After a weekend that included as good a lacrosse game as he has ever seen, not to mention two more wins for the unbeaten women's basketball team and an incredible opening night performance by the baseball team, TigerBlog begins with two men who have been winning championships at Princeton since before he arrived there.
Wait, before those two guys, there were other things this weekend that stood out, most notably two women's squash players who reached the semifinals of the individual national championships, one of whom, 11th-seeded Nicole Bunyan, defeated third-seeded Danielle Letourneau of Cornell 11-9, 10-12, 11-9, 17-19, 12-10 in an epic quarterfinal.
Still, TigerBlog starts with men's track and field coach Fred Samara and men's swimming and diving coach Rob Orr.
There are only five coaches who predate TigerBlog at Princeton. Fred and Rob are two of them. The others are Susan Teeter (women's swimming and diving), Peter Farrell (women's track and field/cross country) and Chris Sailer (women's lacrosse).
This past weekend, Fred and Rob each added another championship to his respective mantel. Fred led the Tigers to the Ivy League Heptagonal indoor championship, while Rob added another Ivy title of his own. Both championships were blowouts.
Want to guess how many them have between them?
Let's start with this: Between them, they have coached for 74 years at Princeton.
They're very different people, Fred and Rob. If you want TigerBlog to give you one word to describe Fred, it's "strong." He's strong physically - anyone who has seen his workout regimens through the years can attest to that.
Remember, this is a man who competed alongside Bruce Jenner at the 1976 Olympic Games in the decathlon, finishing fifth despite a hamstring injury a few weeks before that kept him from being 100%. Now it's nearly 40 years later, and he looks like he is in the exact same shape he was back then.
He's also strong mentally. He tolerates no BS. He's direct, to the point, even when it means having a difficult conversation about something. TigerBlog has been on the receiving end of a handful of those - not many, but more than one - in his time at Princeton, and he came away with a respect for Fred's ability to be direct and, well, strong in his opinions.
As a result of all of this, Fred runs a strong program, one filled with athletes who reflect his mental toughness, and physical demeanor. Programs like that are ready to go when the times get the toughest.
He's tough, Fred, but he's fair. And he's funny. He can laugh at himself when the moment calls for it, and he has a very subtle sense of humor. He is a great foil for Farrell, in a Butch and Sundance sort of way, minus the bank robbery and such.
As for Rob Orr, if TigerBlog had to pick one word to describe him, it would be, well, TB isn't quite so sure. He asked his OAC colleague Craig Sachson, who knows Orr way better than TB does, to pick out a word, and Sachson came back with "beloved."
As in, beloved by his guys.
TigerBlog knows that Rob is a laid-back guy, one who follows "how are you" with some sort of funny quip as his response. He's a bit eccentric, but not really. He appears like he's not really fazed by anything going on around him and that all of this is one big joke.
Sachson said this about Orr, with whom he's worked for more than a decade: "He doesn't want to be interviewed, but he'll usually throw balls at the people I am interviewing." That's about right.
At the same time, he's definitely serious, especially when it comes to what goes on in his pool.
In that respect, he's a competitive man. TigerBlog has heard speak about issues that are important to him and his program, and, like Fred, he's very direct and strong. It's no wonder his swimmers love him. Like Fred he always has their backs. Like Fred, he's set the standard very high for them.
The final margin of victory for the track and field team was 63 points, which as TB understands is a lot. The final margin for the swimming and diving team was 232.5 points, which similarly is a lot.
These were dominant performances by teams coached by men who has lost nothing off their fastballs in all those years. Each year continues to be its own challenge for them, and year after year they meet that challenge.
In case you were wondering, that's 22 straight years of finishing first or second at the indoor Heps for Fred Samara. The last time Rob Orr didn't finish first or second in the Ivy League? How about never in his 36 seasons.
Oh, and how many championships? That's 18 indoor Heps titles and 36 Heps titles overall for Fred, and that's 22 Ivy titles for Rob.
That's a record of success that is really hard to fathom, for both men.
And so on this busy, successful weekend at Princeton, they're the two who stood out.
This isn't the first time.
Showing posts with label men's track and field. Show all posts
Showing posts with label men's track and field. Show all posts
Monday, March 2, 2015
Thursday, February 26, 2015
That's History
TigerBlog was an American history major at Penn.
Maybe he should have gone down a different path. Maybe physics. Or accounting.
Nah, history suited him. He's always liked the way one era flowed into another, the way it all built on itself, the way a modern world emerged from an older one.
He has the right kind of brain for memorizing dates and places. All in all, it fit him well.
Because of that, TigerBlog was only to happy to volunteer to be one of the readers of the questions at the History Bowl event at a middle school yesterday.
You know how this works. There are teams of kids from different schools who compete against each other answering questions about history, with points awarded in different ways.
In the end, the winning "team" was a single young man who was the sole representative from his school. He went up against other schools who fielded teams of four, and yet he beat all of them. It was pretty impressive.
TigerBlog read the questions for four matches. There were four rounds to each match, with four separate ways of awarding points. The bottom line, though, was that it was all historical trivia.
What surprised TB was the nature of the questions. Very few of them were American history. Most of them were European or non-Western, many going back to medieval times or even ancient times.
It made them pretty hard questions, at least for TB. Perhaps it's because that's the kind of stuff kids study in that age group. TB isn't sure. He just figured there'd be more American history questions than anything else.
And how would TB have done had he competed? He wouldn't have won, that's for sure. Maybe if it was more American history, he would have liked his chances more.
And while TB was thinking back to his college major, it dawned on him that there are things that history students study today that hadn't happened yet when TB was in college. That's a tad frightening.
Anyway, fast-forwarding to the present, or even a few days into the future, there will be three Ivy League championships crowned this weekend, at a minimum. And one of them will definitely be awarded on the Princeton campus.
And possibly a second. At least mathematically.
Let's start with the first, which starts today and will run until Saturday. The Ivy League men's swimming and diving championships will be at DeNunzio Pool, and if history - and pre-meet projections - are an indicator, then the winner will be either Princeton or Harvard.
A week ago, TigerBlog pointed out that the last time the Ivy women's championship was won by someone other than those two schools was in 1999. Princeton then extended that streak by winning the 2015 title.
The domination by Princeton and Harvard on the men's side has been even greater. On the men's side, either Princeton or Harvard has won every year since 1993, when Yale got a share of the title with Harvard.
Anyway, there are afternoon and evening sessions today, tomorrow and Saturday.
Meanwhile, up at Harvard, it'll be the Ivy League Heptagonal indoor track and field championships for men and women.
As in swimming and diving, men's indoor track and field has been dominated by two schools for a long time, in this case, Princeton and Cornell. In fact, it's back to 1996 to find a different winner (it was Penn that year).
On the women's side, there have been four winners in the last six years - Princeton twice, Harvard twice, Cornell and Columbia once each.
The indoor Heps go Saturday and Sunday.
The other possible Ivy League champion for this weekend would be in women's basketball.
Princeton plays at home against Yale tomorrow night and Brown Saturday. A sweep by the 14th-ranked Tigers mathematically eliminates every team in the league other than Penn.
Right now, Princeton is 9-0 in the league - and 25-0 overall, the only undefeated women's basketball team in Division I. Penn is 7-2, while Cornell and Yale are both 6-4.
If Princeton wins tomorrow, then Yale would be eliminated. If Princeton sweeps, then neither Yale nor Cornell could catch Princeton.
If Penn splits with Yale and Brown and Princeton sweeps, then Princeton would be three games up on Penn with three to play. If Princeton sweeps and Penn gets swept, then Princeton would clinch the outright title.
ON THE OTHER HAND - that's all caps, so TB must be serious here - Princeton has to play Penn in the final game of the season at the Palestra. All Penn wants to do is have a shot at tying for the championship that night, which requires Princeton to lose one along the way and Penn to keep winning.
Will it happen? The four teams Princeton plays between now and then have all lost to the Tigers, by a lot (Brown), a lot (Columbia) a lot (Cornell) and a little (Yale, who lost by six in the first game between the two.
Yes, Princeton is the heavy favorite. No, nothing is etched in stone until it happens.
Maybe he should have gone down a different path. Maybe physics. Or accounting.
Nah, history suited him. He's always liked the way one era flowed into another, the way it all built on itself, the way a modern world emerged from an older one.
He has the right kind of brain for memorizing dates and places. All in all, it fit him well.
Because of that, TigerBlog was only to happy to volunteer to be one of the readers of the questions at the History Bowl event at a middle school yesterday.
You know how this works. There are teams of kids from different schools who compete against each other answering questions about history, with points awarded in different ways.
In the end, the winning "team" was a single young man who was the sole representative from his school. He went up against other schools who fielded teams of four, and yet he beat all of them. It was pretty impressive.
TigerBlog read the questions for four matches. There were four rounds to each match, with four separate ways of awarding points. The bottom line, though, was that it was all historical trivia.
What surprised TB was the nature of the questions. Very few of them were American history. Most of them were European or non-Western, many going back to medieval times or even ancient times.
It made them pretty hard questions, at least for TB. Perhaps it's because that's the kind of stuff kids study in that age group. TB isn't sure. He just figured there'd be more American history questions than anything else.
And how would TB have done had he competed? He wouldn't have won, that's for sure. Maybe if it was more American history, he would have liked his chances more.
And while TB was thinking back to his college major, it dawned on him that there are things that history students study today that hadn't happened yet when TB was in college. That's a tad frightening.
Anyway, fast-forwarding to the present, or even a few days into the future, there will be three Ivy League championships crowned this weekend, at a minimum. And one of them will definitely be awarded on the Princeton campus.
And possibly a second. At least mathematically.
Let's start with the first, which starts today and will run until Saturday. The Ivy League men's swimming and diving championships will be at DeNunzio Pool, and if history - and pre-meet projections - are an indicator, then the winner will be either Princeton or Harvard.
A week ago, TigerBlog pointed out that the last time the Ivy women's championship was won by someone other than those two schools was in 1999. Princeton then extended that streak by winning the 2015 title.
The domination by Princeton and Harvard on the men's side has been even greater. On the men's side, either Princeton or Harvard has won every year since 1993, when Yale got a share of the title with Harvard.
Anyway, there are afternoon and evening sessions today, tomorrow and Saturday.
Meanwhile, up at Harvard, it'll be the Ivy League Heptagonal indoor track and field championships for men and women.
As in swimming and diving, men's indoor track and field has been dominated by two schools for a long time, in this case, Princeton and Cornell. In fact, it's back to 1996 to find a different winner (it was Penn that year).
On the women's side, there have been four winners in the last six years - Princeton twice, Harvard twice, Cornell and Columbia once each.
The indoor Heps go Saturday and Sunday.
The other possible Ivy League champion for this weekend would be in women's basketball.
Princeton plays at home against Yale tomorrow night and Brown Saturday. A sweep by the 14th-ranked Tigers mathematically eliminates every team in the league other than Penn.
Right now, Princeton is 9-0 in the league - and 25-0 overall, the only undefeated women's basketball team in Division I. Penn is 7-2, while Cornell and Yale are both 6-4.
If Princeton wins tomorrow, then Yale would be eliminated. If Princeton sweeps, then neither Yale nor Cornell could catch Princeton.
If Penn splits with Yale and Brown and Princeton sweeps, then Princeton would be three games up on Penn with three to play. If Princeton sweeps and Penn gets swept, then Princeton would clinch the outright title.
ON THE OTHER HAND - that's all caps, so TB must be serious here - Princeton has to play Penn in the final game of the season at the Palestra. All Penn wants to do is have a shot at tying for the championship that night, which requires Princeton to lose one along the way and Penn to keep winning.
Will it happen? The four teams Princeton plays between now and then have all lost to the Tigers, by a lot (Brown), a lot (Columbia) a lot (Cornell) and a little (Yale, who lost by six in the first game between the two.
Yes, Princeton is the heavy favorite. No, nothing is etched in stone until it happens.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Have A Slice
When TigerBlog was in high school, he could ride his bike (or eventually drive) about a mile to the nearest pizza place. He's pretty sure a plain slice was 80 cents.
During his time in the newspaper business, he'd often get two slices and a medium cherry coke for lunch at a pizza place in West Windsor. He's pretty sure the total bill was $2.40.
TigerBlog has always liked the thicker crust pizza, as opposed to the thin crust, though he always has liked the pizza at Conte's, which is definitely thin crust. He can't figure that out in the same way he's never been able to figure out why he doesn't like peanut butter but likes Reese's peanut butter cups.
When TigerBlog used to take the bus with the Princeton men's basketball team during his newspaper days, the team would often get pizza for the long rides after games. TigerBlog used to get his with mushrooms, and he'd split a pie with the only other person on the bus who wanted mushrooms on his pizza, Sean Jackson, the 1992 Ivy League Player of the Year.
Back then, pizza was cheese, bread, sauce and maybe a topping if you wanted. If you've ever had a pizza, you're familiar with the normal toppings - sausage, pepperoni, onions, peppers. Those are the normal ones.
If you're looking for maybe the greatest movie moment involving pizza, it's hard to beat the opening credits of "Saturday Night Fever," when John Travolta stops off for a slice on his way back to the hardware store in Brooklyn.
TB isn't sure exactly when he first noticed that pizza toppings had gone from simple to ultra-complex.
TB stopped off for a slice yesterday around lunchtime at a pizza place he'd ever been to before, and he was amazed at all the different combinations. He can't even begin to remember them all.
There was buffalo chicken. Caesar salad. One that looked like a salad with artichokes on it. Chicken parmigiana. Cheesesteak. Meat and more meat.
In all, there had to be nearly 20 different kinds of pizza sitting there.
Off in the corner, there was also a plain pie. It made TigerBlog wonder if anyone can ever look at all of those different choices and ask for plain.
Of any place that TB has ever gone that has pizza but isn't a pizza place, the one with the best pizza is Frist Campus Center, by the way.
TB was out of the office yesterday, though he has plenty he needs to get done.
He has to send a bunch of stuff to the Tewaaraton Trophy people for Tom Schreiber, one of the five finalists. He has a ton of stuff to do for the Princeton Varsity Club senior athlete banquet, which is two weeks from today.
That little fact, by the way, guarantees that two weeks from today will be 90 degrees with a chance of thunderstorms.
Because the banquet is so close, it means that the academic year is winding down. The banquet always corresponds with the first day of Reunions, which is followed by graduation, and another year will have come and gone.
There are still athletic events to be contested, of course.
Princeton has a maximum of 19 more competitions, depending on how many teams and individuals qualify for national championships.
This a huge weekend for rowing, with the Ivy League championships for women in Cherry Hill and the Eastern Sprints - which determine the Ivy champ for men's heavyweight and lightweight - in Worcester, Mass.
TigerBlog has never been to Eastern Sprints or to the Ivy women's championships, but he has been to the national championships, which are quite a show. This year's IRA national championships will be May 30-June 1 in West Windsor.
In addition to rowing, there is IC4A and ECAC track and field at Weaver Stadium this weekend.
In fact, other than one NCAA women's tennis singles participant (freshman Alanna Wolf), all of the rest of Princeton's athletic schedule for this year is rowing and track and field.
It ends June 11-14 with the NCAA track and field championships in Eugene, Ore., where Julia Ratcliffe will probably be among the contenders in the women's hammer throw.
And then it'll be summer.
Speaking of which, you know where they have great pizza?
On the boardwalk.
During his time in the newspaper business, he'd often get two slices and a medium cherry coke for lunch at a pizza place in West Windsor. He's pretty sure the total bill was $2.40.
TigerBlog has always liked the thicker crust pizza, as opposed to the thin crust, though he always has liked the pizza at Conte's, which is definitely thin crust. He can't figure that out in the same way he's never been able to figure out why he doesn't like peanut butter but likes Reese's peanut butter cups.
When TigerBlog used to take the bus with the Princeton men's basketball team during his newspaper days, the team would often get pizza for the long rides after games. TigerBlog used to get his with mushrooms, and he'd split a pie with the only other person on the bus who wanted mushrooms on his pizza, Sean Jackson, the 1992 Ivy League Player of the Year.
Back then, pizza was cheese, bread, sauce and maybe a topping if you wanted. If you've ever had a pizza, you're familiar with the normal toppings - sausage, pepperoni, onions, peppers. Those are the normal ones.
If you're looking for maybe the greatest movie moment involving pizza, it's hard to beat the opening credits of "Saturday Night Fever," when John Travolta stops off for a slice on his way back to the hardware store in Brooklyn.
TB isn't sure exactly when he first noticed that pizza toppings had gone from simple to ultra-complex.
TB stopped off for a slice yesterday around lunchtime at a pizza place he'd ever been to before, and he was amazed at all the different combinations. He can't even begin to remember them all.
There was buffalo chicken. Caesar salad. One that looked like a salad with artichokes on it. Chicken parmigiana. Cheesesteak. Meat and more meat.
In all, there had to be nearly 20 different kinds of pizza sitting there.
Off in the corner, there was also a plain pie. It made TigerBlog wonder if anyone can ever look at all of those different choices and ask for plain.
Of any place that TB has ever gone that has pizza but isn't a pizza place, the one with the best pizza is Frist Campus Center, by the way.
TB was out of the office yesterday, though he has plenty he needs to get done.
He has to send a bunch of stuff to the Tewaaraton Trophy people for Tom Schreiber, one of the five finalists. He has a ton of stuff to do for the Princeton Varsity Club senior athlete banquet, which is two weeks from today.
That little fact, by the way, guarantees that two weeks from today will be 90 degrees with a chance of thunderstorms.
Because the banquet is so close, it means that the academic year is winding down. The banquet always corresponds with the first day of Reunions, which is followed by graduation, and another year will have come and gone.
There are still athletic events to be contested, of course.
Princeton has a maximum of 19 more competitions, depending on how many teams and individuals qualify for national championships.
This a huge weekend for rowing, with the Ivy League championships for women in Cherry Hill and the Eastern Sprints - which determine the Ivy champ for men's heavyweight and lightweight - in Worcester, Mass.
TigerBlog has never been to Eastern Sprints or to the Ivy women's championships, but he has been to the national championships, which are quite a show. This year's IRA national championships will be May 30-June 1 in West Windsor.
In addition to rowing, there is IC4A and ECAC track and field at Weaver Stadium this weekend.
In fact, other than one NCAA women's tennis singles participant (freshman Alanna Wolf), all of the rest of Princeton's athletic schedule for this year is rowing and track and field.
It ends June 11-14 with the NCAA track and field championships in Eugene, Ore., where Julia Ratcliffe will probably be among the contenders in the women's hammer throw.
And then it'll be summer.
Speaking of which, you know where they have great pizza?
On the boardwalk.
Friday, May 9, 2014
Women's Lax, Women's Tennis, Track And Field - And Ping Pong
The good people of Dillon Gym are sort of their own subculture.
It's a mix of coaches and campus rec over there, centrally located in the middle of campus. For every one person who wanders into Jadwin Gym, TigerBlog figures 20 or so probably walk into Dillon.
TigerBlog is part of the Jadwin crowd. It's a mix of coaches, administrators and staff over here, a little bit off the beaten path of the University campus, though with much, much better parking.
The Dillon people and the Jadwin people work together in that they are all part of the same department but don't really work together on a day-to-day basis. It's hardly a regular occurrence when one of the Dillonites wanders over to Jadwin or vice versa.
They're not like the Hatfields and the McCoys or anything like that. Far from it. They're just separated by a huge part of the campus, and they don't always get to see each other all the time.
TigerBlog has been a Jadwin person for a long time. In all that time, he can't remember anything like what's currently going on with the McCoys, as it were, where apparently there is a staff ping-pong tournament going on.
TB saw the bracket yesterday, which was Day 1 of the competition, which according to the bracket will lead to a championship match in two weeks. Apparently the big opening round upset was women's volleyball coach Sabrina King's win over men's lightweight rowing coach Marty Crotty.
TigerBlog has only see one of the 27 people in the field play ping-pong. For whatever reason, he'll go with men's soccer coach Jim Barlow to win it all, even though he's one of the 26 he's never seen play. It just seems like something he'd be good at.
He also likes men's lacrosse coach Chris Bates, who would meet Barlow in the semifinals. On the other side, he'll stay with King - though she'd have to get past men's golf coach Will Green - and go with women's lightweight rowing coach Paul Rassam as his other person in the Final Four.
He has no idea if any of these people are actually any good in ping pong.
Women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer isn't in the field. She's busy right now anyway, what with her team at Virginia for this afternoon's opening round game of the NCAA tournament against Penn State. The opening draw is at 4, and the winner plays Virginia Sunday.
Princeton and Penn State are hardly strangers. They meet for the 35th time overall and second time in three weeks, after Penn State won 13-12 in the final game of the regular season.
About two hours before the lacrosse game starts, Princeton will be playing Arizona State in Alabama in the opening round of the NCAA women's tennis tournament.
Laura Granville has the Tigers in the NCAA tournament in her second year. Arizona State coach Sheila McInerney has a little more experience - she's been there for 30 years.
Come to think of it, TigerBlog figures Granville is probably a good ping pong player too.
The other really big event this weekend is Heps track and field, which will take place at Yale.
Princeton's men are the three-time defending champion. The women are looking for their 10th Heps title and first since 2011.
Princeton is loaded with individual contenders among the men and women, most notably Julia Ratcliffe in the hammer throw on the women's side. Ratcliffe has the Ivy League's best throw this season - and the NCAA's best throw, for that matter.
Those are the big events of the weekend.
The ping pong tournament picks up again next week.
It's a mix of coaches and campus rec over there, centrally located in the middle of campus. For every one person who wanders into Jadwin Gym, TigerBlog figures 20 or so probably walk into Dillon.
TigerBlog is part of the Jadwin crowd. It's a mix of coaches, administrators and staff over here, a little bit off the beaten path of the University campus, though with much, much better parking.
The Dillon people and the Jadwin people work together in that they are all part of the same department but don't really work together on a day-to-day basis. It's hardly a regular occurrence when one of the Dillonites wanders over to Jadwin or vice versa.
They're not like the Hatfields and the McCoys or anything like that. Far from it. They're just separated by a huge part of the campus, and they don't always get to see each other all the time.
TigerBlog has been a Jadwin person for a long time. In all that time, he can't remember anything like what's currently going on with the McCoys, as it were, where apparently there is a staff ping-pong tournament going on.
TB saw the bracket yesterday, which was Day 1 of the competition, which according to the bracket will lead to a championship match in two weeks. Apparently the big opening round upset was women's volleyball coach Sabrina King's win over men's lightweight rowing coach Marty Crotty.
TigerBlog has only see one of the 27 people in the field play ping-pong. For whatever reason, he'll go with men's soccer coach Jim Barlow to win it all, even though he's one of the 26 he's never seen play. It just seems like something he'd be good at.
He also likes men's lacrosse coach Chris Bates, who would meet Barlow in the semifinals. On the other side, he'll stay with King - though she'd have to get past men's golf coach Will Green - and go with women's lightweight rowing coach Paul Rassam as his other person in the Final Four.
He has no idea if any of these people are actually any good in ping pong.
Women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer isn't in the field. She's busy right now anyway, what with her team at Virginia for this afternoon's opening round game of the NCAA tournament against Penn State. The opening draw is at 4, and the winner plays Virginia Sunday.
Princeton and Penn State are hardly strangers. They meet for the 35th time overall and second time in three weeks, after Penn State won 13-12 in the final game of the regular season.
About two hours before the lacrosse game starts, Princeton will be playing Arizona State in Alabama in the opening round of the NCAA women's tennis tournament.
Laura Granville has the Tigers in the NCAA tournament in her second year. Arizona State coach Sheila McInerney has a little more experience - she's been there for 30 years.
Come to think of it, TigerBlog figures Granville is probably a good ping pong player too.
The other really big event this weekend is Heps track and field, which will take place at Yale.
Princeton's men are the three-time defending champion. The women are looking for their 10th Heps title and first since 2011.
Princeton is loaded with individual contenders among the men and women, most notably Julia Ratcliffe in the hammer throw on the women's side. Ratcliffe has the Ivy League's best throw this season - and the NCAA's best throw, for that matter.
Those are the big events of the weekend.
The ping pong tournament picks up again next week.
Friday, April 11, 2014
The Pre-Tournament Begins
TigerBlog isn't sure if Tuesday night's Princeton-Lehigh men's lacrosse game was the most exciting in Division I this season or just the second-best one played that day.
If you thought Princeton's 10-9 double overtime win over Lehigh was wild, what with the whole tying it with 2.7 seconds left in regulation and all, how about the Sacred Heart-Holy Cross game? Sacred Heart trailed 11-3 in the fourth quarter - the fourth quarter - and then ripped off eight goals to tie it and before winning 12-11 in overtime.
So what's better, a relatively unheard of comeback or a game that goes to two overtimes without ever having either team lead by more than one?
In the case of Princeton's game against Lehigh, the score was tied at 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5, 6-6, 7-7, 8-8 and finally 9-9.
Getting to 9-9 wasn't exactly easy.
Princeton trailed 9-8 with 1:10 to go, Lehigh with the ball, out of a timeout. TigerBlog always thinks the team with the ball in that situation hurts itself by calling timeout, since the defense can come out the timeout ready to pounce on the ball, rather than scrambling while play is ongoing.
In this case, the Tigers doubled the ball and trapped it in the corner, gaining possession and clearing it to Tom Schreiber, whose shot was saved by Lehigh's outstanding goalie Matt Poillon. The game might have been over there, except that Poillon's outlet pass shorthopped its target near midfield, allowing Schreiber and Will Reynolds to converge and get it back. Schreiber's next shot hit a foot in front of the goal and bounced back near midfield, where Mike MacDonald picked it up and got it to Kip Orban, who beat Poillon and the clock with 2.7 seconds to spare to send it to overtime.
And then another overtime.
And then Schreiber got the ball free about 10 yards in front of the goal after slipping a screen and, well, he was never going to miss from there. And he didn't.
For Princeton, it was a great win. Hopefully for the Tigers it doesn't become the highlight of the year.
With three weeks to go in the regular season, Princeton is trying to make its push for the two big tournaments, first the Ivy League one and then the NCAA one. This weekend starts the three-game pre-tournament.
The schedule has Princeton at home tomorrow (1) against Dartmouth, a team that beat the Tigers in Hanover 10-9 last year in a game that did a great deal to haunt Princeton come NCAA selection night.
Next week is a trip to Harvard, who just happens to be the last unbeaten team in Ivy League men's lacrosse. And then it's off to Long Island to take on Cornell in what is called the Battle of Bethpage April 26.
Right now, Harvard is 3-0, followed by Cornell at 2-1, Penn and Yale at 2-2, Princeton and Brown at 1-2 and Dartmouth at 0-3. This weekend starts the sorting out, with Yale at Brown tonight and Harvard at Penn tomorrow, in addition the Tigers and Big Green and a non-league game of Cornell and Hofstra.
It's actually tough for a Princeton fan to know which teams would help the Tigers by winning. Princeton obviously wants Lehigh to win out and at least get the Patriot League final against Loyola.
Princeton has already beaten Penn and Hofstra, so the better they do, the better Princeton's win is. On the other hand, a Penn loss to Harvard means Princeton's win isn't as good as it would be if Penn keeps winning, but it could help Princeton get into the Ivy tournament and make a potential win over Harvard be better should the Tigers pull that off next week.
The same logic applies to Hofstra-Cornell. The win over Hofstra gets better with a win over Cornell; a Cornell win gives Princeton a top 10 or even top 5 opponent to go against on Long Island.
And it's probably better for Princeton if Brown beats Yale, since Yale figures to be battling Princeton for an at-large NCAA bid should neither get the NCAA bid. But then that all depends what would happen after that, as Brown still has to play Cornell and Yale still have to play Harvard.
Princeton can solve all of its own problems by winning out. It desperately needs a win against Dartmouth after a season where two wins (Hofstra, Manhattan) were followed by two losses (Hopkins, Carolina) and then two more wins (Penn, Villanova) and then two more losses (Yale, Brown) and now two more wins (Rutgers, Lehigh).
Princeton has never lost consecutive games to Dartmouth and is 30-1 all-time in Princeton against the alma mater of head coach Chris Bates.
That game is not the only home event this weekend.
The men's golf team hosts the Princeton Invitational tomorrow and Sunday, and there is home women's tennis against Harvard (tomorrow) and Dartmouth (Sunday), home men's and women's track against Monmouth, St. John's and Vermont (fairly random group) and men's lightweight rowing against Cornell.
By the way, speaking of golf, TigerBlog hasn't played since 2000 or so, but he'd like to get out at least once this summer. He's adding that to his other goal of catching a fish.
It's still spring, though. It's actually early spring, but time is running out on the lacrosse season.
The game Tuesday was a great one. The one tomorrow is a huge one, the first of at least three in a row.
Princeton is hoping for much more than that.
If you thought Princeton's 10-9 double overtime win over Lehigh was wild, what with the whole tying it with 2.7 seconds left in regulation and all, how about the Sacred Heart-Holy Cross game? Sacred Heart trailed 11-3 in the fourth quarter - the fourth quarter - and then ripped off eight goals to tie it and before winning 12-11 in overtime.
So what's better, a relatively unheard of comeback or a game that goes to two overtimes without ever having either team lead by more than one?
In the case of Princeton's game against Lehigh, the score was tied at 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5, 6-6, 7-7, 8-8 and finally 9-9.
Getting to 9-9 wasn't exactly easy.
Princeton trailed 9-8 with 1:10 to go, Lehigh with the ball, out of a timeout. TigerBlog always thinks the team with the ball in that situation hurts itself by calling timeout, since the defense can come out the timeout ready to pounce on the ball, rather than scrambling while play is ongoing.
In this case, the Tigers doubled the ball and trapped it in the corner, gaining possession and clearing it to Tom Schreiber, whose shot was saved by Lehigh's outstanding goalie Matt Poillon. The game might have been over there, except that Poillon's outlet pass shorthopped its target near midfield, allowing Schreiber and Will Reynolds to converge and get it back. Schreiber's next shot hit a foot in front of the goal and bounced back near midfield, where Mike MacDonald picked it up and got it to Kip Orban, who beat Poillon and the clock with 2.7 seconds to spare to send it to overtime.
And then another overtime.
And then Schreiber got the ball free about 10 yards in front of the goal after slipping a screen and, well, he was never going to miss from there. And he didn't.
For Princeton, it was a great win. Hopefully for the Tigers it doesn't become the highlight of the year.
With three weeks to go in the regular season, Princeton is trying to make its push for the two big tournaments, first the Ivy League one and then the NCAA one. This weekend starts the three-game pre-tournament.
The schedule has Princeton at home tomorrow (1) against Dartmouth, a team that beat the Tigers in Hanover 10-9 last year in a game that did a great deal to haunt Princeton come NCAA selection night.
Next week is a trip to Harvard, who just happens to be the last unbeaten team in Ivy League men's lacrosse. And then it's off to Long Island to take on Cornell in what is called the Battle of Bethpage April 26.
Right now, Harvard is 3-0, followed by Cornell at 2-1, Penn and Yale at 2-2, Princeton and Brown at 1-2 and Dartmouth at 0-3. This weekend starts the sorting out, with Yale at Brown tonight and Harvard at Penn tomorrow, in addition the Tigers and Big Green and a non-league game of Cornell and Hofstra.
It's actually tough for a Princeton fan to know which teams would help the Tigers by winning. Princeton obviously wants Lehigh to win out and at least get the Patriot League final against Loyola.
Princeton has already beaten Penn and Hofstra, so the better they do, the better Princeton's win is. On the other hand, a Penn loss to Harvard means Princeton's win isn't as good as it would be if Penn keeps winning, but it could help Princeton get into the Ivy tournament and make a potential win over Harvard be better should the Tigers pull that off next week.
The same logic applies to Hofstra-Cornell. The win over Hofstra gets better with a win over Cornell; a Cornell win gives Princeton a top 10 or even top 5 opponent to go against on Long Island.
And it's probably better for Princeton if Brown beats Yale, since Yale figures to be battling Princeton for an at-large NCAA bid should neither get the NCAA bid. But then that all depends what would happen after that, as Brown still has to play Cornell and Yale still have to play Harvard.
Princeton can solve all of its own problems by winning out. It desperately needs a win against Dartmouth after a season where two wins (Hofstra, Manhattan) were followed by two losses (Hopkins, Carolina) and then two more wins (Penn, Villanova) and then two more losses (Yale, Brown) and now two more wins (Rutgers, Lehigh).
Princeton has never lost consecutive games to Dartmouth and is 30-1 all-time in Princeton against the alma mater of head coach Chris Bates.
That game is not the only home event this weekend.
The men's golf team hosts the Princeton Invitational tomorrow and Sunday, and there is home women's tennis against Harvard (tomorrow) and Dartmouth (Sunday), home men's and women's track against Monmouth, St. John's and Vermont (fairly random group) and men's lightweight rowing against Cornell.
By the way, speaking of golf, TigerBlog hasn't played since 2000 or so, but he'd like to get out at least once this summer. He's adding that to his other goal of catching a fish.
It's still spring, though. It's actually early spring, but time is running out on the lacrosse season.
The game Tuesday was a great one. The one tomorrow is a huge one, the first of at least three in a row.
Princeton is hoping for much more than that.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Keeping Up
TigerBlog would never watch "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" if he didn't have a good reason.
In TB's opinion, the Kardashian show more than any other captures so many of the ills of contemporary American popular culture - and really American society as a whole.
Let's face it. These are people who are narcissists and who will do anything for fame and fortune. They have no discernible talent, other than having been in the right place at the right time when reality TV kicked into high gear - and very little in the way of shame.
And so they've spent years and years living their lives with cameras pointed at them. In fairness, who wouldn't start to think that they were fascinating if every little piece of one's life were part of a TV show?
Of course you have to hand it to them. They have achieved great fame and fortune, which is America today is what the whole goal seems to be. Find whatever shortcut you can to wealth and notoriety, and it was really the Kardashian family that wrote the playbook of how to do so.
TB hates when he's going through the channels and stumbles upon it for a second before he changes the channel. It makes him feel unclean just to see that much of it.
So if he watched a segment of it Sunday night, there must have been a good reason, right?
There was.
This episode centered around Bruce Jenner's birthday - and his daughter's coming 18th birthday and desire to buy a beach house in Malibu, because, you know, isn't that what 18-year-olds do?
Anyway, there was a time that Bruce Jenner was the studliest of studs, the Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon, the greatest athlete in the world, a genuine American sporting icon. Seriously, after the 1976 Olympics, Jenner was to marketing in this country what Michael Jordan or Peyton Manning would become. That's how huge he was.
Now? He's just part of the trainwreck.
Anyway, his step-daughters wanted to do something nice for his birthday though, and they hit upon the idea of surprising him by inviting his 1976 Olympic decathlon teammates to California for his dinner.
Both of those teammates were named Fred. One of them is Fred Samara, the longtime Princeton men's track and field coach.
And that's how TigerBlog came to watch "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" Sunday.
Actually, he didn't watch the whole thing. He relied on his coworker Kristy McNeil, an avid fan of the show, to let him know when Fred was about to be on.
When TB put it on, he saw the barely recognizable Bruce Jenner dressed in a Princeton Track and Field shirt. And there was a part where Kim Kardashian looks up the 1976 Olympic decathlon team and then calls Fred to invite him the party.
Fred - both Freds, Samara and Dixon, actually - is then shown walking into where the family has gathered. Kim's concern was that Bruce wouldn't recognize the two Freds after all these years, but that's hardly the case.
TB remembers when Fred went out to California for the party/filming. It was awhile ago.
And there he was on TV Sunday night.
It went as well as it could have for Samara, with the Princeton Track and Field t-shirt and with a fairly respectable treatment by the narcissists, the ones who could have been condescending without too much effort.
When TB spoke to Samara yesterday, he was pleased with the way it went. And TB could tell he wasn't the first person to ask him about it.
If Samara was uncomfortable with the whole thing, he'll be much more in his element this weekend, when Princeton competes in the Ivy League Heptagonal championships at Dartmouth.
From his bio:
As head coach, Samara has guided the Tigers to 35 Ivy League titles, 17 indoor, 14 outdoor and four in cross country. Since 2000 alone, Samara had guided the Tigers to 12 Ivy League track & field titles, winning eight in indoor track and field and four in outdoor. His team posted an Ivy League triple crown in 2010-11 as Princeton became just the 10th program in NCAA history to sweep all six titles (men and women) in a single academic year and did it again in 2011-12.
As for indoor Heps, the men's winner has been either Princeton or Cornell every year since 1994 except for one year, 1997, when Penn won the title. Princeton won in 2010, 2011 and 2012 before Cornell regained the championship last year.
Samara looks like he could still be a decathlete all these years later. His workouts are a standard part of daily life in Jadwin Gym, and he doesn't have an ounce of fat on him.
Yeah, he's way more athlete/coach than reality TV star.
His cameo appearance Sunday was more than enough for him. And for TigerBlog, who will watch again when another Princeton coach is on.
In TB's opinion, the Kardashian show more than any other captures so many of the ills of contemporary American popular culture - and really American society as a whole.
Let's face it. These are people who are narcissists and who will do anything for fame and fortune. They have no discernible talent, other than having been in the right place at the right time when reality TV kicked into high gear - and very little in the way of shame.
And so they've spent years and years living their lives with cameras pointed at them. In fairness, who wouldn't start to think that they were fascinating if every little piece of one's life were part of a TV show?
Of course you have to hand it to them. They have achieved great fame and fortune, which is America today is what the whole goal seems to be. Find whatever shortcut you can to wealth and notoriety, and it was really the Kardashian family that wrote the playbook of how to do so.
TB hates when he's going through the channels and stumbles upon it for a second before he changes the channel. It makes him feel unclean just to see that much of it.
So if he watched a segment of it Sunday night, there must have been a good reason, right?
There was.
This episode centered around Bruce Jenner's birthday - and his daughter's coming 18th birthday and desire to buy a beach house in Malibu, because, you know, isn't that what 18-year-olds do?
Anyway, there was a time that Bruce Jenner was the studliest of studs, the Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon, the greatest athlete in the world, a genuine American sporting icon. Seriously, after the 1976 Olympics, Jenner was to marketing in this country what Michael Jordan or Peyton Manning would become. That's how huge he was.
Now? He's just part of the trainwreck.
Anyway, his step-daughters wanted to do something nice for his birthday though, and they hit upon the idea of surprising him by inviting his 1976 Olympic decathlon teammates to California for his dinner.
Both of those teammates were named Fred. One of them is Fred Samara, the longtime Princeton men's track and field coach.
And that's how TigerBlog came to watch "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" Sunday.
Actually, he didn't watch the whole thing. He relied on his coworker Kristy McNeil, an avid fan of the show, to let him know when Fred was about to be on.
When TB put it on, he saw the barely recognizable Bruce Jenner dressed in a Princeton Track and Field shirt. And there was a part where Kim Kardashian looks up the 1976 Olympic decathlon team and then calls Fred to invite him the party.
Fred - both Freds, Samara and Dixon, actually - is then shown walking into where the family has gathered. Kim's concern was that Bruce wouldn't recognize the two Freds after all these years, but that's hardly the case.
TB remembers when Fred went out to California for the party/filming. It was awhile ago.
And there he was on TV Sunday night.
It went as well as it could have for Samara, with the Princeton Track and Field t-shirt and with a fairly respectable treatment by the narcissists, the ones who could have been condescending without too much effort.
When TB spoke to Samara yesterday, he was pleased with the way it went. And TB could tell he wasn't the first person to ask him about it.
If Samara was uncomfortable with the whole thing, he'll be much more in his element this weekend, when Princeton competes in the Ivy League Heptagonal championships at Dartmouth.
From his bio:
As head coach, Samara has guided the Tigers to 35 Ivy League titles, 17 indoor, 14 outdoor and four in cross country. Since 2000 alone, Samara had guided the Tigers to 12 Ivy League track & field titles, winning eight in indoor track and field and four in outdoor. His team posted an Ivy League triple crown in 2010-11 as Princeton became just the 10th program in NCAA history to sweep all six titles (men and women) in a single academic year and did it again in 2011-12.
As for indoor Heps, the men's winner has been either Princeton or Cornell every year since 1994 except for one year, 1997, when Penn won the title. Princeton won in 2010, 2011 and 2012 before Cornell regained the championship last year.
Samara looks like he could still be a decathlete all these years later. His workouts are a standard part of daily life in Jadwin Gym, and he doesn't have an ounce of fat on him.
Yeah, he's way more athlete/coach than reality TV star.
His cameo appearance Sunday was more than enough for him. And for TigerBlog, who will watch again when another Princeton coach is on.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
It's Quiet
TigerBlog opens today with a little more on the NFC championship game.
First, to those who are okay with Richard Sherman's postgame rant, TB would quote Pete Carril: "When you lower your standards, they turn around and attack you."
It's not that Sherman is dumb. Hardly. It's not that he's a thug. Hardly.
It's that this is what society is all about these days. The more outrageous, the better. A week ago, how many people had heard of Richard Sherman, as good a player as he is? Who's the Seahawks other corner? Who are the Broncos corners?
And if you heard of him before, was it because of his play or because of his social media?
Richard Sherman? Household name now. In contemporary America, that's mission accomplished. Whatever it takes to achieve it.
Oh, and NaVorro Bowman, the 49ers linebacker and leading tackler this season who appeared to intercept a pass near the goal line, only to have the play be non-reviewable because it was ruled a fumble and a recovery by the Seahawks and such a play is not reviewable?
Well, Bowman tore his ACL and MCL on the play, which brought up another Pete Carril moment.
As Bowman was on the ground, at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that he'd gotten possession of the ball for his team - until someone went over and told him that he didn't and that it wasn't reviewable.
It reminded TB of the time at lunchtime basketball in Jadwin when an assistant football coach drove to the basket, only to tear his knee along the way. Carril, who was playing at the time, walked out over to where the football coach was on the ground, writhing away, while someone had run to get an athletic trainer.
And what did Pete say? Only this: "Now might be the best time to tell you you traveled."
Anyway, how could that play not be reviewable? Justice was served, of course, by a turnover on the net play that gave San Francisco the ball anyway.
But isn't the point of replay to correct awful mistakes? Games can be delayed interminably in the second quarter of Week 3 over microscopic analysis to see if a receiver had both feet in bounds or not, but an obviously incorrect call in the NFC Championship Game?
Oh well. Now we're on to Seahawks-Broncos, which can only mean two things - a lot of Richard Sherman and two weeks of talk about how many people want the weather to be awful.
Why do people want the weather to stink? Isn't a good thing that the Super Bowl is in this area? It's something different, but it's not like the NFL has never played postseason games in bad weather before.
TB is astounded by the number of people who want the weather to be below zero. TB gets people who want to see it snow, because that's cool. But freezing?
Why? Would the Super Bowl be anymore about corporate greed and excess if it was held in Hawaii? Nope.
Week 1 of the Super Bowl hype corresponds with the final week of first semester exams here at Princeton. As of today it's been nine days since Princeton had a sporting event, which makes this the longest stretch of the year without any competition - even with the rest of the week to go.
Princeton's next athletic events are this weekend, with men's and women's track and field, men's and women's tennis and men's basketball all in action.
Beginning Saturday, with both tracks and women's tennis, there will be at least one Princeton athletic event every day through the day of the Super Bowl. Some of those will be bigger events than others, with none bigger than the basketball games against Harvard (women here, men at Harvard) on Jan. 31.
For now, it's very, very quiet around here.
Elsewhere in college athletics, especially hockey and basketball, this is about as busy as it gets. Schools are back from exams and holiday breaks, and conference games dominate in January.
Creighton buried Villanova last night in men's basketball 96-68, shooting 21 for 35 from three-point range along the way. It was the seventh conference game for Creighton.
A bunch of schools - including every one in the MAAC - have played eight league games. In the Ivy League, every team, men's and women's, has played one.
One team that has played six league games, and won them all, is American's men's team. American is coached by Princeton alum Mike Brennan, and he has fellow Tiger Scott Greenman as an assistant coach.
Anyway, during exam break, teams here do not have formal practices. They have informal ones, featuring whoever can get down to work out as a break from studying.
That all ends soon enough. The games will be restarting and come next month, the winter/spring overlap will begin.
For today, though, it's much more relaxing. And it leaves TB to look out the window and wonder about issues other than Princeton athletics.
Like how do they know no two snowflakes are alike?
First, to those who are okay with Richard Sherman's postgame rant, TB would quote Pete Carril: "When you lower your standards, they turn around and attack you."
It's not that Sherman is dumb. Hardly. It's not that he's a thug. Hardly.
It's that this is what society is all about these days. The more outrageous, the better. A week ago, how many people had heard of Richard Sherman, as good a player as he is? Who's the Seahawks other corner? Who are the Broncos corners?
And if you heard of him before, was it because of his play or because of his social media?
Richard Sherman? Household name now. In contemporary America, that's mission accomplished. Whatever it takes to achieve it.
Oh, and NaVorro Bowman, the 49ers linebacker and leading tackler this season who appeared to intercept a pass near the goal line, only to have the play be non-reviewable because it was ruled a fumble and a recovery by the Seahawks and such a play is not reviewable?
Well, Bowman tore his ACL and MCL on the play, which brought up another Pete Carril moment.
As Bowman was on the ground, at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that he'd gotten possession of the ball for his team - until someone went over and told him that he didn't and that it wasn't reviewable.
It reminded TB of the time at lunchtime basketball in Jadwin when an assistant football coach drove to the basket, only to tear his knee along the way. Carril, who was playing at the time, walked out over to where the football coach was on the ground, writhing away, while someone had run to get an athletic trainer.
And what did Pete say? Only this: "Now might be the best time to tell you you traveled."
Anyway, how could that play not be reviewable? Justice was served, of course, by a turnover on the net play that gave San Francisco the ball anyway.
But isn't the point of replay to correct awful mistakes? Games can be delayed interminably in the second quarter of Week 3 over microscopic analysis to see if a receiver had both feet in bounds or not, but an obviously incorrect call in the NFC Championship Game?
Oh well. Now we're on to Seahawks-Broncos, which can only mean two things - a lot of Richard Sherman and two weeks of talk about how many people want the weather to be awful.
Why do people want the weather to stink? Isn't a good thing that the Super Bowl is in this area? It's something different, but it's not like the NFL has never played postseason games in bad weather before.
TB is astounded by the number of people who want the weather to be below zero. TB gets people who want to see it snow, because that's cool. But freezing?
Why? Would the Super Bowl be anymore about corporate greed and excess if it was held in Hawaii? Nope.
Week 1 of the Super Bowl hype corresponds with the final week of first semester exams here at Princeton. As of today it's been nine days since Princeton had a sporting event, which makes this the longest stretch of the year without any competition - even with the rest of the week to go.
Princeton's next athletic events are this weekend, with men's and women's track and field, men's and women's tennis and men's basketball all in action.
Beginning Saturday, with both tracks and women's tennis, there will be at least one Princeton athletic event every day through the day of the Super Bowl. Some of those will be bigger events than others, with none bigger than the basketball games against Harvard (women here, men at Harvard) on Jan. 31.
For now, it's very, very quiet around here.
Elsewhere in college athletics, especially hockey and basketball, this is about as busy as it gets. Schools are back from exams and holiday breaks, and conference games dominate in January.
Creighton buried Villanova last night in men's basketball 96-68, shooting 21 for 35 from three-point range along the way. It was the seventh conference game for Creighton.
A bunch of schools - including every one in the MAAC - have played eight league games. In the Ivy League, every team, men's and women's, has played one.
One team that has played six league games, and won them all, is American's men's team. American is coached by Princeton alum Mike Brennan, and he has fellow Tiger Scott Greenman as an assistant coach.
Anyway, during exam break, teams here do not have formal practices. They have informal ones, featuring whoever can get down to work out as a break from studying.
That all ends soon enough. The games will be restarting and come next month, the winter/spring overlap will begin.
For today, though, it's much more relaxing. And it leaves TB to look out the window and wonder about issues other than Princeton athletics.
Like how do they know no two snowflakes are alike?
Friday, December 6, 2013
Draw It Up
Guess what today is?
The World Cup draw for 2014.
TigerBlog didn't realize that when he woke up this morning. Now he can't wait.
As he has said before, TigerBlog went from not watching one minute of the 2002 World Cup to watching a lot of the 2006 World Cup to watching all of the 2010 World Cup.
Now, as 2014 looms, he can't wait for the next one.
The big lure in 2010 was the U.S. team, coached by Princeton alum Bob Bradley. For 2014, TB has been rooting for Egypt, coached by Bradley through the qualifying tournament. The Egyptians came pretty close to making it into the 32-team field before getting wiped out by Ghana in the play-in for one of Africa's five spots.
TB has also been rooting for Costa Rica, from the time he went there in June 2012 and saw Los Ticos play El Salvador in an opening-round qualifier at the national stadium in San Jose. TigerBlog has never seen anything else quite like that.
So now the 32 teams are set, and it's time for the draw. It's not quite random, and it's likely that it won't be long afterwards before someone refers to the U.S. as being in the Group of Death.
At least that's TB's pre-selection prediction.
TB assumes he'll end up rooting for the U.S. when the event in Brazil begins. Still, he'd like it better if Bradley had not lost his job, especially since he actually led the U.S. to first place in the group stage in 2010.
By the way, the NCAA basketball tournament would be so much better if the selections were done the same way as they're done for the World Cup. Seed the teams, then assign them randomly.
The World Cup is about six months away. The Winter Olympics are about two months away, right?
Actually, they start two months from tomorrow.
TB will take the World Cup over the Winter Olympics, though he'll watch the Olympics when they're on.
As he thinks about it, TB really hasn't watched that much sports on TV lately. He watched almost none of the baseball playoffs. He's watched hardly any of the NFL season. The NBA? He watches his new favorite team, the Sixers, because 1) the Knicks are completely unwatchable and 2) the Sixers have Hollis Thompson, a Georgetown guy.
Hockey? Nah.
College basketball? There's certainly enough of it on, as TB has said all week.
TB will watch the Princeton-FDU game tomorrow night at Jadwin Gym (tip is at 7). It's a pretty good day around here, actually, even before the basketball game.
It starts with the New Year's Invitational track and field meet and the Big Al Invitational swim meet.
There's also home women's hockey against Union at 4, with a Skate with the Tigers event when it's over.
Everything except the basketball game, of course, comes without an admissions fee.
And that's about it for today.
Oh wait, not it isn't.
Today is John Mack's birthday. TigerBlog is a big birthday guy, and he likes to wish people well on their big days.
John Mack is a little different, of course. A 10-time Heptagonal champion as a track athlete and Roper Trophy winner as a Princeton undergrad, Mack is now one of the "old alums" who comes back every now and then and remarks about how different everything is.
And by old, TB is saying mid-30s or so.
John Mack worked in the athletic department at Princeton after he graduated and then went on to Northwestern's athletic department and now law school, from where he will graduate this coming spring.
TigerBlog's big regret from Mack's most recent visit, which was the weekend of Heps and the Cornell football game, was that he didn't get a current track athlete to go up to Mack and call him "sir." That would have been great.
Anyway, happy birthday to John Mack. TB apologizes for not sending a card, so this will have to do.
And now that really is all for today.
The World Cup draw for 2014.
TigerBlog didn't realize that when he woke up this morning. Now he can't wait.
As he has said before, TigerBlog went from not watching one minute of the 2002 World Cup to watching a lot of the 2006 World Cup to watching all of the 2010 World Cup.
Now, as 2014 looms, he can't wait for the next one.
The big lure in 2010 was the U.S. team, coached by Princeton alum Bob Bradley. For 2014, TB has been rooting for Egypt, coached by Bradley through the qualifying tournament. The Egyptians came pretty close to making it into the 32-team field before getting wiped out by Ghana in the play-in for one of Africa's five spots.
TB has also been rooting for Costa Rica, from the time he went there in June 2012 and saw Los Ticos play El Salvador in an opening-round qualifier at the national stadium in San Jose. TigerBlog has never seen anything else quite like that.
So now the 32 teams are set, and it's time for the draw. It's not quite random, and it's likely that it won't be long afterwards before someone refers to the U.S. as being in the Group of Death.
At least that's TB's pre-selection prediction.
TB assumes he'll end up rooting for the U.S. when the event in Brazil begins. Still, he'd like it better if Bradley had not lost his job, especially since he actually led the U.S. to first place in the group stage in 2010.
By the way, the NCAA basketball tournament would be so much better if the selections were done the same way as they're done for the World Cup. Seed the teams, then assign them randomly.
The World Cup is about six months away. The Winter Olympics are about two months away, right?
Actually, they start two months from tomorrow.
TB will take the World Cup over the Winter Olympics, though he'll watch the Olympics when they're on.
As he thinks about it, TB really hasn't watched that much sports on TV lately. He watched almost none of the baseball playoffs. He's watched hardly any of the NFL season. The NBA? He watches his new favorite team, the Sixers, because 1) the Knicks are completely unwatchable and 2) the Sixers have Hollis Thompson, a Georgetown guy.
Hockey? Nah.
College basketball? There's certainly enough of it on, as TB has said all week.
TB will watch the Princeton-FDU game tomorrow night at Jadwin Gym (tip is at 7). It's a pretty good day around here, actually, even before the basketball game.
It starts with the New Year's Invitational track and field meet and the Big Al Invitational swim meet.
There's also home women's hockey against Union at 4, with a Skate with the Tigers event when it's over.
Everything except the basketball game, of course, comes without an admissions fee.
And that's about it for today.
Oh wait, not it isn't.
Today is John Mack's birthday. TigerBlog is a big birthday guy, and he likes to wish people well on their big days.
John Mack is a little different, of course. A 10-time Heptagonal champion as a track athlete and Roper Trophy winner as a Princeton undergrad, Mack is now one of the "old alums" who comes back every now and then and remarks about how different everything is.
And by old, TB is saying mid-30s or so.
John Mack worked in the athletic department at Princeton after he graduated and then went on to Northwestern's athletic department and now law school, from where he will graduate this coming spring.
TigerBlog's big regret from Mack's most recent visit, which was the weekend of Heps and the Cornell football game, was that he didn't get a current track athlete to go up to Mack and call him "sir." That would have been great.
Anyway, happy birthday to John Mack. TB apologizes for not sending a card, so this will have to do.
And now that really is all for today.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Traitors
Andy Reid was lying.
He knew it. The media knew it. Any casual fan paying the remotest attention knew it.
Reid is now the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. He spent the last 14 years as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. The Chiefs play the Eagles, in Philadelphia no less, tomorrow night.
The obvious question for Reid is what it will be like to play against the Eagles. The obvious answer is something like: "I had a great experience there. We did a lot of great things. They fired me last year. I want to beat them badly. I've had this game circled since the schedule came out."
Something like that.
Instead, Reid said all the expected things, how the game is what matters, it's not about him, blah, blah, blah.
What would have been the sin of answering honestly?
Then again, TigerBlog doesn't understand why media people don't call out coaches when they are either lying or are acting as if the media people don't get it when the questioning turns to something other than what they want to say. Why didn't someone say to Reid: "are you honestly saying that you have no special emotions about this game?" or even "hey, Andy, nobody here is buying it."
How about last week, when reporters were asking Alabama's universally loathed football coach Nick Saban about reports of violations. Saban went into "I will talk about the game" mode rather than admitting that he at least understood why someone might have the temerity to ask.
Why didn't someone say: "Hey, Nick, do you get it at all?"
Of course, that would require the backing of the higher ups at whatever publication it was, something that was insanely lacking on the part of one South Carolina newspaper. Did you see this story?
How could any self-respecting reporter work for The State, knowing that the publisher would do that to one of their own? And what does it say about the influence that the football coach can have over a state, not that anything bad could ever come of that, well, er, um, you know what TB is talking about.
Anyway, TB digresses.
Despite Reid's unwillingness to be honest about his emotions in returning to Philadelphia, TigerBlog will still be rooting for the Chiefs in this one.
First, he never roots for the Eagles. Unless they're playing the Yankees, which they don't usually do.
Two, the Chiefs have Mike Catapano, the Princeton alum who is a rookie defensive lineman for the team.
Reid's return to Philadelphia comes a few days before the Princeton women's soccer team hosts William & Mary. That game will be Sunday at 1 and is the only home soccer game of the weekend.
Princeton coach Julie Shackford is a William & Mary alum, which makes it somewhat similar to the Reid vs. the Eagles storyline, except that she didn't play at William & Mary last year or anything like that.
In fact, this will be the fifth time Shackford coaches against her alma mater, though her own college coach, John Daly, is still the Tribe head coach today. That has to make it even more emotional.
As for the rest of the Princeton coaching staff, there are many examples of those who coach against their alma maters. Actually, it happens way more than TigerBlog thought it did before he actually looked into it.
Harvard alum Chris Sailer does it every year in women's lacrosse. United States Naval Academy grad Luis Nicolao does as well in men's water polo.
Courtney Banghart goes head-to-head with Dartmouth, her alma mater, twice each year. Up until this point, she has been coaching against Chris Wielgus, who had been her head coach in college.
Penn alum Fred Samara has coached against the Quakers in track and field and cross country for decades. The men's hockey coach, Bob Prier, is a St. Lawrence grad.
The women's golf team, headed by alum Nicki Cutler, is competing this weekend at Vanderbilt's tournament. Susan Teeter has coached the women's swimming and diving team against Tennessee. Scott Bradley has coached Princeton against North Carolina many times in baseball; Lisa Sweeney coached against Lehigh twice in softball last spring.
TigerBlog isn't sure if he's missed anyone. If he has, he apologizes.
And hey, he can relate to the whole concept of competing against the alma mater.
He's happy to know he's part of a long list of Princeton traitors.
He knew it. The media knew it. Any casual fan paying the remotest attention knew it.
Reid is now the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. He spent the last 14 years as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. The Chiefs play the Eagles, in Philadelphia no less, tomorrow night.
The obvious question for Reid is what it will be like to play against the Eagles. The obvious answer is something like: "I had a great experience there. We did a lot of great things. They fired me last year. I want to beat them badly. I've had this game circled since the schedule came out."
Something like that.
Instead, Reid said all the expected things, how the game is what matters, it's not about him, blah, blah, blah.
What would have been the sin of answering honestly?
Then again, TigerBlog doesn't understand why media people don't call out coaches when they are either lying or are acting as if the media people don't get it when the questioning turns to something other than what they want to say. Why didn't someone say to Reid: "are you honestly saying that you have no special emotions about this game?" or even "hey, Andy, nobody here is buying it."
How about last week, when reporters were asking Alabama's universally loathed football coach Nick Saban about reports of violations. Saban went into "I will talk about the game" mode rather than admitting that he at least understood why someone might have the temerity to ask.
Why didn't someone say: "Hey, Nick, do you get it at all?"
Of course, that would require the backing of the higher ups at whatever publication it was, something that was insanely lacking on the part of one South Carolina newspaper. Did you see this story?
How could any self-respecting reporter work for The State, knowing that the publisher would do that to one of their own? And what does it say about the influence that the football coach can have over a state, not that anything bad could ever come of that, well, er, um, you know what TB is talking about.
Anyway, TB digresses.
Despite Reid's unwillingness to be honest about his emotions in returning to Philadelphia, TigerBlog will still be rooting for the Chiefs in this one.
First, he never roots for the Eagles. Unless they're playing the Yankees, which they don't usually do.
Two, the Chiefs have Mike Catapano, the Princeton alum who is a rookie defensive lineman for the team.
Reid's return to Philadelphia comes a few days before the Princeton women's soccer team hosts William & Mary. That game will be Sunday at 1 and is the only home soccer game of the weekend.
Princeton coach Julie Shackford is a William & Mary alum, which makes it somewhat similar to the Reid vs. the Eagles storyline, except that she didn't play at William & Mary last year or anything like that.
In fact, this will be the fifth time Shackford coaches against her alma mater, though her own college coach, John Daly, is still the Tribe head coach today. That has to make it even more emotional.
As for the rest of the Princeton coaching staff, there are many examples of those who coach against their alma maters. Actually, it happens way more than TigerBlog thought it did before he actually looked into it.
Harvard alum Chris Sailer does it every year in women's lacrosse. United States Naval Academy grad Luis Nicolao does as well in men's water polo.
Courtney Banghart goes head-to-head with Dartmouth, her alma mater, twice each year. Up until this point, she has been coaching against Chris Wielgus, who had been her head coach in college.
Penn alum Fred Samara has coached against the Quakers in track and field and cross country for decades. The men's hockey coach, Bob Prier, is a St. Lawrence grad.
The women's golf team, headed by alum Nicki Cutler, is competing this weekend at Vanderbilt's tournament. Susan Teeter has coached the women's swimming and diving team against Tennessee. Scott Bradley has coached Princeton against North Carolina many times in baseball; Lisa Sweeney coached against Lehigh twice in softball last spring.
TigerBlog isn't sure if he's missed anyone. If he has, he apologizes.
And hey, he can relate to the whole concept of competing against the alma mater.
He's happy to know he's part of a long list of Princeton traitors.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Orange And Black Clashes With Red And Blue
TigerBlog spent 11 glorious years working in the newspaper business.
Back then, it was a nearly perfect job for him. He went to games. Wrote about them. Worked late. Slept late. What could be better when you're in your 20s, right?
Being in the newspaper business taught TB an important lesson about life, too.
In newspapers, you can never get more than a day behind. Get today's paper out and then worry about tomorrow's. Life is sort of like that too.
Almost all of TB's time in the business was spent writing, the first six years about high school sports and the last five about college sports. It was in those last five years that he first started to learn his way around the Princeton campus and athletic department.
TB did have to spend some nights working on the desk, which wasn't quite his favorite thing to do, though looking back on it there were some big time laughs with some great people.
Mostly what the desk is about is proofreading (something TigerBlog is awful at) and headline writing (something TB loved to do).
Proofreading is hard for a lot of reasons, at least to TB. For starters, there's the balance between correcting errors and rewriting stories, and TB was never a fan of having his own stuff redone.
Then there's the whole concentration part. There are few things more frustrating than reading through a story, finding nothing wrong with it and then picking up the paper the next morning and having some dumb mistake instantly jump out at you.
Headline writing, though. Now that was fun. And it's also the biggest misconception people had about newspapers. TB can't tell you how many times someone mentioned the headline, not realizing that the person who wrote the story never writes the headline.
TigerBlog has touched on this before, with some of the great headlines he wrote in the newspaper business:
"Dykstra's Appendix Out At Home" - the story was about how Lenny Dykstra had to fly back from a road trip for an appendicitis
"Eagles Kicking Circus Auditions Two New Clowns" - this one was about how the Eagles couldn't find a kicker, brought in two mid-week and then didn't sign either one
There were also the two legendary headlines that lived on forever in the newsroom lore. TigerBlog, for the record, saw both in the paper so he can verify that they were true, though he didn't write either one:
"Irish Girls Are Loose" - preview story of a big Notre Dame High girls basketball game
"Vazquez Rides Miss Wyoming To Victory" - self-explanatory, sort of
TigerBlog's favorite goprincetontigers.com headline that he's written? "Final 0:04," written after Ryan Boyle's goal with four seconds left sent Princeton to the 2004 NCAA men's lacrosse Final Four.
Get it? Final 0:04?
TigerBlog received an email last week from a Penn alum he'd never met, and on the bottom of the email, he said that he'd love to see a headline one day that read "Orange and Black Clashes With Red and Blue."
TB could not for the life of him figure out how he'd ever missed that one before.
The colors clash with each other as color schemes, and the teams are huge rivals. What a perfect headline.
Maybe TB will use that one this coming men's lacrosse season.
Earlier in the email he said he'd always wondered how someone could turn his back on his alma mater and embrace his rival school.
The answer?
It was hard at first. Very conflicting. TigerBlog could never have imagined when he was in college that there would be a day where he would actually want Princeton to beat Penn in men's basketball.
Then it got easier. Then it got to be second nature.
It's mostly about the people, after all, more than the schools themselves. TB didn't know anyone at Princeton at one point. Once he got to know the people, the place wasn't as important.
And so now he's no longer about the Red and Blue, at least when it's clashing with his favorite colors, Orange and Black.
Back then, it was a nearly perfect job for him. He went to games. Wrote about them. Worked late. Slept late. What could be better when you're in your 20s, right?
Being in the newspaper business taught TB an important lesson about life, too.
In newspapers, you can never get more than a day behind. Get today's paper out and then worry about tomorrow's. Life is sort of like that too.
Almost all of TB's time in the business was spent writing, the first six years about high school sports and the last five about college sports. It was in those last five years that he first started to learn his way around the Princeton campus and athletic department.
TB did have to spend some nights working on the desk, which wasn't quite his favorite thing to do, though looking back on it there were some big time laughs with some great people.
Mostly what the desk is about is proofreading (something TigerBlog is awful at) and headline writing (something TB loved to do).
Proofreading is hard for a lot of reasons, at least to TB. For starters, there's the balance between correcting errors and rewriting stories, and TB was never a fan of having his own stuff redone.
Then there's the whole concentration part. There are few things more frustrating than reading through a story, finding nothing wrong with it and then picking up the paper the next morning and having some dumb mistake instantly jump out at you.
Headline writing, though. Now that was fun. And it's also the biggest misconception people had about newspapers. TB can't tell you how many times someone mentioned the headline, not realizing that the person who wrote the story never writes the headline.
TigerBlog has touched on this before, with some of the great headlines he wrote in the newspaper business:
"Dykstra's Appendix Out At Home" - the story was about how Lenny Dykstra had to fly back from a road trip for an appendicitis
"Eagles Kicking Circus Auditions Two New Clowns" - this one was about how the Eagles couldn't find a kicker, brought in two mid-week and then didn't sign either one
There were also the two legendary headlines that lived on forever in the newsroom lore. TigerBlog, for the record, saw both in the paper so he can verify that they were true, though he didn't write either one:
"Irish Girls Are Loose" - preview story of a big Notre Dame High girls basketball game
"Vazquez Rides Miss Wyoming To Victory" - self-explanatory, sort of
TigerBlog's favorite goprincetontigers.com headline that he's written? "Final 0:04," written after Ryan Boyle's goal with four seconds left sent Princeton to the 2004 NCAA men's lacrosse Final Four.
Get it? Final 0:04?
TigerBlog received an email last week from a Penn alum he'd never met, and on the bottom of the email, he said that he'd love to see a headline one day that read "Orange and Black Clashes With Red and Blue."
TB could not for the life of him figure out how he'd ever missed that one before.
The colors clash with each other as color schemes, and the teams are huge rivals. What a perfect headline.
Maybe TB will use that one this coming men's lacrosse season.
Earlier in the email he said he'd always wondered how someone could turn his back on his alma mater and embrace his rival school.
The answer?
It was hard at first. Very conflicting. TigerBlog could never have imagined when he was in college that there would be a day where he would actually want Princeton to beat Penn in men's basketball.
Then it got easier. Then it got to be second nature.
It's mostly about the people, after all, more than the schools themselves. TB didn't know anyone at Princeton at one point. Once he got to know the people, the place wasn't as important.
And so now he's no longer about the Red and Blue, at least when it's clashing with his favorite colors, Orange and Black.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Okay Smart Guy
The air conditioning stopped working in TigerBlog's car about three weeks ago.
TB called Ron, who is sort of the unofficial fixer of all OAC car problems, and he said TB should play with the dials for awhile, going back and forth from cold to hot, AC to defroster to heater and such.
So TB did that, and after about an hour of this, the AC started to work again.
It went from that point until Tuesday without incident, when it suddenly stopped working again. And so TB did the same trick, and again it worked. Until the next day, when it stopped again.
This time it gave out during a thunderstorm, while TB was driving three 16 year olds back from a lacrosse practice. To say that it created a rather unpleasant environment in the car is something of an understatement.
So, even though it started working again, TB took his car off to Ron this morning. At first Ron said he couldn't take it today because he had just gotten back from vacation, until TB pointed out that it's 90 degrees ever day around here and he really couldn't handle not have AC for an hour at a time on a hit-and-miss basis.
There was a time, of course, when cars didn't have air conditioning at all. In fact, according to Wikipedia at least, the first car air conditioners weren't readily available until the 1950s, and around 20% of cars in the 1960s had air conditioning in them.
This is not the 1960s though, and TB has come to rely on air conditioning. His fear today is hearing these words: "it can't be fixed." Coming in a close second is: "it can be fixed but it'll be expensive."
Anyway, TB had to get a ride in with a co-worker, and by the time they got to Jadwin Gym, they encountered something that TB has never seen before. Every single space in Lot 21 (the big one next to Jadwin) was taken.
Football camp is going on, which accounts for how many cars were in the parking lot, and out on the grass.
It doesn't account for how many of them drove past the two huge sandwich board signs at Lot 21, the small one in the front where athletic department people park. Those signs have a giant "NO" on them, as in no parking here if you don't have an athletics hang tag. And yet every spot was taken, which means that a handful of people saw those signs, said "this doesn't apply to me" and drove right in.
As a result, it took a few laps around the parking lot to see if someone was leaving, and finally it was Tyler Cordell, the women's basketball operations director, who left, giving up a prime parking spot.
TB wasn't prepared for such a crowded parking lot on a Friday morning in the summer. Usually the lot would be empty on such a day.
The extra time in the parking lot got TB thinking more about today's subject, which ostensibly is about how Peter Callahan was named a CoSIDA first-team Academic All-America in track and field.
Callahan, of course, was the one whose finishing kick gave Princeton wins in the distance medley relay at the NCAA championships and Heps, in dramatically stunning fashion.
As an aside, only CoSIDA, which is the national sports information directors' association, can use the term Academic All-America.
As another aside, TB knew a guy at Penn who used to say he had a 3.9 GPA, give or take a point. He actually had a 2.9 GPA.
Anyway, Callahan was Princeton's first first-team Academic All-America in a long time, as in all the way back to 2000, when both Susan Rea (soccer/softball) and Josh Sims (lacrosse) were honored.
When TB saw this, his first thought was Landis Stankievech, the Rhodes Scholar hockey player who had a nearly perfect GPA, wasn't a first-team Academic All-America? And he wasn't. He was third team.
TB's second thought is the same as it always is in these situations.
Do you want to publicize that this is something that hasn't happened in awhile?
On the one hand, it's impressive when someone does something here that hasn't been done in that long, given the quality of athletes and students who are here. On the other, it points out that it's been awhile.
This goes beyond an individual award like Callahans.
What about something like a team that hasn't won a championship in a long time? Or another team that hasn't matched an accomplishment in more than a decade?
Or even a stat.
The men's lacrosse team this year, for instance, had its highest scoring team in 10 years. Is it good to point that out or bad to say that it's been that long since the team up numbers like this?
TB has always wrestled with that, perhaps more than he should. Accomplishments, after all, are accomplishments, and something like how like it's been since such an accomplishment has been achieved adds historical significance to it.
TB just doesn't want to shortchange the teams and athletes who came in between such accomplishments.
Does it make the athletic program look bad that it hasn't had a first-team Academic All-America in 13 years?
That's the actual question here.
TB called Ron, who is sort of the unofficial fixer of all OAC car problems, and he said TB should play with the dials for awhile, going back and forth from cold to hot, AC to defroster to heater and such.
So TB did that, and after about an hour of this, the AC started to work again.
It went from that point until Tuesday without incident, when it suddenly stopped working again. And so TB did the same trick, and again it worked. Until the next day, when it stopped again.
This time it gave out during a thunderstorm, while TB was driving three 16 year olds back from a lacrosse practice. To say that it created a rather unpleasant environment in the car is something of an understatement.
So, even though it started working again, TB took his car off to Ron this morning. At first Ron said he couldn't take it today because he had just gotten back from vacation, until TB pointed out that it's 90 degrees ever day around here and he really couldn't handle not have AC for an hour at a time on a hit-and-miss basis.
There was a time, of course, when cars didn't have air conditioning at all. In fact, according to Wikipedia at least, the first car air conditioners weren't readily available until the 1950s, and around 20% of cars in the 1960s had air conditioning in them.
This is not the 1960s though, and TB has come to rely on air conditioning. His fear today is hearing these words: "it can't be fixed." Coming in a close second is: "it can be fixed but it'll be expensive."
Anyway, TB had to get a ride in with a co-worker, and by the time they got to Jadwin Gym, they encountered something that TB has never seen before. Every single space in Lot 21 (the big one next to Jadwin) was taken.
Football camp is going on, which accounts for how many cars were in the parking lot, and out on the grass.
It doesn't account for how many of them drove past the two huge sandwich board signs at Lot 21, the small one in the front where athletic department people park. Those signs have a giant "NO" on them, as in no parking here if you don't have an athletics hang tag. And yet every spot was taken, which means that a handful of people saw those signs, said "this doesn't apply to me" and drove right in.
As a result, it took a few laps around the parking lot to see if someone was leaving, and finally it was Tyler Cordell, the women's basketball operations director, who left, giving up a prime parking spot.
TB wasn't prepared for such a crowded parking lot on a Friday morning in the summer. Usually the lot would be empty on such a day.
The extra time in the parking lot got TB thinking more about today's subject, which ostensibly is about how Peter Callahan was named a CoSIDA first-team Academic All-America in track and field.
Callahan, of course, was the one whose finishing kick gave Princeton wins in the distance medley relay at the NCAA championships and Heps, in dramatically stunning fashion.
As an aside, only CoSIDA, which is the national sports information directors' association, can use the term Academic All-America.
As another aside, TB knew a guy at Penn who used to say he had a 3.9 GPA, give or take a point. He actually had a 2.9 GPA.
Anyway, Callahan was Princeton's first first-team Academic All-America in a long time, as in all the way back to 2000, when both Susan Rea (soccer/softball) and Josh Sims (lacrosse) were honored.
When TB saw this, his first thought was Landis Stankievech, the Rhodes Scholar hockey player who had a nearly perfect GPA, wasn't a first-team Academic All-America? And he wasn't. He was third team.
TB's second thought is the same as it always is in these situations.
Do you want to publicize that this is something that hasn't happened in awhile?
On the one hand, it's impressive when someone does something here that hasn't been done in that long, given the quality of athletes and students who are here. On the other, it points out that it's been awhile.
This goes beyond an individual award like Callahans.
What about something like a team that hasn't won a championship in a long time? Or another team that hasn't matched an accomplishment in more than a decade?
Or even a stat.
The men's lacrosse team this year, for instance, had its highest scoring team in 10 years. Is it good to point that out or bad to say that it's been that long since the team up numbers like this?
TB has always wrestled with that, perhaps more than he should. Accomplishments, after all, are accomplishments, and something like how like it's been since such an accomplishment has been achieved adds historical significance to it.
TB just doesn't want to shortchange the teams and athletes who came in between such accomplishments.
Does it make the athletic program look bad that it hasn't had a first-team Academic All-America in 13 years?
That's the actual question here.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Is That A School Record?
TigerBlog is pretty sure that no other Princeton men’s basketball player will ever score 58 points in a game, something that Bill Bradley did in the 1965 NCAA third-place game against Wichita State.
Considering that in the 65 years prior to that and 48 years since no one else has reached 40, let alone 50, let alone 58 points in a game, Bradley’s record seems pretty safe.
Then again, so does his 2,503 career points, another school record that no one before or since has even remotely approached. In fact, the last two seasons have produced the No. 2 (Ian Hummer) and No. 3 (Douglas Davis) scorers in program history. No other player in Princeton history has ever scored more than Hummer except Bradley, and Hummer still finished 878 points away from the record.
TB has always viewed the numbers Bradley put up as the most unbreakable in all of Princeton Athletics.
The most unbreakable record in sports is usually considered to be Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, set back in 1941. TB has always sort of figured that DiMaggio’s record is approachable, if for no other reason than it will only take someone 57 games to do it, and yet in the 72 years since, nobody has.
As an aside, if you’re so young that you’re removed from the legend of Joe DiMaggio, ask a parent or grandparent. In addition to his on-field performance, which incluces more career home runs than strikeouts, DiMaggio was viewed as the perfect role model for every kid who ever got a baseball glove.
What other athlete has ever inspired a lyric like he did, as Simon and Garfunkel said: “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”
Anyway, to TB, Cy Young’s record of 511 career wins is actually the most unbreakable, since nobody is even going to make 511 career starts anymore, let alone with 511 games.
Most Princeton records are easy to find. They’re right there in the record book.
Of course, they require faith. Princeton’s record for goals in a men’s lacrosse game is 10, set by William Griffiths against Rutgers in 1951. At least that’s what the record book says. It was a little before TB’s time.
Then there are the records that are a little tougher to figure.
These records are limited to swimming and track and field and are more about what constitutes a Princeton record than the records themselves.
Greta Feldman ran a 2:03.something in the 800 (TB can’t find the exact time, but whatever it was it qualified for her the U.S.A. nationals) as part of the American milers series in Indianapolis two weeks ago.
Feldman’s time would have broken the Princeton record. Except Feldman graduated earlier this month.
So is it a record? Is the summer season now a continuation of the Princeton track and field season?
And hey, she was wearing her Princeton uniform when she did it. So is it a school record?
Or is it not, because she is a graduate?
TB isn’t sure.
He does know that there is no common thinking on the subject nationally. Some schools would recognize the record; others wouldn’t.
Track and Field News, which is basically the bible of the sport, says that collegians should be credited with records until August after they graduate. The U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches’ Association says just the opposite, that the athletes’ career ends at the NCAA championships.
TB would say that a school record should only count in an actual Princeton University competition and that the opportunity to set a school record ends with the end of the athletes' eligibility, which ends with the last competition senior year.
Then again, what if this had been a year ago?
What if Feldman had set this record at the Olympic Trials last summer, prior to her senior year? Would that be a school record?
The same is true for swimming.
When is a school record a school record?
Suppose, say, Tom Schreiber was playing in a summer league and went out and scored 11 goals in a game. Would that be a school record? No way.
So why would it be so different in the two individual sports?
TB isn't sure what the right answer is here. Is it from the start to the conclusion of eligibility? Should any event during the period of eligibility count, regardless of what the competition was?
Then there's the added factor of not knowing through the years what the policy has been or who made it. Does the existing list of records include events that were outside of Princeton competition? There's no way to tell in some cases.
Feldman's time puts her in the national conversation as she looks ahead to the 2016 Summer Olympics, and that was the goal all along.
A Princeton record?
She might have been a few weeks late for that.
Considering that in the 65 years prior to that and 48 years since no one else has reached 40, let alone 50, let alone 58 points in a game, Bradley’s record seems pretty safe.
Then again, so does his 2,503 career points, another school record that no one before or since has even remotely approached. In fact, the last two seasons have produced the No. 2 (Ian Hummer) and No. 3 (Douglas Davis) scorers in program history. No other player in Princeton history has ever scored more than Hummer except Bradley, and Hummer still finished 878 points away from the record.
TB has always viewed the numbers Bradley put up as the most unbreakable in all of Princeton Athletics.
The most unbreakable record in sports is usually considered to be Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, set back in 1941. TB has always sort of figured that DiMaggio’s record is approachable, if for no other reason than it will only take someone 57 games to do it, and yet in the 72 years since, nobody has.
As an aside, if you’re so young that you’re removed from the legend of Joe DiMaggio, ask a parent or grandparent. In addition to his on-field performance, which incluces more career home runs than strikeouts, DiMaggio was viewed as the perfect role model for every kid who ever got a baseball glove.
What other athlete has ever inspired a lyric like he did, as Simon and Garfunkel said: “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”
Anyway, to TB, Cy Young’s record of 511 career wins is actually the most unbreakable, since nobody is even going to make 511 career starts anymore, let alone with 511 games.
Most Princeton records are easy to find. They’re right there in the record book.
Of course, they require faith. Princeton’s record for goals in a men’s lacrosse game is 10, set by William Griffiths against Rutgers in 1951. At least that’s what the record book says. It was a little before TB’s time.
Then there are the records that are a little tougher to figure.
These records are limited to swimming and track and field and are more about what constitutes a Princeton record than the records themselves.
Greta Feldman ran a 2:03.something in the 800 (TB can’t find the exact time, but whatever it was it qualified for her the U.S.A. nationals) as part of the American milers series in Indianapolis two weeks ago.
Feldman’s time would have broken the Princeton record. Except Feldman graduated earlier this month.
So is it a record? Is the summer season now a continuation of the Princeton track and field season?
And hey, she was wearing her Princeton uniform when she did it. So is it a school record?
Or is it not, because she is a graduate?
TB isn’t sure.
He does know that there is no common thinking on the subject nationally. Some schools would recognize the record; others wouldn’t.
Track and Field News, which is basically the bible of the sport, says that collegians should be credited with records until August after they graduate. The U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches’ Association says just the opposite, that the athletes’ career ends at the NCAA championships.
TB would say that a school record should only count in an actual Princeton University competition and that the opportunity to set a school record ends with the end of the athletes' eligibility, which ends with the last competition senior year.
Then again, what if this had been a year ago?
What if Feldman had set this record at the Olympic Trials last summer, prior to her senior year? Would that be a school record?
The same is true for swimming.
When is a school record a school record?
Suppose, say, Tom Schreiber was playing in a summer league and went out and scored 11 goals in a game. Would that be a school record? No way.
So why would it be so different in the two individual sports?
TB isn't sure what the right answer is here. Is it from the start to the conclusion of eligibility? Should any event during the period of eligibility count, regardless of what the competition was?
Then there's the added factor of not knowing through the years what the policy has been or who made it. Does the existing list of records include events that were outside of Princeton competition? There's no way to tell in some cases.
Feldman's time puts her in the national conversation as she looks ahead to the 2016 Summer Olympics, and that was the goal all along.
A Princeton record?
She might have been a few weeks late for that.
Friday, June 7, 2013
It Went Okay
Ryan Crouser had six throws in the shot put - or, correctly, six puts of the shot - at the NCAA track and field championships in Eugene, Ore., Wednesday and went foul, foul, 20.31 meters, foul, foul, foul.
The five fouls didn't end up mattering. The 20.31 meters did, as it made Crouser the NCAA champion.
Then, the Texas sophomore - all 6-7, 240 of him - went back to his hotel, where he ran into Princeton's OAC track and field contact, Kristy McNeil, who is more than a foot shorter.
As Kristy relayed the story, she saw him in the hallway with his Texas track warmups on and asked him what event he did. When he said he was in the shot put, she asked him how he did, to which he replied something along the lines of "it went okay."
Then, when she pressed him for where he finished, he said "I won."
While Princeton hasn't had a champion at these championships, not everyone goes with a chance to win - or defines success by coming home with a victory.
Princeton has had three All-Americas so far, the first two of whom were on the same day Crouser won the shot put, as Julia Ratcliffe in the hammer and Russell Dinkins in the 800 both earned second-team honors.
Princeton's best showing so far came last night in the 10,000, when senior Michael Franklin finished fifth, a finish that made him a first-team All-America. It was also Princeton's best finish ever in the 10K at the NCAA championships.
TigerBlog will steal the next two paragraphs from McNeil's story on the race, which also has a great picture of Franklin:
This year's Ivy League champion in the 5 and 10k, Franklin entered the meet seeded 18th out of 24. He finished in front of top-seeded Girma Mecheso (OSU) as well as Parker Stinson (Oregon) who had the third-best time in the nation entering today’s race.
Franklin was in second place for the first couple laps before he settled comfortably into a big pack. With about nine laps remaining the race starting to slow a bit and athletes started to break away from one another. Franklin found himself steady in the top 12 and with three laps to go he turned it on. He ran his fastest three laps in the final three laps clocking a 1:08.17, 1:06.73 and closed with a 1:01.62 - the second -fastest lap of any of the competitors throughout the entire race.
Princeton sent nine athletes to the championships, and eight of them have already competed.
The only one left to go is junior Imani Oliver in the women's triple jump.
Oliver, the school-record-holder in the triple jump, is not only the last Princeton athlete to compete at the NCAA championships but also the last Princeton athlete in any sport to compete in the 2012-13 academic year.
Princeton Athletics has been going strong since last Aug. 31, when the women's volleyball team, soccer teams and field hockey team opened their seasons.
One of the things that TB loves about his job is that no two years are exactly the same, and each year provides its own challenge. The 2012-13 academic year is one of the best that TB has seen around here.
Princeton won four NCAA championships this academic year, beginning with the field hockey team and continuing with fencing, an individual fencer and the indoor track and field distance medley relay team. There were some epic performances this year, and Princeton has had some of the best athletes who have ever played their sports at the school - and in some cases the best athlete ever to play his/her sport - compete this year.
As TB looks back at the 2012-13 year, another part of what he loves about Princeton couldn't be clearer.
There are some who would never want to work at a place that doesn't have BCS-level football and basketball and then a big drop-off in importance to everything else.
For TB, the diversity of sports at Princeton - and of the people who play them - is still a huge lure.
It was on display all year, with 38 sports and nearly 1,000 athletes, all leading up to today, when Oliver's last triple jump will bring the curtain down again - until it starts up again for another year, with another new set of challenges, with no guarantee for continued success.
The 2012-13 academic year?
Hey, like Ryan Crouser said, it went okay.
The five fouls didn't end up mattering. The 20.31 meters did, as it made Crouser the NCAA champion.
Then, the Texas sophomore - all 6-7, 240 of him - went back to his hotel, where he ran into Princeton's OAC track and field contact, Kristy McNeil, who is more than a foot shorter.
As Kristy relayed the story, she saw him in the hallway with his Texas track warmups on and asked him what event he did. When he said he was in the shot put, she asked him how he did, to which he replied something along the lines of "it went okay."
Then, when she pressed him for where he finished, he said "I won."
While Princeton hasn't had a champion at these championships, not everyone goes with a chance to win - or defines success by coming home with a victory.
Princeton has had three All-Americas so far, the first two of whom were on the same day Crouser won the shot put, as Julia Ratcliffe in the hammer and Russell Dinkins in the 800 both earned second-team honors.
Princeton's best showing so far came last night in the 10,000, when senior Michael Franklin finished fifth, a finish that made him a first-team All-America. It was also Princeton's best finish ever in the 10K at the NCAA championships.
TigerBlog will steal the next two paragraphs from McNeil's story on the race, which also has a great picture of Franklin:
This year's Ivy League champion in the 5 and 10k, Franklin entered the meet seeded 18th out of 24. He finished in front of top-seeded Girma Mecheso (OSU) as well as Parker Stinson (Oregon) who had the third-best time in the nation entering today’s race.
Franklin was in second place for the first couple laps before he settled comfortably into a big pack. With about nine laps remaining the race starting to slow a bit and athletes started to break away from one another. Franklin found himself steady in the top 12 and with three laps to go he turned it on. He ran his fastest three laps in the final three laps clocking a 1:08.17, 1:06.73 and closed with a 1:01.62 - the second -fastest lap of any of the competitors throughout the entire race.
Princeton sent nine athletes to the championships, and eight of them have already competed.
The only one left to go is junior Imani Oliver in the women's triple jump.
Oliver, the school-record-holder in the triple jump, is not only the last Princeton athlete to compete at the NCAA championships but also the last Princeton athlete in any sport to compete in the 2012-13 academic year.
Princeton Athletics has been going strong since last Aug. 31, when the women's volleyball team, soccer teams and field hockey team opened their seasons.
One of the things that TB loves about his job is that no two years are exactly the same, and each year provides its own challenge. The 2012-13 academic year is one of the best that TB has seen around here.
Princeton won four NCAA championships this academic year, beginning with the field hockey team and continuing with fencing, an individual fencer and the indoor track and field distance medley relay team. There were some epic performances this year, and Princeton has had some of the best athletes who have ever played their sports at the school - and in some cases the best athlete ever to play his/her sport - compete this year.
As TB looks back at the 2012-13 year, another part of what he loves about Princeton couldn't be clearer.
There are some who would never want to work at a place that doesn't have BCS-level football and basketball and then a big drop-off in importance to everything else.
For TB, the diversity of sports at Princeton - and of the people who play them - is still a huge lure.
It was on display all year, with 38 sports and nearly 1,000 athletes, all leading up to today, when Oliver's last triple jump will bring the curtain down again - until it starts up again for another year, with another new set of challenges, with no guarantee for continued success.
The 2012-13 academic year?
Hey, like Ryan Crouser said, it went okay.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
No Turn On Red
TigerBlog pulled up to a traffic light the other day, and he was turning right.
There was a sign that said "No Turn On Red Weekdays 2-5." TB then looked at his clock and saw that it was 4:59.
What would you have done? Turn, or wait?
TB was debating that. He wondered if there was a police officer anywhere who would give someone a ticket for turning right at a right light one minute before it was okay to do so.
Whose clock was official anyway? Is it like when a game is on TV and everything has to be synced through the clock in the truck before the pregame countdown on the clock in the stadium can start. The cop's clock is the only one that matters?
Maybe it would become 5:00 before the light turned green. Maybe it wouldn't.
Then the guy behind TB honked at him. Didn't he see the sign? Didn't he know it wasn't exactly time to make a right turn on red?
The light turned green before the clock struck five, and TB waited to turn. That was two days ago. He's going to go back to that intersection at some point in the near future at around 4:55 and see how many people turn right on red before 5:00. He can report back on that.
Of course, there is the whole notion of coming to a complete stop before turning right on red, something that is in practicality more of a slow roll and then turn. TB is guilty of that all the time, yet something kept him from making the actual turn before the clock said it was time.
The ability to turn right on red predates when TB got his driver's license, though not by much. According to Wikipedia, it grew out of an idea to save gas during the fuel shortages in the 1970s.
Through the years TB has sometimes wondered why there would be a "No Turn On Red" sign at a certain intersection, when clearly it looks safe to turn there.
Then there's the question of whether or not it's legal to make a right on red in big cities. It's against the law in New York City, for instance, and so TB has wondered if he could turn right on red in unfamiliar cities.
And then there is the much less frequent left on red, at an intersection with two one-way streets. Is that legal?
Speaking of left turns, Peter Farrell, the Princeton women's track and field coach, was working with Miss TigerBlog before she ran for her middle school team this spring.
Her events were the 100 hurdles, the long jump and the 400, though she filled in on the 4x100 relay team one time, and it just so happened that the relay team set the school record that day.
Anyway, Farrell's advice to MTB on how to run the 400? Make four left turns and get back here as soon as you can.
With coaching like that, is it any wonder that Princeton is doing so well in the sport?
The Tigers had two All-Americas on the first day of the NCAA outdoor track and field championship. Freshman Julia Ratcliffe didn't have her best day, but she still finished 11th in the hammer and won All-America honors. Senior Russell Dinkins finished 16th in the 800, also becoming an All-America.
Dinkins ran a 1:50.7. Feel free to contrast that time with the 1:51.5 that Ed Burrowes ran for Princeton in the 1940 NCAA finals, to finish second overall.
Dinkins is back today in the 4x400, along with Austin Hollimon, Tom Hopkins and Daniel McCord.
Greta Feldman will make 16 left turns in the women's 1,500, and Heps cross country champion Chris Bendsten and Michael Franklin will run in the 10,000.
TB isn't sure how many lefts that is, but it's a lot.
There is a Day 1 photo gallery of the NCAA championships on goprincetontigers.com, and it makes Oregon's Hayward Field look like the great place to watch track and field that it's made out to be.
TB's favorite picture is the one of Dinkins on the starting line, with the packed stands behind him.
Oh, and the 10,000 is 100 left turns.
TB is pretty sure at least.
There was a sign that said "No Turn On Red Weekdays 2-5." TB then looked at his clock and saw that it was 4:59.
What would you have done? Turn, or wait?
TB was debating that. He wondered if there was a police officer anywhere who would give someone a ticket for turning right at a right light one minute before it was okay to do so.
Whose clock was official anyway? Is it like when a game is on TV and everything has to be synced through the clock in the truck before the pregame countdown on the clock in the stadium can start. The cop's clock is the only one that matters?
Maybe it would become 5:00 before the light turned green. Maybe it wouldn't.
Then the guy behind TB honked at him. Didn't he see the sign? Didn't he know it wasn't exactly time to make a right turn on red?
The light turned green before the clock struck five, and TB waited to turn. That was two days ago. He's going to go back to that intersection at some point in the near future at around 4:55 and see how many people turn right on red before 5:00. He can report back on that.
Of course, there is the whole notion of coming to a complete stop before turning right on red, something that is in practicality more of a slow roll and then turn. TB is guilty of that all the time, yet something kept him from making the actual turn before the clock said it was time.
The ability to turn right on red predates when TB got his driver's license, though not by much. According to Wikipedia, it grew out of an idea to save gas during the fuel shortages in the 1970s.
Through the years TB has sometimes wondered why there would be a "No Turn On Red" sign at a certain intersection, when clearly it looks safe to turn there.
Then there's the question of whether or not it's legal to make a right on red in big cities. It's against the law in New York City, for instance, and so TB has wondered if he could turn right on red in unfamiliar cities.
And then there is the much less frequent left on red, at an intersection with two one-way streets. Is that legal?
Speaking of left turns, Peter Farrell, the Princeton women's track and field coach, was working with Miss TigerBlog before she ran for her middle school team this spring.
Her events were the 100 hurdles, the long jump and the 400, though she filled in on the 4x100 relay team one time, and it just so happened that the relay team set the school record that day.
Anyway, Farrell's advice to MTB on how to run the 400? Make four left turns and get back here as soon as you can.
With coaching like that, is it any wonder that Princeton is doing so well in the sport?
The Tigers had two All-Americas on the first day of the NCAA outdoor track and field championship. Freshman Julia Ratcliffe didn't have her best day, but she still finished 11th in the hammer and won All-America honors. Senior Russell Dinkins finished 16th in the 800, also becoming an All-America.
Dinkins ran a 1:50.7. Feel free to contrast that time with the 1:51.5 that Ed Burrowes ran for Princeton in the 1940 NCAA finals, to finish second overall.
Dinkins is back today in the 4x400, along with Austin Hollimon, Tom Hopkins and Daniel McCord.
Greta Feldman will make 16 left turns in the women's 1,500, and Heps cross country champion Chris Bendsten and Michael Franklin will run in the 10,000.
TB isn't sure how many lefts that is, but it's a lot.
There is a Day 1 photo gallery of the NCAA championships on goprincetontigers.com, and it makes Oregon's Hayward Field look like the great place to watch track and field that it's made out to be.
TB's favorite picture is the one of Dinkins on the starting line, with the packed stands behind him.
Oh, and the 10,000 is 100 left turns.
TB is pretty sure at least.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Pack It Up
TigerBlog hates to overpack.
It doesn't mean he can always stop himself from doing so.
Packing is always a pain. What should you take? How many times are you going to change your shirt? What if you go out for a nice dinner?
Most of the times that TB has had to pack, it's been Princeton related.
Back in 1996, when Princeton went to Indianapolis for the NCAA basketball tournament, TB assumed the Tigers were going to lose to UCLA, so he only packed enough for a first-round exit. Instead, Princeton won - perhaps you remember that - and TB had to go to the mall next to his hotel and buy a new shirt and new underwear for the rest of that trip.
Packing for an Ivy League road trip is relatively easy, since that's a fixed amount of time, especially when it's just overnight. On the other hand, you don't want to be caught short, so there is the tendency to take more that you actually need, which leads to that moment when someone says "what are you, going for a week?"
When TB sees college basketball games on television, he often wonders how the coaches keep their suits from getting wrinkled. They make it seem so easy. TB has khaki pants in his bag that look like he rolled them up in a ball when he takes them out.
TB often vows to underpack. Of course, when he does, there's the stress of wondering how long it will all last, only to be shocked when it seems to last as many days as necessary. As TB thinks about it, that's sort of how Hanukkah got started.
When Princeton's men's lacrosse team went to Costa Rica last year, TB took his Princeton lacrosse bag, which is a fairly oversized cloth bag into which TB can fit basically everything he owns. When traveling from Point A (the capital city of San Jose) to Point B (coastal town of Samara) to Point C (coastal town of Tamarindo), there was the issue of what to do with the dirty stuff, which is left to mingle with the clean stuff, which is a bigger issue for TB than it is for most, he assumes.
Anyway, as TB was packing, he did the classic overthinking, as in "what if there's a formal dinner" or "what if it gets cold." The result? Overpacking, and a large subsection of clothes that never left the bag.
For the most part, TB uses his old Trenton Thunder duffel bag when he travels, which is the perfect size for a night or two. TB got it when he helped Tom McCarthy out at the 1996 Eastern League all-star game at Waterfront Park. It's probably time for a newer, more Princeton-centric bag.
The Princeton track and field contingent left in various stages on various flights for the NCAA championships at Eugene, Oregon, which begins today and runs through the weekend.
TB was impressed to see just how light Princeton women's track and field coach Peter Farrell was able to pack. TB brings more to work each day, or so it looked anyway.
As an aside, it's quite the contrast to what TB saw from Texas men's basketball coach Rick Barnes when Texas and Princeton arrived at baggage claim at the Honolulu airport in 1998. Barnes had about 10 bags - and he snapped at the team managers for getting their own before they got his.
Anyway, back in Eugene, where the weather should be sunny and warm, Princeton has sent nine athletes, which is the most Princeton has ever had in the event.
The first to compete might be the one who has the best chance of winning it all, and that's freshman hammer thrower Julia Ratcliffe, who throws today and who has the second-best throw in the country this year. Russell Dinkins and Austin Hollimon, half of the NCAA indoor-champion distance medley relay team this past winter, both run today in their semifinals (Dinkins in the 800, Hollimon in the 400 hurdles).
Of Princeton's nine athletes in Oregon, seven will be competing tomorrow.
For some of them, their season began way back with the beginning of cross country. It's certainly a long grind.
The NCAA track and field championships will be the last Princeton events of the academic year.
After that, it'll be time to pack it up - until the 2013-14 season begins.
It doesn't mean he can always stop himself from doing so.
Packing is always a pain. What should you take? How many times are you going to change your shirt? What if you go out for a nice dinner?
Most of the times that TB has had to pack, it's been Princeton related.
Back in 1996, when Princeton went to Indianapolis for the NCAA basketball tournament, TB assumed the Tigers were going to lose to UCLA, so he only packed enough for a first-round exit. Instead, Princeton won - perhaps you remember that - and TB had to go to the mall next to his hotel and buy a new shirt and new underwear for the rest of that trip.
Packing for an Ivy League road trip is relatively easy, since that's a fixed amount of time, especially when it's just overnight. On the other hand, you don't want to be caught short, so there is the tendency to take more that you actually need, which leads to that moment when someone says "what are you, going for a week?"
When TB sees college basketball games on television, he often wonders how the coaches keep their suits from getting wrinkled. They make it seem so easy. TB has khaki pants in his bag that look like he rolled them up in a ball when he takes them out.
TB often vows to underpack. Of course, when he does, there's the stress of wondering how long it will all last, only to be shocked when it seems to last as many days as necessary. As TB thinks about it, that's sort of how Hanukkah got started.
When Princeton's men's lacrosse team went to Costa Rica last year, TB took his Princeton lacrosse bag, which is a fairly oversized cloth bag into which TB can fit basically everything he owns. When traveling from Point A (the capital city of San Jose) to Point B (coastal town of Samara) to Point C (coastal town of Tamarindo), there was the issue of what to do with the dirty stuff, which is left to mingle with the clean stuff, which is a bigger issue for TB than it is for most, he assumes.
Anyway, as TB was packing, he did the classic overthinking, as in "what if there's a formal dinner" or "what if it gets cold." The result? Overpacking, and a large subsection of clothes that never left the bag.
For the most part, TB uses his old Trenton Thunder duffel bag when he travels, which is the perfect size for a night or two. TB got it when he helped Tom McCarthy out at the 1996 Eastern League all-star game at Waterfront Park. It's probably time for a newer, more Princeton-centric bag.
The Princeton track and field contingent left in various stages on various flights for the NCAA championships at Eugene, Oregon, which begins today and runs through the weekend.
TB was impressed to see just how light Princeton women's track and field coach Peter Farrell was able to pack. TB brings more to work each day, or so it looked anyway.
As an aside, it's quite the contrast to what TB saw from Texas men's basketball coach Rick Barnes when Texas and Princeton arrived at baggage claim at the Honolulu airport in 1998. Barnes had about 10 bags - and he snapped at the team managers for getting their own before they got his.
Anyway, back in Eugene, where the weather should be sunny and warm, Princeton has sent nine athletes, which is the most Princeton has ever had in the event.
The first to compete might be the one who has the best chance of winning it all, and that's freshman hammer thrower Julia Ratcliffe, who throws today and who has the second-best throw in the country this year. Russell Dinkins and Austin Hollimon, half of the NCAA indoor-champion distance medley relay team this past winter, both run today in their semifinals (Dinkins in the 800, Hollimon in the 400 hurdles).
Of Princeton's nine athletes in Oregon, seven will be competing tomorrow.
For some of them, their season began way back with the beginning of cross country. It's certainly a long grind.
The NCAA track and field championships will be the last Princeton events of the academic year.
After that, it'll be time to pack it up - until the 2013-14 season begins.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Nine For Oregon
TigerBlog was reading a comparison on, of all places, laxpower about, of all things, which movie is funnier, "Stripes" or "Animal House."
TB will now give his two cents.
"Stripes" is one of the funniest movies he's ever seen. If you've never seen it, go watch it. Bill Murray plays John Winger, a complete failure who is reaching his 30s and has no idea what to do with his life, until he sees a commercial about the Army.
On a whim, he signs up, along with his equally frustrated friend Russell Ziskey, played by Harold Ramis. As the two go through basic training under the encouraging eye of Sgt. Hulka, they meet all kinds of characters, including a not-so-lean, mean fighting machine named Dewey Oxberger, in John Candy's best performance.
The movie is one hilarious moment after another, right up until the end, where our heroes save America from the Russians, or something like that, all with the help of one "heavily armed recreation vehicle."
TB saw it on the day it came out in 1981, at the theater on Route 9 in Freehold. Not the one at Pond Road. The other one. Since then, he's seen it probably, oh, a million times, and there hasn't been a week that's gone by where he hasn't quoted at least one line from the movie.
It's in the top five of funniest movies he's ever seen.
It's not "Animal House."
For TB's money, "Animal House" is the funniest movie ever made. It's also the first R-rated movie he ever saw in the movies, also in Freehold, but at the theater that was across the street from the car wash, in the same strip mall as an Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips.
"Animal House" is a perfect spoof of college life, complete with perfect characters who accomplish something difficult, and that is to approach being caricatures without ever crossing the line and therefore remaining human - and hysterical.
TB has also seen this movie a million times, and it's funny every single time he sees it again. Also like "Striples," "Animal House" has been quoted by TB on a weekly basis.
In much the same way as it's impossible to do for "Stripes," it's also impossible for TB to pick his single favorite line, because there are just too many great ones.
TB always knew that "Animal House" was filmed at the University of Oregon.
What he didn't realize is that a bunch of other colleges passed on the opportunity to have it filmed there because of the crudeness of the movie. Oregon's president at the time, William Beaty Boyd, had been at another college in California that wouldn't allow "The Graduate" to be filmed there, and he felt like he had missed out on a chance to be part of something special.
At least that's what Wikipedia says.
And so it came to be that the University of Oregon was the host for the filming of the funniest movie ever made. That's what the school is known for.
Well, that and crazy football uniforms.
And track and field.
It's hard to argue against Oregon as being the one place to see a track meet. Beginning next Wednesday, nine Princeton athletes will get to see a meet at Oregon from the inside out, as they will compete at the NCAA championships.
Princeton will be sending six men and three women to compete at legendary Hayward Field, the host for the championships.
There were some big performances and big heartaches at the qualifying round last weekend, and the group of nine that advances is thought to be the most Princeton has ever sent to the finals.
Their events are pretty varied, from the 400 hurdles (Austin Hollimon) to two in the 10K (Chris Bendtsen and Michael Franklin) to a hammer thrower (Julia Ratcliffe) to a triple jumper (Imani Oliver).
Princeton's 4x400 men's relay team qualified, with Dinkins, Hollimon, Tom Hopkins and Daniel McCord. Greta Feldman will run the 1,500.
A year ago, Princeton sent six athletes to the championships and came back with an individual winner, as Donn Cabral won the steeplechase.
This year there is no Princeton athlete who is a clear favorite to win, though that was also the case in the winter, when Princeton won the distance medley relay NCAA championship.
And, beyond winning, Princeton does figure to come back with multiple All-Americas.
The Princeton track and field programs have had overwhelming success in the last few years, and this year has been no different.
The Tigers, one could say, are on quite a run.
And now that run takes them all the way to Hayward Field, for the biggest meet on the most famous stage.
Yes. Quite a run.
TB will now give his two cents.
"Stripes" is one of the funniest movies he's ever seen. If you've never seen it, go watch it. Bill Murray plays John Winger, a complete failure who is reaching his 30s and has no idea what to do with his life, until he sees a commercial about the Army.
On a whim, he signs up, along with his equally frustrated friend Russell Ziskey, played by Harold Ramis. As the two go through basic training under the encouraging eye of Sgt. Hulka, they meet all kinds of characters, including a not-so-lean, mean fighting machine named Dewey Oxberger, in John Candy's best performance.
The movie is one hilarious moment after another, right up until the end, where our heroes save America from the Russians, or something like that, all with the help of one "heavily armed recreation vehicle."
TB saw it on the day it came out in 1981, at the theater on Route 9 in Freehold. Not the one at Pond Road. The other one. Since then, he's seen it probably, oh, a million times, and there hasn't been a week that's gone by where he hasn't quoted at least one line from the movie.
It's in the top five of funniest movies he's ever seen.
It's not "Animal House."
For TB's money, "Animal House" is the funniest movie ever made. It's also the first R-rated movie he ever saw in the movies, also in Freehold, but at the theater that was across the street from the car wash, in the same strip mall as an Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips.
"Animal House" is a perfect spoof of college life, complete with perfect characters who accomplish something difficult, and that is to approach being caricatures without ever crossing the line and therefore remaining human - and hysterical.
TB has also seen this movie a million times, and it's funny every single time he sees it again. Also like "Striples," "Animal House" has been quoted by TB on a weekly basis.
In much the same way as it's impossible to do for "Stripes," it's also impossible for TB to pick his single favorite line, because there are just too many great ones.
TB always knew that "Animal House" was filmed at the University of Oregon.
What he didn't realize is that a bunch of other colleges passed on the opportunity to have it filmed there because of the crudeness of the movie. Oregon's president at the time, William Beaty Boyd, had been at another college in California that wouldn't allow "The Graduate" to be filmed there, and he felt like he had missed out on a chance to be part of something special.
At least that's what Wikipedia says.
And so it came to be that the University of Oregon was the host for the filming of the funniest movie ever made. That's what the school is known for.
Well, that and crazy football uniforms.
And track and field.
It's hard to argue against Oregon as being the one place to see a track meet. Beginning next Wednesday, nine Princeton athletes will get to see a meet at Oregon from the inside out, as they will compete at the NCAA championships.
Princeton will be sending six men and three women to compete at legendary Hayward Field, the host for the championships.
There were some big performances and big heartaches at the qualifying round last weekend, and the group of nine that advances is thought to be the most Princeton has ever sent to the finals.
Their events are pretty varied, from the 400 hurdles (Austin Hollimon) to two in the 10K (Chris Bendtsen and Michael Franklin) to a hammer thrower (Julia Ratcliffe) to a triple jumper (Imani Oliver).
Princeton's 4x400 men's relay team qualified, with Dinkins, Hollimon, Tom Hopkins and Daniel McCord. Greta Feldman will run the 1,500.
A year ago, Princeton sent six athletes to the championships and came back with an individual winner, as Donn Cabral won the steeplechase.
This year there is no Princeton athlete who is a clear favorite to win, though that was also the case in the winter, when Princeton won the distance medley relay NCAA championship.
And, beyond winning, Princeton does figure to come back with multiple All-Americas.
The Princeton track and field programs have had overwhelming success in the last few years, and this year has been no different.
The Tigers, one could say, are on quite a run.
And now that run takes them all the way to Hayward Field, for the biggest meet on the most famous stage.
Yes. Quite a run.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Athletic Diversity
TigerBlog has spent much of the week working on the video for next week's Princeton Varsity Club awards banquet.
Among other things, the video each year is a great reminder for TigerBlog of the amazing diversity of athletic talent that gathers under the heading of "Princeton Athletics."
TB long ago bought into the concept of having 38 varsity teams and 1,000 varsity athletes and the philosophy of treating all of them as equally as possibly. Not completely equally, which would be impossible.
Still, you can't be part of Princeton Athletics if you don't agree with that way of thinking.
Projects like the video always get TB thinking about how all of these athletes came to play the sports they played, and if athletic ability is interchangeable. TB has mentioned both of these a few times in the past.
Forgetting size considerations, could a good fencer be a good football player? Are all 1,000 of them just great athletes who, for whatever reason, drifted into one sport over another?
And how did that happen?
What role does fate play? How much of it has to do with where someone grew up and what sports were big in that area, or what sports didn't exist in that area?
The video is a once-a-year reminder of all of this.
The webpage is a daily one.
TB is always amazed at the randomness of the stories that make up the top seven on goprincetontigers.com at any given moment. They could be almost anything at any time.
As TB sat down to write, the seven stories consisted of two on women's golf, one on men's lacrosse, one on each water polo team, one on track and field and one on men's tennis.
That's a pretty wild mix.
The first three were all about Princeton athletes in NCAA postseason competition, and all three are about not-to-be-taken-for-granted accomplishments.
Matija Pecotic's Princeton career ended yesterday with a loss in the second round of the NCAA men's tennis tournament. It was the last Princeton appearance for Pecotic, who came from Malta and became the first three-time Ivy League men's tennis Player of the Year - and the 11th in any sport.
As an aside, TB has some pretty good video of Pecotic bouncing the ball on the side of his racket.
Then there's the second story, the one about Kelly Shon at the NCAA women's golf championships.
Shon qualified the hard way, as one of six individuals who made the field of 126 during the qualifying rounds without having her team advance.
Shon sits at eight-over through three rounds, which puts her in the top half of the field. Shon, the second Princeton women's golfer to reach the NCAA finals, has one more round to play.
She finished her third round in 55th place, which is also third among the six individual qualifiers.
When Shon's final round is over, then the 2012-13 academic year will be down to just the national championships in rowing and track and field.
The first of three days of qualifying for the NCAA track and field championships was yesterday, and Princeton is at the Eastern regional, at North Carolina A&T.
Princeton has 23 athletes competing, all of whom are looking to advance to the NCAA finals in Eugene, Ore., in early June.
Twenty-three. That's a lot.
At Princeton, it's sort of taken for granted that track and field athletes will reach this level and even the finals. Why wouldn't it, when it seems to happen every year?
But it's not an easy path to get there.
Keep that in mind as you read the list of those who make it.
Among other things, the video each year is a great reminder for TigerBlog of the amazing diversity of athletic talent that gathers under the heading of "Princeton Athletics."
TB long ago bought into the concept of having 38 varsity teams and 1,000 varsity athletes and the philosophy of treating all of them as equally as possibly. Not completely equally, which would be impossible.
Still, you can't be part of Princeton Athletics if you don't agree with that way of thinking.
Projects like the video always get TB thinking about how all of these athletes came to play the sports they played, and if athletic ability is interchangeable. TB has mentioned both of these a few times in the past.
Forgetting size considerations, could a good fencer be a good football player? Are all 1,000 of them just great athletes who, for whatever reason, drifted into one sport over another?
And how did that happen?
What role does fate play? How much of it has to do with where someone grew up and what sports were big in that area, or what sports didn't exist in that area?
The video is a once-a-year reminder of all of this.
The webpage is a daily one.
TB is always amazed at the randomness of the stories that make up the top seven on goprincetontigers.com at any given moment. They could be almost anything at any time.
As TB sat down to write, the seven stories consisted of two on women's golf, one on men's lacrosse, one on each water polo team, one on track and field and one on men's tennis.
That's a pretty wild mix.
The first three were all about Princeton athletes in NCAA postseason competition, and all three are about not-to-be-taken-for-granted accomplishments.
Matija Pecotic's Princeton career ended yesterday with a loss in the second round of the NCAA men's tennis tournament. It was the last Princeton appearance for Pecotic, who came from Malta and became the first three-time Ivy League men's tennis Player of the Year - and the 11th in any sport.
As an aside, TB has some pretty good video of Pecotic bouncing the ball on the side of his racket.
Then there's the second story, the one about Kelly Shon at the NCAA women's golf championships.
Shon qualified the hard way, as one of six individuals who made the field of 126 during the qualifying rounds without having her team advance.
Shon sits at eight-over through three rounds, which puts her in the top half of the field. Shon, the second Princeton women's golfer to reach the NCAA finals, has one more round to play.
She finished her third round in 55th place, which is also third among the six individual qualifiers.
When Shon's final round is over, then the 2012-13 academic year will be down to just the national championships in rowing and track and field.
The first of three days of qualifying for the NCAA track and field championships was yesterday, and Princeton is at the Eastern regional, at North Carolina A&T.
Princeton has 23 athletes competing, all of whom are looking to advance to the NCAA finals in Eugene, Ore., in early June.
Twenty-three. That's a lot.
At Princeton, it's sort of taken for granted that track and field athletes will reach this level and even the finals. Why wouldn't it, when it seems to happen every year?
But it's not an easy path to get there.
Keep that in mind as you read the list of those who make it.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Three Straight, 15 Overall
TigerBlog pulled into the Jadwin Gym parking lot close to six yesterday, just in time to see the aftermath of the Heps track and field meet.
TB knew he wasn't going to be back in time to see the men's 4x400 relay, the final event of the day. He'd been following the meet on Twitter while he drove back from Ithaca.
Relax. He wasn't driving and looking at Twitter. He was a passenger, in a car driven by Princeton's Senior Associate Director of Athletics Anthony Archbald.
TB and Archbald spent a lot of time together this weekend. They drove back from Ithaca after the men's lacrosse game Friday night, arriving in the wee hours. Then it was back to Ithaca Saturday night, arriving near midnight. And then the return trip yesterday afternoon.
Archbald has something in his car that TB does not have in his, and that is satellite radio.
If TB had satellite radio, it would almost always be on the E Street channel, when it wasn't on sporting events.
The two got to listen to Game 7 of the Nets and Bulls Saturday night, on the home station of the Bulls. TB could not believe what homers they were, including this stinging postgame interview question one of the broadcasters asked one of the players: "Who is smiling more now, me or you?"
Yesterday, it was Oklahoma City-Memphis Game 1 and Knicks-Pacers Game 1.
Both are Knicks fans from when they were little, but TB has renounced his loyalty for the remainder of these playoffs on the grounds that his team is the least likeable team in all of professional sports. Archbald was also rooting for the Grizzlies, who apparently gave it away at the end.
There's something odd about listening to an NBA game on the radio, in that it's almost impossible to follow, simply because of how often the score changes. Inevitably it becomes background noise, until the second half of the fourth quarter.
Archbald's satellite radio display also had a function that kept the score updated on the screen itself. TB hoped that it did so automatically via some link to a stat feed, rather than having someone whose job it is to manually change the score as the game goes along.
Archbald was intently following the games, especially the Knicks, to a degree that TB admired for its sheer concentration alone.
And so as Archbald made the occasional hand gesture or barely audible sigh at a Knicks foul or turnover, TB enjoyed the passenger seat, something he's almost never in. He sent a few text messages, read Laxpower and Inside Lacrosse to see what speculation was out there about the coming NCAA selections, played a word game or two and followed Heps on Twitter.
It's really hard to keep track of track, and even field, based solely on the team score at any given moment. If you think there are radical swings in NBA games on radio, it's even more pronounced in a track meet on Twitter.
There are a certain number of events remaining to be contested, and there are certain strengths and weaknesses for each team, which means that losing, even by an apparently large margin, at a certain point is no big deal.
On the men's side, TB knew that it would be between Princeton and Cornell, as it always seems to be for the last 12 years or so.
TB also knew that the 4x400 was a Princeton strength, so the Tigers always had that to fall back on, especially when Cornell's lead was erased and the teams were tied at 142-142 with four events left.
Other than that, it was hard to know event-by-event where the meet stood.
Still, it was a fun way to follow what was going on, with pictures and videos on Twitter, not to mention others who were checking about the meet.
In the end, Princeton would win by an apparently comfortable 28 points. It was the third straight outdoor Heps for the Tiger men and the 15th overall.
Every Princeton runner scored points in the 1500, 110 hurdles, 400, 100, 800, 400 hurdles and 200.
It's easy to just look at the results and see that the Tigers won without giving it much thought, but Princeton this has been a glorious era for Princeton's track and field programs, both of which are filled with glorious eras.
As TB arrived back at Jadwin, the visiting teams were loading up buses, gathering their stuff and heading home. Princeton's post-meet celebrations were wrapping up. Parents of all athletes from all eight Ivy schools were everywhere.
TB was struck by the big difference between the event he had been at - the men's lacrosse tournament - and Heps track and field, and that is that Heps felt like a huge party, probably because it involves all eight schools and because it involves the men and women at the same place at the same time.
There are certain dates on the annual Princeton sports calendar that are a little more special than others, and anything that has the word "Heps" in it is on the list.
TB loves the cross country event each fall.
He was hoping to get there for the end yesterday, but he knew he wouldn't.
Besides, Twitter was a great way to follow what was going on, right up to the news that the Tiger men had won.
TB knew he wasn't going to be back in time to see the men's 4x400 relay, the final event of the day. He'd been following the meet on Twitter while he drove back from Ithaca.
Relax. He wasn't driving and looking at Twitter. He was a passenger, in a car driven by Princeton's Senior Associate Director of Athletics Anthony Archbald.
TB and Archbald spent a lot of time together this weekend. They drove back from Ithaca after the men's lacrosse game Friday night, arriving in the wee hours. Then it was back to Ithaca Saturday night, arriving near midnight. And then the return trip yesterday afternoon.
Archbald has something in his car that TB does not have in his, and that is satellite radio.
If TB had satellite radio, it would almost always be on the E Street channel, when it wasn't on sporting events.
The two got to listen to Game 7 of the Nets and Bulls Saturday night, on the home station of the Bulls. TB could not believe what homers they were, including this stinging postgame interview question one of the broadcasters asked one of the players: "Who is smiling more now, me or you?"
Yesterday, it was Oklahoma City-Memphis Game 1 and Knicks-Pacers Game 1.
Both are Knicks fans from when they were little, but TB has renounced his loyalty for the remainder of these playoffs on the grounds that his team is the least likeable team in all of professional sports. Archbald was also rooting for the Grizzlies, who apparently gave it away at the end.
There's something odd about listening to an NBA game on the radio, in that it's almost impossible to follow, simply because of how often the score changes. Inevitably it becomes background noise, until the second half of the fourth quarter.
Archbald's satellite radio display also had a function that kept the score updated on the screen itself. TB hoped that it did so automatically via some link to a stat feed, rather than having someone whose job it is to manually change the score as the game goes along.
Archbald was intently following the games, especially the Knicks, to a degree that TB admired for its sheer concentration alone.
And so as Archbald made the occasional hand gesture or barely audible sigh at a Knicks foul or turnover, TB enjoyed the passenger seat, something he's almost never in. He sent a few text messages, read Laxpower and Inside Lacrosse to see what speculation was out there about the coming NCAA selections, played a word game or two and followed Heps on Twitter.
It's really hard to keep track of track, and even field, based solely on the team score at any given moment. If you think there are radical swings in NBA games on radio, it's even more pronounced in a track meet on Twitter.
There are a certain number of events remaining to be contested, and there are certain strengths and weaknesses for each team, which means that losing, even by an apparently large margin, at a certain point is no big deal.
On the men's side, TB knew that it would be between Princeton and Cornell, as it always seems to be for the last 12 years or so.
TB also knew that the 4x400 was a Princeton strength, so the Tigers always had that to fall back on, especially when Cornell's lead was erased and the teams were tied at 142-142 with four events left.
Other than that, it was hard to know event-by-event where the meet stood.
Still, it was a fun way to follow what was going on, with pictures and videos on Twitter, not to mention others who were checking about the meet.
In the end, Princeton would win by an apparently comfortable 28 points. It was the third straight outdoor Heps for the Tiger men and the 15th overall.
Every Princeton runner scored points in the 1500, 110 hurdles, 400, 100, 800, 400 hurdles and 200.
It's easy to just look at the results and see that the Tigers won without giving it much thought, but Princeton this has been a glorious era for Princeton's track and field programs, both of which are filled with glorious eras.
As TB arrived back at Jadwin, the visiting teams were loading up buses, gathering their stuff and heading home. Princeton's post-meet celebrations were wrapping up. Parents of all athletes from all eight Ivy schools were everywhere.
TB was struck by the big difference between the event he had been at - the men's lacrosse tournament - and Heps track and field, and that is that Heps felt like a huge party, probably because it involves all eight schools and because it involves the men and women at the same place at the same time.
There are certain dates on the annual Princeton sports calendar that are a little more special than others, and anything that has the word "Heps" in it is on the list.
TB loves the cross country event each fall.
He was hoping to get there for the end yesterday, but he knew he wouldn't.
Besides, Twitter was a great way to follow what was going on, right up to the news that the Tiger men had won.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Track Talk
Miss TigerBlog is running and jumping on the middle school track and field team this spring.
It's her introduction to the sport, and she seems to like it. TigerBlog does too.
The meets are vastly different than the games for the other sports that MTB has played. They feature events for girls and boys, and both spend most of their time milling around together, waiting for their turn to compete.
It's a much different dynamic than, say, a middle school dance, where the boys would be on one side and the girls on the other. No, here they mix together in small groups, a few girls with a few boys, cheering the rest of them on.
Somewhere in there is a graduate psychology thesis on adolescent social interactions and the power of sport.
There was a meet yesterday, and TB couldn't help but notice the easy socialization.
And the fact that also unlike the other sports MTB has played, in this one there is the unmistakable sight of kids on cell phones, texting and talking to someone, quite possibly other kids on their team at the meet.
The kids all have been exposed to a variety of events, and TB is fascinated that even though they're all beginners and they're all new to this, they are already gravitating to certain events.
MTB's friend Wiki is a sprinter. Her other friend Olivia is already a distance runner - which in this case means the 1,600, which is the longest event.
MTB's best event so far is the long jump, and she's also run the 100 hurdles and the 400.
Yesterday she had to go right from the 400 to the long jump, with no rest in between.
As she got closer to the start of track and field season, she asked her dad if she could come run on the track at Princeton, and so TB brought her a few times to do so.
It's the same track that this weekend hosts the Heptagonal track and field championships, which come to Weaver Track and Field Stadium tomorrow and Sunday.
TB supposes there are some similarities with Heps and the middle school meets.
For one, the men's and women's teams are competing at the same place and time, and they pull for each other the way the kids do. For another, there is considerable down time between events for each competitor.
The Princeton women were the outdoor runner up last year and have won nine outdoor Heps titles all-time, including in 2009 and 2011. Harvard won the indoor championship this past winter.
Among the women's subplots are Tory Worthen's quest to become the first Princeton women to win the same event at Heps eight times when she competes in the pole vault. Worthen, who has won indoor and outdoors in her first seven tries, is trying to become the seventh athlete overall to win the same event eight times.
On the men's side, Princeton lost to Cornell by one point at the indoor Hep, and those two figure to go at it again this weekend. In fact, in the last 11 years, only Princeton or Cornell has won the title outdoors.
Princeton, as a matter of fact, has won the last two and three of the last four.
Heps begins tomorrow at 10 am and Sunday at 11 am. The last events are the women's and men's 4x400 relays, which go off at 4:50 and 5 Sunday, followed by the awards ceremony.
TigerBlog hopes to be unable to make it Sunday, as his desire is to be watching Princeton in the Ivy men's lacrosse championship game in Ithaca.
But hey, no lacrosse talk today. TB will only mention that sport tangentially. And if he's not in Ithaca, then he'll be at Weaver, probably with MTB.
It should be a great event the next two days.
Heps always is.
It's her introduction to the sport, and she seems to like it. TigerBlog does too.
The meets are vastly different than the games for the other sports that MTB has played. They feature events for girls and boys, and both spend most of their time milling around together, waiting for their turn to compete.
It's a much different dynamic than, say, a middle school dance, where the boys would be on one side and the girls on the other. No, here they mix together in small groups, a few girls with a few boys, cheering the rest of them on.
Somewhere in there is a graduate psychology thesis on adolescent social interactions and the power of sport.
There was a meet yesterday, and TB couldn't help but notice the easy socialization.
And the fact that also unlike the other sports MTB has played, in this one there is the unmistakable sight of kids on cell phones, texting and talking to someone, quite possibly other kids on their team at the meet.
The kids all have been exposed to a variety of events, and TB is fascinated that even though they're all beginners and they're all new to this, they are already gravitating to certain events.
MTB's friend Wiki is a sprinter. Her other friend Olivia is already a distance runner - which in this case means the 1,600, which is the longest event.
MTB's best event so far is the long jump, and she's also run the 100 hurdles and the 400.
Yesterday she had to go right from the 400 to the long jump, with no rest in between.
As she got closer to the start of track and field season, she asked her dad if she could come run on the track at Princeton, and so TB brought her a few times to do so.
It's the same track that this weekend hosts the Heptagonal track and field championships, which come to Weaver Track and Field Stadium tomorrow and Sunday.
TB supposes there are some similarities with Heps and the middle school meets.
For one, the men's and women's teams are competing at the same place and time, and they pull for each other the way the kids do. For another, there is considerable down time between events for each competitor.
The Princeton women were the outdoor runner up last year and have won nine outdoor Heps titles all-time, including in 2009 and 2011. Harvard won the indoor championship this past winter.
Among the women's subplots are Tory Worthen's quest to become the first Princeton women to win the same event at Heps eight times when she competes in the pole vault. Worthen, who has won indoor and outdoors in her first seven tries, is trying to become the seventh athlete overall to win the same event eight times.
On the men's side, Princeton lost to Cornell by one point at the indoor Hep, and those two figure to go at it again this weekend. In fact, in the last 11 years, only Princeton or Cornell has won the title outdoors.
Princeton, as a matter of fact, has won the last two and three of the last four.
Heps begins tomorrow at 10 am and Sunday at 11 am. The last events are the women's and men's 4x400 relays, which go off at 4:50 and 5 Sunday, followed by the awards ceremony.
TigerBlog hopes to be unable to make it Sunday, as his desire is to be watching Princeton in the Ivy men's lacrosse championship game in Ithaca.
But hey, no lacrosse talk today. TB will only mention that sport tangentially. And if he's not in Ithaca, then he'll be at Weaver, probably with MTB.
It should be a great event the next two days.
Heps always is.
Monday, March 11, 2013
"We Believe In Pete"
It was completely beautiful Saturday morning at around 10 as TigerBlog made the right turn off 15-501 onto the campus of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
As he came up the hill, he reached the stop sign where, if he made a left, he'd drive right past the mammoth Dean Smith Center, the home for Carolina basketball. Since he was early, he figured he would, and as he did, he found a few hundred people already milling around outside the building.
It was a pretty impressive site, considering that tip-off for UNC-Duke basketball was still 11 hours away. And, as TB tweeted, the Carolina fans were wearing t-shirts that seemed to indicate that they didn't quite like the Blue Devils.
TB then made a U-turn and headed up the hill, winding past Kenan Stadium and the baseball field (which is nicer than Waterfront Park, where the Trenton Thunder play, and Waterfront Park is pretty nice) and then to the top, where he turned left, parked and made the short walk down to Fetzer Field.
It was already near 60 and completely sunny by then, and it would get even warmer by the time the Princeton-North Carolina men's lacrosse game began at noon.
And by the time it ended, it was temperatures in the mid-60s and shots in the high 90s, as in 99 total shots between the teams, in a 16-15 Carolina win.
The men's lacrosse game was followed by UNC-Virginia women's lacrosse, which Carolina won 8-7.
TigerBlog joked yesterday that he wondered if there was a Carolina fan anywhere who said something like "well, the men's basketball team got thumped by Duke, but at least we won two good lacrosse games."
His sense is no.
What about at Princeton?
It's more likely that there are people here who thought "pretty good weekend even with what happened to men's basketball" than there were at Carolina.
Yes, Princeton did not have a great weekend in men's basketball. The Tigers fell twice on the road, Harvard swept, and the race is now over.
And it would have been great to get the lacrosse game, especially how it played out in the final 90 seconds.
Still, there were some great moments to this weekend.
First, the women's basketball team and men's swimming and diving teams both won Ivy League championships, something that has become an annual occurrence for both, with four straight for the women's basketball team and five straight for the men's swimming and diving team.
TigerBlog ranked the top five events of last weekend and heard some feedback from those who disagreed.
Were he ranking this week's big winners, he would have women's basketball and men's swimming and diving two and three, or maybe tied for second.
No. 1 this weekend?
The men's distance medley relay team of Michael Williams, Austin Hollimon, Russell Dinkins and Peter Callahan (go to the 3:45 mark of the video, by the way).
For the third straight weekend, the DMR used a furious finish by Callahan to win a huge event, first at Heps, then at a meet at Notre Dame that qualified them for the NCAAs and ultimately at the NCAA championship itself in Fayetteville, Ark.
What makes it more amazing is that Callahan is a senior who basically was out for the last 12 months due to injury. He ran for the first time after that recovery - and clearly is showing no ill-effects.
In the video of each race, Callahan bursts from the pack for a stunning kick to win going away.
And each time, he looked like it was effortless.
The kick Saturday night in Fayetteville began just a few steps before the start of the final lap. Callahan was sitting in third in what appeared to be anyone's race - and then he was gone.
And no one in the field could mount any kind of counter move.
TigerBlog isn't a track and field guy and doesn't pretend to know much about it, but it's wildly impressive to see what Callahan has done the last three weeks. Each time, he looks like he's simply shifting into another gear, and away he goes.
It's one thing to do it at Heps. It's another thing to do it the way he has the last two weekends, against teams stocked with runners of the highest level nationally.
If you take for granted the success of Princeton's track and field programs, then events like this should be a reminder of just how impressive what the Tigers do can be.
For Princeton, it was the first NCAA indoor running championship since 1975, when the Tigers won the 4x 2-mile, an event no longer contested. Of course, the last outdoor running title was a year ago, when Donn Cabral won the NCAA steeplechase.
TB loved the post race interview with the four Princeton runners, especially when Hollimon said "we believe in Pete."
Why wouldn't they?
After what he's done the last three weekends, who wouldn't?
As he came up the hill, he reached the stop sign where, if he made a left, he'd drive right past the mammoth Dean Smith Center, the home for Carolina basketball. Since he was early, he figured he would, and as he did, he found a few hundred people already milling around outside the building.
It was a pretty impressive site, considering that tip-off for UNC-Duke basketball was still 11 hours away. And, as TB tweeted, the Carolina fans were wearing t-shirts that seemed to indicate that they didn't quite like the Blue Devils.
TB then made a U-turn and headed up the hill, winding past Kenan Stadium and the baseball field (which is nicer than Waterfront Park, where the Trenton Thunder play, and Waterfront Park is pretty nice) and then to the top, where he turned left, parked and made the short walk down to Fetzer Field.
It was already near 60 and completely sunny by then, and it would get even warmer by the time the Princeton-North Carolina men's lacrosse game began at noon.
And by the time it ended, it was temperatures in the mid-60s and shots in the high 90s, as in 99 total shots between the teams, in a 16-15 Carolina win.
The men's lacrosse game was followed by UNC-Virginia women's lacrosse, which Carolina won 8-7.
TigerBlog joked yesterday that he wondered if there was a Carolina fan anywhere who said something like "well, the men's basketball team got thumped by Duke, but at least we won two good lacrosse games."
His sense is no.
What about at Princeton?
It's more likely that there are people here who thought "pretty good weekend even with what happened to men's basketball" than there were at Carolina.
Yes, Princeton did not have a great weekend in men's basketball. The Tigers fell twice on the road, Harvard swept, and the race is now over.
And it would have been great to get the lacrosse game, especially how it played out in the final 90 seconds.
Still, there were some great moments to this weekend.
First, the women's basketball team and men's swimming and diving teams both won Ivy League championships, something that has become an annual occurrence for both, with four straight for the women's basketball team and five straight for the men's swimming and diving team.
TigerBlog ranked the top five events of last weekend and heard some feedback from those who disagreed.
Were he ranking this week's big winners, he would have women's basketball and men's swimming and diving two and three, or maybe tied for second.
No. 1 this weekend?
The men's distance medley relay team of Michael Williams, Austin Hollimon, Russell Dinkins and Peter Callahan (go to the 3:45 mark of the video, by the way).
For the third straight weekend, the DMR used a furious finish by Callahan to win a huge event, first at Heps, then at a meet at Notre Dame that qualified them for the NCAAs and ultimately at the NCAA championship itself in Fayetteville, Ark.
What makes it more amazing is that Callahan is a senior who basically was out for the last 12 months due to injury. He ran for the first time after that recovery - and clearly is showing no ill-effects.
In the video of each race, Callahan bursts from the pack for a stunning kick to win going away.
And each time, he looked like it was effortless.
The kick Saturday night in Fayetteville began just a few steps before the start of the final lap. Callahan was sitting in third in what appeared to be anyone's race - and then he was gone.
And no one in the field could mount any kind of counter move.
TigerBlog isn't a track and field guy and doesn't pretend to know much about it, but it's wildly impressive to see what Callahan has done the last three weeks. Each time, he looks like he's simply shifting into another gear, and away he goes.
It's one thing to do it at Heps. It's another thing to do it the way he has the last two weekends, against teams stocked with runners of the highest level nationally.
If you take for granted the success of Princeton's track and field programs, then events like this should be a reminder of just how impressive what the Tigers do can be.
For Princeton, it was the first NCAA indoor running championship since 1975, when the Tigers won the 4x 2-mile, an event no longer contested. Of course, the last outdoor running title was a year ago, when Donn Cabral won the NCAA steeplechase.
TB loved the post race interview with the four Princeton runners, especially when Hollimon said "we believe in Pete."
Why wouldn't they?
After what he's done the last three weekends, who wouldn't?
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