for Princeton men's lacrosse, something that probably he could deal with easily. It happened when Coulter Mackesy had a four goal, one assist night in an 11-6 Princeton win over Rutgers, moving Mackesy to 209 points, three more than MacDonald had.

The other one? That's the one that probably stung.

MacDonald had three games at Princeton with nine points but none higher. Ah, but this past Saturday, a few hours before Mackesy dropped MacDonald down another spot, Jami MacDonald had a 10-point outing against No. 22 Harvard. 

As such, the MacDonald family record for points in a game now rests with Jami, a Princeton junior. TigerBlog decided to investigate if there was any taunting from Jami to her brother, and as it turns out, there wasn't.

TB reached out to Steve MacDonald, the patriarch of the family. This was his response:

Jami did not….  But Ed Caulkin sent this to Mikey and me. Hahaha
Hey Mikey - did you ever get 10pts in a game? Asking for a friend.

Best wishes!
Ed Calkins 

If you're a long-time Princeton lacrosse fan, you know that Ed Calkins was a key midfielder on Princeton's first NCAA championship team in 1992. His daughter Lane is now a teammate of Jami MacDonald's.

By the way, if you want to get a sense of how competitive the MacDonald family can be, try playing a card game with them, as TigerBlog has done. That'll give you a pretty good idea.  

The game was called "Wizard." TB had never heard of it until he sat down to play with the entire MacDonald family. 

The fact that he didn't know the rules notwithstanding, TB won — three times. And that was after he saw cards thrown, insults hurled, marital choices questioned (at least that's what Linda MacDonald said to her husband Steve) though it was all in good fun. They are a great group, the MacDonalds. 

Meanwhile, back at the women's lacrosse team, the Tigers defeated Harvard 20-6, improving to 5-1 on the season. MacDonald's 10 points in that game followed a six-point outing in a win over Penn State in midweek.

After her 16-point week, the honors started to pour in. She was named the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week Monday and then the Division I Offensive Player of the Week by the IWLCA yesterday. 

MacDonald's 10-point game tied the program record for points in a game, set three other times before. Interestingly, with all of the great offensive players who have come through the program through the years, all three of the other 10-point games came in the 1980s.

First there was Kathleen Mahoney, who did so in 1981 against Brown. Then, three days apart in April 1989, Phillis Fogarty had 10 against Hofstra and then Catherine McCarthy matched that against Yale. 

That 1981 game against Brown, by the way, is the only one in program history where Princeton had two players with at least seven goals — eight from Mahoney and seven from Wiz Lippincott. 

And what did Mahoney attribute her success to on that day? Well, here is her quote in the Daily Princetonian afterward: 

"It must have been those M&M's," she theorized, referring to the tasty combination of orange juice, M&M'S and candy bars she had wolfed down for breakfast. 

Yeah, that's how it used to be.

The Princeton women are at Rutgers tomorrow night (7), starting a stretch of four straight away games, though first there will be a nine-day break. Princeton won't play again until March 21 at Towson and then March 29 at Yale and April 5 at Cornell. 

Princeton is ranked 12th this week. Yale is ranked fourth.