And The Winners Are ...

TigerBlog remembers clearly the day he met Roko Pozaric. 

The Princeton men's water polo team was on its way to the NCAA tournament in California, and TB was going to write a feature story about its freshman star. The two met in DeNunzio Pool shortly before the players got on the bus to go to the airport. 

And that was nearly four years ago? What the heck?

Here is how the story began:

There were 120 graduates in the most recent class at Gimnazija Titusa Brezovackog, a high school in Zagreb.

Nearly four months ago, the only one of those 120 grads who was heading to college in the United States was sitting on an airplane, heading out of Croatian airspace, wondering what exactly he was getting himself into next. Clearly Roko Pozaric, about to join Princeton’s Class of 2025 and the men’s water polo team, was diving – literally and figuratively – into the deep end of a new pool, with no idea of what to expect.

“I was stressed a lot about coming here,” Pozaric says. “I’d never been to Princeton before. I’d never been to the United States before.”

Can you imagine that flight? Heading into a new part of your life, far away from everything and everyone you've ever known? What thoughts must he have had as he made his first trip west, eventually landing in New Jersey.

TigerBlog is guessing that none of those thoughts involved the William Winston Roper Trophy, given annually to the top senior male athlete at Princeton.

And yet there he was last night at the Gary Walters Princeton Varsity Club Senior Banquet, taking home the big prize. His career at Princeton was one of excellence from the day he first stepped on the campus. Among his accomplishments: a four-time All-American, three-time NWPC Player of the Year, four-time first-team All-NWPC, 2021 NWPC Rookie of the Year. 

He also graduates as Princeton's career leader in goals scored with 281; the former record of 254 had stood for nearly 20 years. 

The C. Otto von Kienbusch Award goes to the top female senior athlete. Its namesake was certainly an interesting character (a blind art collector and collector of arms and armor from the Class of 1906 who lived his entire life in the same New York City apartment at 12 West 74th Street except for his four years at Princeton)not to mention one of the most important people in the history of women's athletics at Princeton. 

It was von Kienbusch who, for reasons he never really made clear, underwrote the earliest days of women's athletics at Princeton, essentially writing blank checks to the first woman athletic administrator at Princeton, Merrily Dean Baker. Because varsity athletics for women were supposed to be gradually launched over a five-year period, there was no money in the budget when they actually started in a few months, rather than a few years.

Maybe he did it to honor the memory of his wife Mildred, who passed away shortly before women came to Princeton. It was his wish that the award given to the top senior female athlete would be the Mildred von Kienbusch Award, but Baker insisted on naming it after him. 

The most recent winner of the award is Mena Scatchard of the women's track and field team. Like Pozaric, she too came to Princeton from Europe, in her case England.

She dominated, especially in her senior year, when she led the team to a Triple Crown of league championships in cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track andfield. 

Individually, she was the NCAA runner-up in the indoor mile this past winter, earning first-team All-American honors. She is a five-time Ivy individual champion, and she set seven individual Princeton records with two more as a part of relays. 

She was also a rarity, a middle distance runner who could also run cross country, where she was the Heps runner-up this past fall. She still has the NCAA championships this year ahead of her. 

Those two were the biggest winners at the banquet last night. Or were they? 

Maybe it was a tie, among every senior athlete there, all of whom made it to this point, all of whom were competing as Tigers through the end of their senior year. They learned lessons. They made friendships. 

And last night, they all celebrated together, as a kickoff to Reunions and the beginning of one of the best times of their lives, through Commencement Tuesday. 

Yes. It was definitely a tie. A more than 200-way tie.