Mr. And Mrs. Diaz-Bonilla

So yesterday TigerBlog referred to the "American goal" as the one that the American field hockey team at the Junior Am Games was defending. 

Is that not correct? Should he have said that it was the "Uruguayan goal," the one the Uruguayans were trying desperately to reach for the tying goal that would not come in what ended as a 2-1 USA win in the semifinals. 

He asks this question because he got this email yesterday:

"The team that is attempting to score should have its name attached to that goal. The team that is defending should not."

TB still thinks he's right. He even asked his colleague Andrew Borders, whose opinion he will definitely trust, and he agrees with TB.  

Anyway, the Junior Pan Am final will be held tonight in Asuncion, Paraguay, where the U.S. U21 team will take on its counterpart from Argentina at 6:45 Eastern for the gold medal. The loser is already assured silver. 

Neither team has ever won gold at the Junior Pan Am Games. For that matter, no team ever has, since this is only the second edition of the Junior Pan Am Games and the first that has included field hockey.  

Argentina, by the way, is an international field hockey powerhouse, with gold medals in eight of the 10 Pan Am Games tournaments and three silver and three bronze in the Olympic Games. 

The U.S. U21 women's team includes Princeton's Talia Schenck, who has scored four goals in four games to date in Paraguay, leaving her tied for fourth overall in the tournament. Schenck will fly back home after the final and be back at practice at Bedford Field in advance of the Sept. 5 opener at home against Old Dominion.

Schenck will be a senior at Princeton, which means she was a freshman in 2022. One of her teammates on that team was Sammy Popper, a member of the Class of 2022. 

Popper was two-time first-team All-Ivy League selection at Princeton, as well as the Ivy Rookie of the Year in 2019, when she helped the Tigers to the NCAA finals. 

She then spent a graduate season at Maryland, where she was a second-team All-Big Ten selection. 

If you've been paying attention, you know that TigerBlog has dipped into Instagram for some ideas of what to write about during this summer. He spent some time on the field hockey team Instagram this weekend because of Schenck's play in Paraguay.

Oh, and he'd like to thank Teryn Brill Galloway from USA Field Hockey for all of her help with photos and videos during this tournament and any others where Princeton has had players on the national teams. It's made it much easier to bring content to the Tiger field hockey fan base. 

TB won't be devoting all of today to what he saw on the app this weekend — only to Sammy Popper, who is no longer Sammy Popper. 

This past weekend, Popper became Sammy Diaz-Bonilla, in real life and on her Instagram page. This happened with her marriage to Daniel Diaz-Bonilla. 

If the groom's name is familiar, that's because he was also an All-Ivy League athlete at Princeton, on the men's soccer team. 

Mrs. Diaz-Bonilla outscored Mr. Diaz-Bonilla 29-11 during their Princeton careers, and that doesn't even count the 10 goals she scored at Maryland. It's not exactly like the marriage of Kat Sharkey, another former Princeton field hockey player, to Tom Schreiber, a soon-to-be lacrosse Hall of Famer. 

In that case, the bride outscored the groom 107-106 while Tigers.  

The wedding this past weekend certainly looked like a blast from the dozens and dozens of pictures that came across Princeton field hockey Instagram. There was certainly a large turnout of former teammates of both. Considering they were field hockey teammates, that meant flying in from all corners of the world. And there they were, all together again.

That part is always great to see. It's the next step in the lifelong friendships that are made at Princeton, a joyous, festive step at that.

Good luck and congratulations to the newlyweds. 

TigerBlog wishes them only the best.