Snake Or Shoelace?

So TigerBlog was walking through the Stadium Garage at Princeton the other day and saw this on the floor:

He stopped and studied it for maybe a full minute, which is a longer time than you'd think. And, even after the picture and up close observation, he still is not sure if that's a dead snake or a shoelace. 

Maybe if it had moved he would have figured it out. And run away quickly. 

Perhaps he would have long-jumped as far as Princeton's Georgina Scoot, who won the Ivy League Heptagonal title this past weekend at Yale. Oh, and she also won the triple jump — setting the league record in the long jump and tying it in the triple.

Had it been a snake that was slithering his way, perhaps TB would have triple jumped out of the way. 

Scoot's performance earned her the USTFCCCA National Athlete of the Week. If you think this is something that happens often, this was Princeton's first-ever winner of this honor. 

Princeton has had NCAA champions and Olympians and who-knows-how-many record setters. Scoot is the first one to be recognized in this way. 

Any time you do anything that has never been done before at Princeton, you've accomplished something very special. 

Scoot came to Princeton from Maypool, which is on the southwest coast of England, right on the River Dart. That would be in the county of Devon. 

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Speaking of rivers, this weekend will feature the Ivy League women's rowing championships on the Cooper River in Pennsauken, which is in South Jersey. This weekend will also see the Ivy League champion crowned in men's lightweight and heavyweight rowing at the Eastern Sprints in Worcester, Mass. 

That will be on a lake, not a river — Lake Winnipesaukee. TigerBlog came very close to spelling that correctly on the first try. 

If you're looking at the current rankings, the No. 1 team in NCAA women's rowing is Stanford, followed by Texas, Washington and Tennessee. After that, you have back-to-back Ivy teams: No. 5 Yale and No. 6 Princeton.

Brown is ranked eighth, with Rutgers in between. 

In other words, this figures to be a pretty intense weekend of racing for the women, with heats beginning Saturday at 4 in the afternoon and then finals Sunday morning, culminating with the women's varsity 8 grand final at 9:40. 

On the men's side, the entire Eastern Sprints will be held Sunday. The highest ranked Ivy heavyweight is Harvard at No. 3, behind No. 1 Cal and No. 2 Washington. The Boys In The Boat would be proud. 

Behind Harvard are four more Ivy teams, going in order Dartmouth, Princeton, Brown and Penn. Again, figure the racing to be intense. 

Then there are the men's lightweights. This week's poll has six Ivies at the top: Harvard, Cornell, Penn, Princeton, Dartmouth and Yale. This will, again, be crazy racing. 

If you get a chance to go, jump at it. TB has been to enough of these championship regattas to know that they are well worth the time. 

These three championships will be the 31st, 32nd and 33rd (and final) Ivy titles to be awarded this academic year. 

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One of TigerBlog's favorite storylines for any athlete is when there is an ever-present chip for being from a non-hotbed area of that particular sport. 

As such, he very much enjoyed the feature story his colleague Warren Croxton wrote about Kayla Yelensky of the women's water polo team. Is she from California, as much a hotbed as any sport has? 

Nope. She's from Connecticut, having grown up in Stamford. She'd travel back and forth to California several times a month for tournaments and better competition and then fly back to be in school Monday morning. 

That's a grind. 

She'd make her way from Stamford to the youth national teams and then to Princeton. Her rise through the sport is well worth reading, and you can do so HERE.

By the way, Connecticut actually has the second-most representation on the Princeton women's roster. There were 15 players on the team this past season, of which 12 were from California and one was from Hungary. The other two were from Connecticut.