So the academic year has ended, and the Class of 2017 has scattered.
Princeton's campus is quiet, or at least quieter, for the summer.
TigerBlog is frequently asked whether he has to work in the summer. The answer is yes. There is always something to do.
In fact, come August, when the events start up again - August 25 is the first athletic event, a women's soccer game at home against Monmouth - TigerBlog will again be amazed by how another summer has flown by and how many things there were to get done along the way.
And that he came up with something to write about every day.
Of course, it's a tad too early to be looking ahead to the coming fall season.
When TigerBlog thinks back to the 2016-17 athletic year, he's going to think of the 11 Ivy League championship teams. He'll think of the field hockey run to the Final Four. He'll think of the different teams that were impacted by freshmen who made an immediate impact on Princeton Athletics - especially Michael Sowers with men's lacrosse (not to mention the extraordinary seasons of seniors Gavin McBride and Zach Currier) and Matthew Kolodzik with wrestling.
He'll think about the extraordinary accomplishment of the men's basketball team, which was asked to do something no other team in Ivy League history ever had to do - go 16-0 to get to the NCAA tournament.
And the football team, the Ivy League champ with the No. 1 offense and No. 1 defense. And the ridiculous year of John Lovett, who put up a season (like Currier) that will never be matched. Remember his numbers: 20 rushing touchdowns, 10 passing touchdowns, 26 receptions. Who will ever do that again?
TB will remember the men's hockey team's ECAC opening round series against Colgate, which Princeton won two games to one. He'll especially remember Game 2 of that series, when Princeton, after losing Game 1, avoided elimination by tying it with one second left and then winning it in OT.
It's one of the best games TB has ever seen. And then Game 3, which was another epic day from this past year, when Princeton gave up the first goal and then came back to win the game and series 2-1.
He'll also keep in mind the women's lacrosse team, especially its NCAA win over Cornell, its third straight over the Big Red, this time accomplishing it as torrential rain fell in a surreal way as the winning goal was scored.
There were other big moments from the past year as well. There always are. It's one of the best parts of being at Princeton.
More than anything else, though, TigerBlog will remember 2016-17 as the year of the most loaded von Kienbusch Award ever.
As you know, Princeton had 10 finalists for the top female senior athlete. All 10 are among the most elite - or are the most elite - athletes ever to play their sport at Princeton.
It began to become obvious to TB and his Office of Athletic Communications colleagues a few years ago that this year was going to be unique. Each year, the OAC group talks about future Roper Trophy and von Kienbusch fields (who says athletic communications people aren't super cool?), and it was obvious that 2017 had some big potential.
First, there were the original members of the Class of 2017. Then there were three who took off to train for the Olympics who would come back as members of the Class of 2017.
The result was what you saw at the banquet before Reunions. That would be the best von Kienbusch field ever.
TigerBlog has always thought that the three greatest male athletes in Princeton history are Hobey Baker, Dick Kazmaier and Bill Bradley. He'd go in this order, by the way: Bradley, Baker, Kazmaier.
As for the women, it's been a bit more uncertain.
He's mentioned Caroline Lind, the two-time Olympic gold medal winning rower. He's mentioned Rachael Becker, from field hockey and lacrosse. Maybe Niveen Rasheed from basketball can be in the conversation. There are certainly others. TigerBlog does not mean to slight anyone.
If you wanted to make a top 25 - hey, maybe that's a summer project? - the Class of 2017 would be well represented.
If you wanted to make a top 1?
Well, TigerBlog would have to go with Ashleigh Johnson.
And yes, maybe she's getting extra credit for her gold medal at the Olympics and the two times she was named the top player in the world at her sport. Or maybe it's just about the eye test.
If you've ever seen Johnson play - at Princeton or in the Olympics or anywhere - you probably could sum her up in one word: "wow."
As in "wow, how can she tread water like that and then explode to get a ball that's rocketing to the top corner of the goal?"
When you're in athletic communications, you don't always want to deal in superlatives. For starters, you don't want to overlook anyone. As TB says, he never means to slight anyone.
In Johnson's case, though, it's a little different. She is so extraordinary that, as TB wrote, her win in this incredible von Kienbusch field surprised no one.
So it's TB's opinion, and not an official Princeton position, that she is the greatest female athlete Princeton has ever seen.
And when you see the greatest, it's okay to point it out.
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Chewing The Cud
As TigerBlog sat roasting in the sun while watching lacrosse this past weekend - an annual rite of summer that he'll get back to in a second - it dawned on him that his two kids rarely play on what would be considered a "nice" day.
It's either freezing or boiling. This weekend? Boiling.
This is Summer No. 10 for TigerBlog of club lacrosse. It's really hard to explain to someone whose kids do not play summer lacrosse, or some other sport, what exactly it's like to devote weekend after weekend, tournament after tournament, summer after summer to a club team like this.
The schedule this past weekend for Miss TigerBlog, for instance, was three games Saturday - at 3, 5 and 7 - and then one more at 1:30 Sunday. That means play a game, sit an hour, play again, sit again, play again.
And this schedule was kind. This coming weekend's tournament has a game at 6 p.m. Friday, at 3 and 7 Saturday and at 8 a.m. Sunday. That's a lot of waiting around.
This, of course, is going on while much of the world is doing non-athletic-related things, like, oh, going to the beach.
And is it free?
TigerBlog's friend Todd has two sons, Matthew and William. Matthew played with TigerBlog Jr. starting in fourth grade and ultimately every summer from the end of sixth grade through the end of 11th. William is two years younger than MTB, so he has a few years left.
TB and Todd were talking the other day about how much money they've invested into this through the years. The exact amount? A lot.
On the other hand, the positives of all of this have so far outweighed the negatives that TB's only complaint is that he's going to miss it when it's over. TBJ's summer team, made up of kids spread out across the Philadelphia area, became very close, as did the parents. MTB's team has pushed her to become a much better player and a much more assertive person (and who doesn't want their nearly 17-year-old daughter to be even more assertive?).
Among TigerBlog's best memories ever are the times that he has spent with his kids at their summer lacrosse tournaments. And not just at the games. Driving. In hotels. Talking lacrosse, yes, but also about anything and everything. Like life. Music. TV. The difference between now and when TB was a kid. TigerBlog's rules for staying out of trouble if you're a teenager.
Even cows.
MTB's tournament this weekend was out in Pennsylvania farm country. As the two got closer to the field, they had this conversation:
TB: That's a lot of cows.
MTB: What are they doing?
TB: Chewing their cud, it apepars.
MTB: What's cud?
TB: No idea.
As it turns out, cud is food that hasn't been fully digested and therefore is dispelled by the digestive system of the cow in order to be chewed again. In other words, it's vomit.
So, yeah. Yuck. But hey, even that turned out to be funny.
That was Saturday. The cows were still there Sunday, seemingly unbothered by the heat and their diet.
Speaking of Sunday, there was a story on nj.com that was right in TigerBlog's wheelhouse. Actually, it was in Harvey Yavener's wheelhouse, though Yav hasn't written anything in awhile.
As an aside, TigerBlog's reaction is still to call stories that appear on nj.com as having been in the "Ledger," as in the Star-Ledger, which used to be on the biggest newspapers in the country.
Anyway the project began last week, when Ryan Dunleavy from nj.com emailed TigerBlog asking him to recommend teams that could be considered in his list of the top Division I teams in New Jersey from the 2016-17 academic year.
The first thing TB thought of was "Yav would have done something like this in a heartbeat." If you don't know who Yav is, he was a sportswriter who probably wrote more about Princeton than anyone other sportswriter ever did. It was from Yav that TigerBlog learned an important lesson - judge all sports, and the athletes who compete in them, equally based on the parameters of each sport, rather than the sport's overall popularity.
It's what led Yav to cover anything and everything, and especially women's sports. Really, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this was wildly unconventional thinking, especially for a veteran male sportswriter.
The piece in nj.com didn't rank the teams in order. It just listed them by school. You can see it HERE.
There are 31 teams who were included in the story, representing New Jersey's eight Division I colleges. Here's the ranking by number of teams included:
Princeton - 13 (really, 14, since men's indoor and outdoor track and field were counted as one)
Monmouth - 5
Rider - 4
Rutgers - 3
Seton Hall/St. Peter's - 2
FDU/NJIT - 1
If you don't feel like doing the math, that's 42 percent for Princeton.
It got TB to thinking about which Princeton team he would have ranked as the No. 1 for the year. Honestly, it's hard to pick.
Women's lacrosse? Ivy tri-champ but then powered to the Ivy tournament title and then to the NCAA quarterfinals.
Men's basketball? The first 16-0 team in league history.
Field hockey? Made it to the Final Four, though didn't win the league.
Women's fencing? No. 2 nationally, plus an individual champ.
Football? Led the Ivy League in offense and defense while winning the championship.
Others? A case can be made.
In other words, it was another really good year for Princeton Athletics.
So chew on that for awhile. It's better than cud, right?
It's either freezing or boiling. This weekend? Boiling.
This is Summer No. 10 for TigerBlog of club lacrosse. It's really hard to explain to someone whose kids do not play summer lacrosse, or some other sport, what exactly it's like to devote weekend after weekend, tournament after tournament, summer after summer to a club team like this.
The schedule this past weekend for Miss TigerBlog, for instance, was three games Saturday - at 3, 5 and 7 - and then one more at 1:30 Sunday. That means play a game, sit an hour, play again, sit again, play again.
And this schedule was kind. This coming weekend's tournament has a game at 6 p.m. Friday, at 3 and 7 Saturday and at 8 a.m. Sunday. That's a lot of waiting around.
This, of course, is going on while much of the world is doing non-athletic-related things, like, oh, going to the beach.
And is it free?
TigerBlog's friend Todd has two sons, Matthew and William. Matthew played with TigerBlog Jr. starting in fourth grade and ultimately every summer from the end of sixth grade through the end of 11th. William is two years younger than MTB, so he has a few years left.
TB and Todd were talking the other day about how much money they've invested into this through the years. The exact amount? A lot.
On the other hand, the positives of all of this have so far outweighed the negatives that TB's only complaint is that he's going to miss it when it's over. TBJ's summer team, made up of kids spread out across the Philadelphia area, became very close, as did the parents. MTB's team has pushed her to become a much better player and a much more assertive person (and who doesn't want their nearly 17-year-old daughter to be even more assertive?).
Among TigerBlog's best memories ever are the times that he has spent with his kids at their summer lacrosse tournaments. And not just at the games. Driving. In hotels. Talking lacrosse, yes, but also about anything and everything. Like life. Music. TV. The difference between now and when TB was a kid. TigerBlog's rules for staying out of trouble if you're a teenager.
Even cows.
MTB's tournament this weekend was out in Pennsylvania farm country. As the two got closer to the field, they had this conversation:
TB: That's a lot of cows.
MTB: What are they doing?
TB: Chewing their cud, it apepars.
MTB: What's cud?
TB: No idea.
As it turns out, cud is food that hasn't been fully digested and therefore is dispelled by the digestive system of the cow in order to be chewed again. In other words, it's vomit.
So, yeah. Yuck. But hey, even that turned out to be funny.
That was Saturday. The cows were still there Sunday, seemingly unbothered by the heat and their diet.
Speaking of Sunday, there was a story on nj.com that was right in TigerBlog's wheelhouse. Actually, it was in Harvey Yavener's wheelhouse, though Yav hasn't written anything in awhile.
As an aside, TigerBlog's reaction is still to call stories that appear on nj.com as having been in the "Ledger," as in the Star-Ledger, which used to be on the biggest newspapers in the country.
Anyway the project began last week, when Ryan Dunleavy from nj.com emailed TigerBlog asking him to recommend teams that could be considered in his list of the top Division I teams in New Jersey from the 2016-17 academic year.
The first thing TB thought of was "Yav would have done something like this in a heartbeat." If you don't know who Yav is, he was a sportswriter who probably wrote more about Princeton than anyone other sportswriter ever did. It was from Yav that TigerBlog learned an important lesson - judge all sports, and the athletes who compete in them, equally based on the parameters of each sport, rather than the sport's overall popularity.
It's what led Yav to cover anything and everything, and especially women's sports. Really, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this was wildly unconventional thinking, especially for a veteran male sportswriter.
The piece in nj.com didn't rank the teams in order. It just listed them by school. You can see it HERE.
There are 31 teams who were included in the story, representing New Jersey's eight Division I colleges. Here's the ranking by number of teams included:
Princeton - 13 (really, 14, since men's indoor and outdoor track and field were counted as one)
Monmouth - 5
Rider - 4
Rutgers - 3
Seton Hall/St. Peter's - 2
FDU/NJIT - 1
If you don't feel like doing the math, that's 42 percent for Princeton.
It got TB to thinking about which Princeton team he would have ranked as the No. 1 for the year. Honestly, it's hard to pick.
Women's lacrosse? Ivy tri-champ but then powered to the Ivy tournament title and then to the NCAA quarterfinals.
Men's basketball? The first 16-0 team in league history.
Field hockey? Made it to the Final Four, though didn't win the league.
Women's fencing? No. 2 nationally, plus an individual champ.
Football? Led the Ivy League in offense and defense while winning the championship.
Others? A case can be made.
In other words, it was another really good year for Princeton Athletics.
So chew on that for awhile. It's better than cud, right?
Monday, June 12, 2017
Goodbye, Jeff
TigerBlog walked down the Jadwin stairs Friday, down to the basement he and his Office of Athletic Communications colleagues call home.
Oh, and Brian Fitzwater, the IT guy for the athletic department. When the OAC relocated downstairs in late 2015, the was space for eight people, and there are seven OACers.
Fitz, as he is known, was thrown into the package. If you ever wanted to share your office space with one random person, the IT guy is a perfect choice.
The printer isn't working? "Hey, Fitz." Got some weird error message on your computer? "Hey, Fitz." Something goofy with your phone? "Hey, Fitz."
It's like sharing office space with the help desk.
Then there's Fitz himself. He's about as laid back as it gets, which is great considering what he has to deal with all the time. TigerBlog isn't the greatest technology mind of all time, but he does like to at least try to solve the problem (usually by turning something off and back on) before he reaches out for help.
Still, there are times he has to reach out for help. Each time, Fitz has fixed it in about 10 seconds. That's his job. People come to him with problems they can't identify or correct, and they seem incredibly daunting to them. On top of that, people are so reliant on their computers, phones, tablets and everything else that they come to Fitz with a total sense of desperation.
And he calmly fixes what ever the problem is and then sends them on their way. Never once, in all that time, has TB ever heard him yell "it's so simple. Fix it yourself."
Plus, he's an IT guy. By nature that makes him a little different. For instance, he had a really bad nose bleed last week. What did he do? He took a picture of it. Then he said to TB "hey, want to see something cool?"
Anyway, as TB came around the corner after getting to the bottom of the stairs Friday, he heard a familiar voice outside the locked office space.
It was Jeff Kampersal, who was on the phone with Fitz.
Kampersal, as you probably know, is the new women's hockey coach at Penn State. This comes, extraordinarily enough, after 21 years as the head coach at Princeton.
During his time at Princeton, Kampersal had a record of 327-261-58. Most recently, he led Princeton to the 2016 Ivy League championship and NCAA tournament and then the ECAC semifinals this year.
TigerBlog and Kampersal go back to before Kampersal coached the women's team here. TB first met him back in 1992, when Kampersal was a senior for the Princeton men's team.
Kurt Kehl and Mark Panus, TigerBlog's predecessors in the OAC, asked him if he'd write two feature stories about a men's hockey players. One was Andre Faust, who would go on to become, TB believes, the first Princeton player ever to score an NHL goal.
The other was Kampersal.
When TigerBlog first started out in the newspaper business, he was paid $15 per story, plus 22 cents per mile. TigerBlog kept his first check, which was for $15, rather than cashing it, figuring it would have sentimental value down the road. It might have - if he had any idea where he put it.
Instead of keeping the check, he should have bought stock in a new company called "Apple." If he had invested $15 then, it would have returned $337,824,443 by now. Or something like that.
Anyway, you know what Kehl and Panus paid him for those stories? Lunch.
TigerBlog knew little to nothing about hockey and Princeton hockey back then. He can't imagine what he wrote in those two features. They probably weren't very good. Not even worth $15.
But he always remembered the first impression Kampersal made on him from that small time they spent together back then. He could tell Kampersal was a good guy.
Nothing that's happened in the last 21 years has changed that impression for TigerBlog. Year after year, Kampersal represented Princeton with class and dignity, with on-ice success and players who routinely won awards for academic success and service.
Like all of the best coaches at Princeton, Kampersal made himself a big part of the departmental culture.
There was a party last week for Kampersal before he left Princeton. It was easy to tell he was uncomfortable being rewarded and celebrated for his time here. He's a humble guy.
And an easy guy to root for. Oh, and speaking of "guy," the storyline for his hiring is pretty simple.
This is from a story in the Daily Collegian, the Penn State student paper:
Penn State won big the last time it hired a former Princeton hockey coach.
The Nittany Lions dipped into the Tigers’ pipeline again with the hiring of Jeff Kampersal, hoping to recreate the success that Guy Gadowsky brought from Princeton.
Kampersal will be heading to the same school that took another Princeton hockey coach, Guy Gadowsky, who took the Princeton men to two NCAA tournaments and then took Penn State there this year. Kampersal and Gadowsky are close, which makes for a good reunion.
Penn State has put a lot of money into its hockey programs, and its hockey arena. It's a new challenge for Kampersal, one that comes after 21 years of loyalty and hard work here at his alma mater.
TigerBlog wishes him the best.
When he said goodbye to him the other day, it dawned on him that he was talking to the same good guy he'd met all those years ago.
Best of luck, Jeff Kampersal.
You definitely made Hobey proud during your time here.
Oh, and Brian Fitzwater, the IT guy for the athletic department. When the OAC relocated downstairs in late 2015, the was space for eight people, and there are seven OACers.
Fitz, as he is known, was thrown into the package. If you ever wanted to share your office space with one random person, the IT guy is a perfect choice.
The printer isn't working? "Hey, Fitz." Got some weird error message on your computer? "Hey, Fitz." Something goofy with your phone? "Hey, Fitz."
It's like sharing office space with the help desk.
Then there's Fitz himself. He's about as laid back as it gets, which is great considering what he has to deal with all the time. TigerBlog isn't the greatest technology mind of all time, but he does like to at least try to solve the problem (usually by turning something off and back on) before he reaches out for help.
Still, there are times he has to reach out for help. Each time, Fitz has fixed it in about 10 seconds. That's his job. People come to him with problems they can't identify or correct, and they seem incredibly daunting to them. On top of that, people are so reliant on their computers, phones, tablets and everything else that they come to Fitz with a total sense of desperation.
And he calmly fixes what ever the problem is and then sends them on their way. Never once, in all that time, has TB ever heard him yell "it's so simple. Fix it yourself."
Plus, he's an IT guy. By nature that makes him a little different. For instance, he had a really bad nose bleed last week. What did he do? He took a picture of it. Then he said to TB "hey, want to see something cool?"
Anyway, as TB came around the corner after getting to the bottom of the stairs Friday, he heard a familiar voice outside the locked office space.
It was Jeff Kampersal, who was on the phone with Fitz.
Kampersal, as you probably know, is the new women's hockey coach at Penn State. This comes, extraordinarily enough, after 21 years as the head coach at Princeton.
During his time at Princeton, Kampersal had a record of 327-261-58. Most recently, he led Princeton to the 2016 Ivy League championship and NCAA tournament and then the ECAC semifinals this year.
TigerBlog and Kampersal go back to before Kampersal coached the women's team here. TB first met him back in 1992, when Kampersal was a senior for the Princeton men's team.
Kurt Kehl and Mark Panus, TigerBlog's predecessors in the OAC, asked him if he'd write two feature stories about a men's hockey players. One was Andre Faust, who would go on to become, TB believes, the first Princeton player ever to score an NHL goal.
The other was Kampersal.
When TigerBlog first started out in the newspaper business, he was paid $15 per story, plus 22 cents per mile. TigerBlog kept his first check, which was for $15, rather than cashing it, figuring it would have sentimental value down the road. It might have - if he had any idea where he put it.
Instead of keeping the check, he should have bought stock in a new company called "Apple." If he had invested $15 then, it would have returned $337,824,443 by now. Or something like that.
Anyway, you know what Kehl and Panus paid him for those stories? Lunch.
TigerBlog knew little to nothing about hockey and Princeton hockey back then. He can't imagine what he wrote in those two features. They probably weren't very good. Not even worth $15.
But he always remembered the first impression Kampersal made on him from that small time they spent together back then. He could tell Kampersal was a good guy.
Nothing that's happened in the last 21 years has changed that impression for TigerBlog. Year after year, Kampersal represented Princeton with class and dignity, with on-ice success and players who routinely won awards for academic success and service.
Like all of the best coaches at Princeton, Kampersal made himself a big part of the departmental culture.
There was a party last week for Kampersal before he left Princeton. It was easy to tell he was uncomfortable being rewarded and celebrated for his time here. He's a humble guy.
And an easy guy to root for. Oh, and speaking of "guy," the storyline for his hiring is pretty simple.
This is from a story in the Daily Collegian, the Penn State student paper:
Penn State won big the last time it hired a former Princeton hockey coach.
The Nittany Lions dipped into the Tigers’ pipeline again with the hiring of Jeff Kampersal, hoping to recreate the success that Guy Gadowsky brought from Princeton.
Kampersal will be heading to the same school that took another Princeton hockey coach, Guy Gadowsky, who took the Princeton men to two NCAA tournaments and then took Penn State there this year. Kampersal and Gadowsky are close, which makes for a good reunion.
Penn State has put a lot of money into its hockey programs, and its hockey arena. It's a new challenge for Kampersal, one that comes after 21 years of loyalty and hard work here at his alma mater.
TigerBlog wishes him the best.
When he said goodbye to him the other day, it dawned on him that he was talking to the same good guy he'd met all those years ago.
Best of luck, Jeff Kampersal.
You definitely made Hobey proud during your time here.
Friday, June 9, 2017
All-America Again
Update from yesterday - TigerBlog's friend Mark reports that he took a drop after hitting the ball into the street and then chipped in from off the green on the next shot to save par.
TB asked him if video exists to prove it. None does, it seems, though TB will take his word for it.
Here's another update from yesterday - TigerBlog found himself near Nassau Hall shortly before noon. It was decidedly less crowded than it had been when he'd been there 48 hours earlier.
TB is sure he could ask someone in the communications office how many people came to this campus in the last week, between Reunions, Class Day and Commencement. Whatever the number is, it's a lot.
The place was flooded with people. There were crowds everywhere.
Sometimes, TigerBlog starts writing something and the words just come flying out. He goes from the first paragraph to the last paragraph without a stop, the thoughts just blending together effortlessly.
Or something like that. In all seriousness, TigerBlog finds it much easier to write that way, quickly, so that his thoughts do continue, as opposed to stopping, going back, trying to figure out where he left off, what he's already said. That's especially true about feature stories, way more so than the daily effort here.
This entry, though, is different.
TigerBlog wrote the update from his friend Mark around 11 yesterday morning, before he headed up near Nassau Hall, which made him wonder about the size of the crowds who had just been there.
Then he had a nice leisurely lunch. Then he wrote the part about wondering how many people were on campus in the last week, so he actually emailed Dan Day in communications.
Then he got into the heavy lifting of his day while waiting for Dan to get back to him. Actually it didn't take Dan that long to inform TB that that there were 26,000 people at Reunions and 10,000 people at Commencement (8,000 of whom took the free panchos that were left out). Throw in some extras here and there, and that's about 40,000 people.
Ah, but TB wasn't sure that was public information, so he emailed Dan back to ask him if it was okay to use. And so he got back to doing other work while he waited, though he did consider what 26,000 or 10,000 or 40,000 people do to the campus.
As he thinks about it and has said before, the only other events that can bring close to that many people here are big football games.
The campus was certainly alive for the last week. Contrast that with when TB was up there yesterday, and it was quiet, almost eerily so. The only sign that anything big had happened there was the last remnants of the fences from Reunions, which were being taken down.
And so TB got to this point, a little past the halfway mark. It was late afternoon - but he had to stop again.
For one, Dan hadn't gotten back to him about using the information, which he ultimately did, which you could have surmised by the fact that TigerBlog already included it. And he wanted to get dinner, which turned out to be dinner for three - TigerBlog, Miss TigerBlog and Miss TigerBlog's hard-to-dislike-even-if-he-constantly-wants-attention cat Jingles.
Speaking of Jingles, MTB started at Instagram feed for him, and he has more than 150 followers already. And he's a cat.
Mostly, TigerBlog had to wait for the results for the NCAA track and field championships, Day 2. This would be the final event of the academic year, with the final two athletes of the 1,000 or so who represent Princeton set to compete - Julia Ratcliffe in the hammer throw and Allison Harris in the pole vault.
For Harris, it would be an honorable mention All-America performance to cap her career, after being an All-America indoors as well.
As for Ratcliffe, she would finish sixth, making her a first-team All-America for the third time in her career. She becomes the first Princeton women's track and field athlete to be a three-time first-team All-America in the same event.
For those keeping score, Ratcliffe finishes her career with an 11th place finish, an NCAA championship, an NCAA runner-up finish and now a sixth-place finish. She also demolished the Ivy League record, and in fact did so with every single throw of her entire career.
TigerBlog remembers when Ratcliffe first arrived at Princeton from New Zealand. It was five years ago, since she'd take one year off to train for the Olympics.
Then-women's track and field coach Peter Farrell knew what a unique talent Ratcliffe was before she came here, and he had raved about her potential from Day 1. When Ratcliffe came to Princeton - literally, after the long flight from home - there was nobody in the women's track and field office. In fact there was nobody in Jadwin Gym other than TigerBlog and a handful of others, and Ratcliffe's first stop was a chair in TB's old office on the balcony.
She seemed tired then.
She leaves Princeton as one its greatest student-athletes ever. She was a nearly perfect student in economics, and it'll be a long time before someone dominates an event in the Ivy League the way Ratcliffe dominated the hammer.
She's also, in TB's limited time with her, been an incredibly nice, polite person, but also one with a quick wit and an easy laugh. What more could Princeton have asked for from one of its athletes.
TigerBlog has been lucky to be around a lot of really impressive athletes in his time at Princeton. There haven't been many who compare to Julia Ratcliffe. Hopefully she reaches the Olympics in 2020. Regardless, whatever she does, you can bet that she'll do it very well.
And with that, the 2016-17 athletic year at Princeton is over.
And so is TigerBlog for today - nearly 12 hours after he started writing this. That, friends, is definitely a record.
TB asked him if video exists to prove it. None does, it seems, though TB will take his word for it.
Here's another update from yesterday - TigerBlog found himself near Nassau Hall shortly before noon. It was decidedly less crowded than it had been when he'd been there 48 hours earlier.
TB is sure he could ask someone in the communications office how many people came to this campus in the last week, between Reunions, Class Day and Commencement. Whatever the number is, it's a lot.
The place was flooded with people. There were crowds everywhere.
Sometimes, TigerBlog starts writing something and the words just come flying out. He goes from the first paragraph to the last paragraph without a stop, the thoughts just blending together effortlessly.
Or something like that. In all seriousness, TigerBlog finds it much easier to write that way, quickly, so that his thoughts do continue, as opposed to stopping, going back, trying to figure out where he left off, what he's already said. That's especially true about feature stories, way more so than the daily effort here.
This entry, though, is different.
TigerBlog wrote the update from his friend Mark around 11 yesterday morning, before he headed up near Nassau Hall, which made him wonder about the size of the crowds who had just been there.
Then he had a nice leisurely lunch. Then he wrote the part about wondering how many people were on campus in the last week, so he actually emailed Dan Day in communications.
Then he got into the heavy lifting of his day while waiting for Dan to get back to him. Actually it didn't take Dan that long to inform TB that that there were 26,000 people at Reunions and 10,000 people at Commencement (8,000 of whom took the free panchos that were left out). Throw in some extras here and there, and that's about 40,000 people.
Ah, but TB wasn't sure that was public information, so he emailed Dan back to ask him if it was okay to use. And so he got back to doing other work while he waited, though he did consider what 26,000 or 10,000 or 40,000 people do to the campus.
As he thinks about it and has said before, the only other events that can bring close to that many people here are big football games.
The campus was certainly alive for the last week. Contrast that with when TB was up there yesterday, and it was quiet, almost eerily so. The only sign that anything big had happened there was the last remnants of the fences from Reunions, which were being taken down.
And so TB got to this point, a little past the halfway mark. It was late afternoon - but he had to stop again.
For one, Dan hadn't gotten back to him about using the information, which he ultimately did, which you could have surmised by the fact that TigerBlog already included it. And he wanted to get dinner, which turned out to be dinner for three - TigerBlog, Miss TigerBlog and Miss TigerBlog's hard-to-dislike-even-if-he-constantly-wants-attention cat Jingles.
Speaking of Jingles, MTB started at Instagram feed for him, and he has more than 150 followers already. And he's a cat.
Mostly, TigerBlog had to wait for the results for the NCAA track and field championships, Day 2. This would be the final event of the academic year, with the final two athletes of the 1,000 or so who represent Princeton set to compete - Julia Ratcliffe in the hammer throw and Allison Harris in the pole vault.
For Harris, it would be an honorable mention All-America performance to cap her career, after being an All-America indoors as well.
As for Ratcliffe, she would finish sixth, making her a first-team All-America for the third time in her career. She becomes the first Princeton women's track and field athlete to be a three-time first-team All-America in the same event.
For those keeping score, Ratcliffe finishes her career with an 11th place finish, an NCAA championship, an NCAA runner-up finish and now a sixth-place finish. She also demolished the Ivy League record, and in fact did so with every single throw of her entire career.
TigerBlog remembers when Ratcliffe first arrived at Princeton from New Zealand. It was five years ago, since she'd take one year off to train for the Olympics.
Then-women's track and field coach Peter Farrell knew what a unique talent Ratcliffe was before she came here, and he had raved about her potential from Day 1. When Ratcliffe came to Princeton - literally, after the long flight from home - there was nobody in the women's track and field office. In fact there was nobody in Jadwin Gym other than TigerBlog and a handful of others, and Ratcliffe's first stop was a chair in TB's old office on the balcony.
She seemed tired then.
She leaves Princeton as one its greatest student-athletes ever. She was a nearly perfect student in economics, and it'll be a long time before someone dominates an event in the Ivy League the way Ratcliffe dominated the hammer.
She's also, in TB's limited time with her, been an incredibly nice, polite person, but also one with a quick wit and an easy laugh. What more could Princeton have asked for from one of its athletes.
TigerBlog has been lucky to be around a lot of really impressive athletes in his time at Princeton. There haven't been many who compare to Julia Ratcliffe. Hopefully she reaches the Olympics in 2020. Regardless, whatever she does, you can bet that she'll do it very well.
And with that, the 2016-17 athletic year at Princeton is over.
And so is TigerBlog for today - nearly 12 hours after he started writing this. That, friends, is definitely a record.
Thursday, June 8, 2017
Hammer Time
There's a golf course near TigerBlog's house.
It looks nice. TigerBlog wouldn't know. He's never played it. The only time he's ever been there was for a banquet for Miss TigerBlog's high school field hockey team.
TB isn't a golfer. He's played before, though not in a long time.
He knows a lot of people who do play. He even knows some who play at that local course.
Like his friend Mark, for instance. Mark is a former Cornell hockey player who has three children, including one (Michael) who grew up playing lacrosse with TigerBlog Jr. and who now plays at St. Joe's and another (Maddie) who grew up playing lacrosse with MTB and will be playing this coming year at Lehigh.
Mark lives across the street and beyond the train tracks from where the golf course is. He's been known to chip balls from his front lawn, over his house and the railroad trestle and onto the green on the other side.
You'd think someone who could do that would have a better sense of where the golf course ended and the road next to it started. And yet there was Mark, standing in the middle of the road on the other side of the course from his house, holding what looked like an eight-iron and looking for his ball, which TigerBlog could see was nestled against the curb, as he happened to be driving by at that exact moment.
How did he get the ball to stop against the curb on the near side of the road, as opposed to the far side? TB drove away before Mark retrieved his ball and got back on the course, so he didn't see the next shot, but he did see the old ladies playing behind him who were pissed that he was making them wait.
Shortly after that, TigerBlog found himself on the towpath, a place he goes a lot to walk or ride his bike. Not the towpath in Princeton. The one in Bucks County, across the river in Pennsylvania. It's a very calming, scenic, in many ways beautiful place, with views of the Delaware River as you go further up and down and the colors of the canal and its surroundings on the path itself.
He's not the only one who goes there to exercise. There are bikers, runners, walkers, dog-walkers, people pushing strollers, teenagers, senior citizens, everybody and anybody. And geese.
The range of speed and athleticism varies widely among those you'll see coming and going, but the other day TigerBlog realized that the two guys who were running towards him were a little different than anyone he usually sees out there.
As they got closer, he figured out why. One of them was Robby Andrews, the volunteer assistant men's cross country coach at Princeton and a member of the 2016 U.S. Olympic team. Robby ran the 1,500 in Rio.
Of course, TB didn't realize it was Andrews until he was passed him, and by then what was he supposed to do? Turn around and catch up to him? Yeah right.
Now that Reunions and Commencement have come and gone, it's easy to forget that the 2016-17 athletic year at Princeton isn't over. There are still the Princeton athletes who are competing in the NCAA track and field championships in Eugene, Ore.
Princeton's participation began yesterday, when William Paulson ran his heat in the 1,500 and August Kiles competed in the pole vault.
It continues today with the two women who have qualified.
Allison Harris will also pole vault, in an event that begins at 8 Eastern. You can watch it HERE.
Harris, the Princeton and Ivy League record holder, finished ninth at the indoor NCAA championships to earn second-team All-America honors. She's also a three-time Heps champ, twice indoors and once outdoors.
Harris is the first Princeton women's pole vaulter to qualify for the outdoor championships in 13 years.
Today will also be the final day as a Princeton Tiger for the legendary Julia Ratcliffe. Barring something wildly unforeseen, Ratcliffe will finish her career having eclipsed the previous Ivy League women's hammer throw record on every single throw of her career. If she takes all her throws today, that would be 140 throws in her career.
The women's hammer starts at 5 Eastern. You can watch it HERE.
Ratcliffe is a four-time hammer throw NCAA qualifier. She won the championship as a sophomore in 2014, and she was the 2015 runner-up before taking last year off to train for the Olympics.
Ratcliffe has the second-best throw so far of the athletes in the field. The best belongs to Maggie Ewen, from Arizona State.
The path to qualifying for the NCAA championships goes through the two regionals. Ratcliffe won the East with a throw of 70.75; Ewen won the West at 70.81. That's not a huge gap. In fact, it's 0.05 meters, or just under two inches.
It would be a storybook ending for Ratcliffe to win again.
Regardless, her place in Princeton Athletic history is already secure.
It looks nice. TigerBlog wouldn't know. He's never played it. The only time he's ever been there was for a banquet for Miss TigerBlog's high school field hockey team.
TB isn't a golfer. He's played before, though not in a long time.
He knows a lot of people who do play. He even knows some who play at that local course.
Like his friend Mark, for instance. Mark is a former Cornell hockey player who has three children, including one (Michael) who grew up playing lacrosse with TigerBlog Jr. and who now plays at St. Joe's and another (Maddie) who grew up playing lacrosse with MTB and will be playing this coming year at Lehigh.
Mark lives across the street and beyond the train tracks from where the golf course is. He's been known to chip balls from his front lawn, over his house and the railroad trestle and onto the green on the other side.
You'd think someone who could do that would have a better sense of where the golf course ended and the road next to it started. And yet there was Mark, standing in the middle of the road on the other side of the course from his house, holding what looked like an eight-iron and looking for his ball, which TigerBlog could see was nestled against the curb, as he happened to be driving by at that exact moment.
How did he get the ball to stop against the curb on the near side of the road, as opposed to the far side? TB drove away before Mark retrieved his ball and got back on the course, so he didn't see the next shot, but he did see the old ladies playing behind him who were pissed that he was making them wait.
Shortly after that, TigerBlog found himself on the towpath, a place he goes a lot to walk or ride his bike. Not the towpath in Princeton. The one in Bucks County, across the river in Pennsylvania. It's a very calming, scenic, in many ways beautiful place, with views of the Delaware River as you go further up and down and the colors of the canal and its surroundings on the path itself.
He's not the only one who goes there to exercise. There are bikers, runners, walkers, dog-walkers, people pushing strollers, teenagers, senior citizens, everybody and anybody. And geese.
The range of speed and athleticism varies widely among those you'll see coming and going, but the other day TigerBlog realized that the two guys who were running towards him were a little different than anyone he usually sees out there.
As they got closer, he figured out why. One of them was Robby Andrews, the volunteer assistant men's cross country coach at Princeton and a member of the 2016 U.S. Olympic team. Robby ran the 1,500 in Rio.
Of course, TB didn't realize it was Andrews until he was passed him, and by then what was he supposed to do? Turn around and catch up to him? Yeah right.
Now that Reunions and Commencement have come and gone, it's easy to forget that the 2016-17 athletic year at Princeton isn't over. There are still the Princeton athletes who are competing in the NCAA track and field championships in Eugene, Ore.
Princeton's participation began yesterday, when William Paulson ran his heat in the 1,500 and August Kiles competed in the pole vault.
It continues today with the two women who have qualified.
Allison Harris will also pole vault, in an event that begins at 8 Eastern. You can watch it HERE.
Harris, the Princeton and Ivy League record holder, finished ninth at the indoor NCAA championships to earn second-team All-America honors. She's also a three-time Heps champ, twice indoors and once outdoors.
Harris is the first Princeton women's pole vaulter to qualify for the outdoor championships in 13 years.
Today will also be the final day as a Princeton Tiger for the legendary Julia Ratcliffe. Barring something wildly unforeseen, Ratcliffe will finish her career having eclipsed the previous Ivy League women's hammer throw record on every single throw of her career. If she takes all her throws today, that would be 140 throws in her career.
The women's hammer starts at 5 Eastern. You can watch it HERE.
Ratcliffe is a four-time hammer throw NCAA qualifier. She won the championship as a sophomore in 2014, and she was the 2015 runner-up before taking last year off to train for the Olympics.
Ratcliffe has the second-best throw so far of the athletes in the field. The best belongs to Maggie Ewen, from Arizona State.
The path to qualifying for the NCAA championships goes through the two regionals. Ratcliffe won the East with a throw of 70.75; Ewen won the West at 70.81. That's not a huge gap. In fact, it's 0.05 meters, or just under two inches.
It would be a storybook ending for Ratcliffe to win again.
Regardless, her place in Princeton Athletic history is already secure.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
The Graduates
This was Monday night, and it was Game 1 of the Women's College World Series. If you didn't see what happened, the game went 17 innings before Oklahoma won 7-5, with a three-run home run in the top of the 17th before Florida could only get one back in the bottom of the 17th. Back in the 12th, Oklahoma got two to go up 4-2, but Florida came right back to tie it again.
Oh, and for reasons he also couldn't possibly explain, he was rooting for Florida.
TigerBlog wasn't even watching the game on TV. He was following it on Twitter and through the live stats, and the game ran well after midnight. Still, he refused to fall asleep until he knew who won.
As he watched the live stats refresh, he thought he heard it begin to rain. It was definitely raining when he woke up, and as he listened to it fall, one of his first thoughts was this: How will this affect graduation?
Then he got an email from Dan Day, the University's Vice President for Communications. If you were to build the perfect VP for Communications for a university, you'd build Dan Day. Anyway, the email said that the ceremony would be held outside, as opposed to in Jadwin Gym, which would be the indoor site. TigerBlog is pretty sure that no graduation since he's been around has had to be moved indoors.
It was cool but not chilly and damp but not too bad for the ceremony. Even when it rained, it only spit a little, never turning into anything steady.
TigerBlog is a big fan of graduation. He's a big fan of tradition and history and celebration and pomp (and apparently, circumstance), and graduation is all of that rolled together.
His own college graduation was held in a building that no longer exists, the Philadelphia Civic Center. It was a nice day and a nice event, but TigerBlog never felt the institutional connection that permeates everything that's happened on the Princeton campus the last week.
BrotherBlog? He loved graduation so much that he did it three times - undergrad, master's and law school. Maybe he just did it to milk graduation gifts out of people? He did have a great pre-graduation party before his law school commencement at U-Dub, where TigerBlog had Thai food for the first time.
As TigerBlog has said, though, nobody does these milestone events like Princeton does. TigerBlog likes the term he just used - "institutional connection." Everything that's happened in the last few days has been a reinforcement of that connection, and a celebration of it. To someone who has spent more than seven times as many years on this campus than on Penn's, he can tell you that this is something very different and very special.
The speech yesterday by valedictorian Jin Yun Chow was about the "unsung heroes" of Princeton, the people who keep the University running and help the students have a better experience in any number of small ways. TB assumed he was included in that group.
The entire ceremony was formal and structured, and TigerBlog really liked it. The awarding of the honorary degrees even included a major surprise - Kareem Abdul Jabbar received one.
For TigerBlog, the best part of graduation every year, though, is to see the recessional of the graduates themselves, how they go through FitzRandolph Gate for the first time and then wind their way back out of the area in front of Nassau Hall.
TigerBlog watched the ceremony while sitting on a cement bench. As University president Chris Eisgruber gave his final remarks - concluding with an emphatic "Onward" - the area around TB began to swell with family members, professors - and coaches. They were there to say goodbye to their seniors, and congratulate them on becoming alums.
As the grads started to make their way by, TigerBlog saw a lot of familiar faces. They'd worn the uniform specific to their team for four years, but now they were all in identical caps and gowns.
He saw Ashleigh Johnson. Then he saw water polo coach Luis Nicolao, who probably was taking graduation 2017 harder than anyone else, since it meant that the best player he'll ever coach was receiving a diploma.
He saw the women's basketball grads. The field hockey grads. The softball grads. The football grads. Team after team walked by. Men's basketball. That was a lot of points that was holding diplomas.
At one point, TB was standing next to Jim Barlow when the men's soccer grads came by.
There were hugs for the coach, but not the kind of hugs that you'd see at any other time, not after a game, not after a goal, not after coming back to school for an alumni event after being away for 10 years.
No, this was the kind of emotion reserved for this moment, with a proud coach and the players who were thanking him for all he did to get them to this day.
TigerBlog waited to see the 11 members of the men's lacrosse team. Eventually they made their way by, and in the world of athletic communications in 2017, TB wanted to get a picture for Twitter and Instagram.
He watched them as they gathered together. He'd seen them play for four years. He'd traveled with them, to their games and even to Europe. He'd seen the paths they'd gone down as players and teammates, how some played pretty much every game and others hadn't played nearly as much, how some had played for four years with barely a scratch while others had to deal with injuries that kept them off the field for long stretches.
As TB got them to get together for the picture, he thought about all of that - and wondered when the next time these 11 would all be in the same place at the same time again.
They were here now, though. The entire Class of 2017 was.
Together again, one last time, together in the moment, celebrating one more win as Princetonians.
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
Congrats Chessie, And The Class of 2017
So is this a good record for a coach: 1,042-137?
What if 20 NCAA championships (and nine more runner-up finishes) go along with that record? That's good, right?
That would be the career record for Sharon Pfluger, the head coach of field hockey and women's lacrosse at the College of New Jersey. Pfluger is one of two female coaches featured in the NCAA's Hall of Champions Legends of the Game at its Indianapolis headquarters. The other? Pat Summit.
Pfluger, whose most recent TCNJ team fell in the NCAA Division III women's lacrosse final to Gettysburg 6-5, reminds TigerBlog of Bill Tierney, another Hall-of-Fame coach whose own resume has seven NCAA lacrosse titles on it, six at Princeton and one at Denver.
Pfluger and Tierney both see each season as its own opportunity and challenge, no matter how many previous successes they've had. They don't live on their past accomplishments. Neither has lost any fire through the years. Both let their players play and are the kinds of coaches players love to play for. They are organized and completely in control, but they are not authoritarians. Their on-field intensity contrasts with their soft-spoken way off the field.
Actually, now that he thinks about it, TigerBlog met Tierney and Pfluger within a few months of each other, back in the 1989-90 range. They were winning then, and they haven't stopped since.
When TigerBlog saw Chessie Jackson had gotten the head women's basketball coaching job at TCNJ, his advice to her was to figure out what Sharon has been doing all these years and do that. It's good advice.
Jackson will be leaving Princeton, where she has been on Courtney Banghart's staff the last two years. Interestingly, the picture on the TCNJ website in the story announcing Jackson's hiring shows her at a Princeton game from two years ago, and she is pictured with Meg Griffith, another former assistant to Banghart who also became a head coach, a year ago at Columbia.
Jackson has all the attributes to be a successful head coach. She is smart (a Williams grad), and she is competitive. She knows what it takes to be successful on the Division I and Division III levels.
She learned from Banghart and Milena Flores at Princeton, which is a pretty good internship. She'll also be a really strong addition to the overall athletic department culture.
She will definitely be the kind of coach that players will want to play for. TigerBlog is a big fan of hers, and he wishes her the best in her first head coaching job.
Congratulations are the order of the day. And happy anniversary.
The anniversary wishes go out to, among others, Princeton University itself.
Today marks the 270th time that Princeton has had a Commencement ceremony; does that mean that this was the 269th Reunions? Must have been a fairly short P-Rade back then.
Actually, TigerBlog was wondering when Reunions started, so he checked out the Princeton Companion. Apparently, they started shortly after the Civil War before becoming a more recognizable event - along with the P-Rade - in the 1890s.
Meanwhile, though, it is the 270th Commencement Day today. TigerBlog remembers the celebrations around the University's 250th anniversary, and he'll stop by for the 300th in another 30 years.
When you're here every day, you don't really consider how far back the University actually dates. When you think in terms of 270 Commencements, it leaves you awed at the number of people who have come through here in that time, and what they've done when they've left here.
It's impressive. And it's not something too many other schools can come close to matching.
As for the congratulations, TB sends out his congrats to everyone who is earning a diploma at Princeton today. It's the culmination of four years of really hard work - and presumably a weekend of a lot of fun.
Just as Chessie is heading down a new road after "studying" at Princeton, so too is everyone who is getting a diploma today.
Princeton is not an easy school, obviously. It challenges its students from Day 1 all the way through to today, graduation. It hasn't been too long since the grads in caps and gowns today were finishing their senior thesis, and then experiencing the thrill of handing it in.
There are roughly 200 Princeton athletes who are graduating today too. Actually, they're technically former Princeton athletes.
They've made their way through to the finish line while balancing the demands of being a high-level Division I athlete with the Princeton academic requirements. This adds another dimension to the accomplishment.
All of the values that Princeton Athletics stands for really manifest themselves in the years ahead for the graduates. All of the lessons they learned. All of the things that athletics has taught them. All of the ways they've had to push themselves to achieve their successes, and all of the times they've had to pick themselves up when it didn't go their way. All the times they've had to sacrifice their own individual wants for the good of the team. All of the times they wanted to take the easy way out but then pushed ahead anyway.
These are all going to stay with them forever. A co-curricular education.
All of that is for the future though. Today is about the moment.
It's Graduation Day. Congratulations to the graduates, especially the athletes.
You're entitled to feel pretty good about yourself right now. You've accomplished something very, very special.
What if 20 NCAA championships (and nine more runner-up finishes) go along with that record? That's good, right?
That would be the career record for Sharon Pfluger, the head coach of field hockey and women's lacrosse at the College of New Jersey. Pfluger is one of two female coaches featured in the NCAA's Hall of Champions Legends of the Game at its Indianapolis headquarters. The other? Pat Summit.
Pfluger, whose most recent TCNJ team fell in the NCAA Division III women's lacrosse final to Gettysburg 6-5, reminds TigerBlog of Bill Tierney, another Hall-of-Fame coach whose own resume has seven NCAA lacrosse titles on it, six at Princeton and one at Denver.
Pfluger and Tierney both see each season as its own opportunity and challenge, no matter how many previous successes they've had. They don't live on their past accomplishments. Neither has lost any fire through the years. Both let their players play and are the kinds of coaches players love to play for. They are organized and completely in control, but they are not authoritarians. Their on-field intensity contrasts with their soft-spoken way off the field.
Actually, now that he thinks about it, TigerBlog met Tierney and Pfluger within a few months of each other, back in the 1989-90 range. They were winning then, and they haven't stopped since.
When TigerBlog saw Chessie Jackson had gotten the head women's basketball coaching job at TCNJ, his advice to her was to figure out what Sharon has been doing all these years and do that. It's good advice.
Jackson will be leaving Princeton, where she has been on Courtney Banghart's staff the last two years. Interestingly, the picture on the TCNJ website in the story announcing Jackson's hiring shows her at a Princeton game from two years ago, and she is pictured with Meg Griffith, another former assistant to Banghart who also became a head coach, a year ago at Columbia.
Jackson has all the attributes to be a successful head coach. She is smart (a Williams grad), and she is competitive. She knows what it takes to be successful on the Division I and Division III levels.
She learned from Banghart and Milena Flores at Princeton, which is a pretty good internship. She'll also be a really strong addition to the overall athletic department culture.
She will definitely be the kind of coach that players will want to play for. TigerBlog is a big fan of hers, and he wishes her the best in her first head coaching job.
Congratulations are the order of the day. And happy anniversary.
The anniversary wishes go out to, among others, Princeton University itself.
Today marks the 270th time that Princeton has had a Commencement ceremony; does that mean that this was the 269th Reunions? Must have been a fairly short P-Rade back then.
Actually, TigerBlog was wondering when Reunions started, so he checked out the Princeton Companion. Apparently, they started shortly after the Civil War before becoming a more recognizable event - along with the P-Rade - in the 1890s.
Meanwhile, though, it is the 270th Commencement Day today. TigerBlog remembers the celebrations around the University's 250th anniversary, and he'll stop by for the 300th in another 30 years.
When you're here every day, you don't really consider how far back the University actually dates. When you think in terms of 270 Commencements, it leaves you awed at the number of people who have come through here in that time, and what they've done when they've left here.
It's impressive. And it's not something too many other schools can come close to matching.
As for the congratulations, TB sends out his congrats to everyone who is earning a diploma at Princeton today. It's the culmination of four years of really hard work - and presumably a weekend of a lot of fun.
Just as Chessie is heading down a new road after "studying" at Princeton, so too is everyone who is getting a diploma today.
Princeton is not an easy school, obviously. It challenges its students from Day 1 all the way through to today, graduation. It hasn't been too long since the grads in caps and gowns today were finishing their senior thesis, and then experiencing the thrill of handing it in.
There are roughly 200 Princeton athletes who are graduating today too. Actually, they're technically former Princeton athletes.
They've made their way through to the finish line while balancing the demands of being a high-level Division I athlete with the Princeton academic requirements. This adds another dimension to the accomplishment.
All of the values that Princeton Athletics stands for really manifest themselves in the years ahead for the graduates. All of the lessons they learned. All of the things that athletics has taught them. All of the ways they've had to push themselves to achieve their successes, and all of the times they've had to pick themselves up when it didn't go their way. All the times they've had to sacrifice their own individual wants for the good of the team. All of the times they wanted to take the easy way out but then pushed ahead anyway.
These are all going to stay with them forever. A co-curricular education.
All of that is for the future though. Today is about the moment.
It's Graduation Day. Congratulations to the graduates, especially the athletes.
You're entitled to feel pretty good about yourself right now. You've accomplished something very, very special.
Monday, June 5, 2017
A Ride Around Reunions
So TigerBlog figured he'd try to get a jump on Friday's banquet recap entry by writing some of it advance, during the day.
As it turned out, it was a bad idea, since he didn't use a word of it when he finally sat down to write post-banquet. Well, maybe not a terrible idea, since he figured he would use some of it this week.
His premise was where the women's athletic class of 2017 ranked all-time among Princeton's top female athletes. This is part of what he wrote:
If you want to say Caroline Lind is the greatest female athlete in Princeton history, you can definitely make the case. If you want to say it's Rachael Becker, you can make that case too.
Hey, he used it.
By the way, TigerBlog finds himself writing things that he doesn't use more and more these days. Maybe it's because he's more willing to trade off deleting a few hundred words that don't say exactly what he wants to say than he was before. Why is that?
Anyway, the point is that TigerBlog would put Rachael Becker up there with any female athlete who has ever played at Princeton. She won seven Ivy League championships between field hockey and lacrosse, and she remains the only Princeton lacrosse player, male or female, ever to win the Tewaaraton Trophy as the nation's top player.
Becker was a three-time first-team All-America in lacrosse, and she was the cornerstone of Princeton's 2002 and 2003 NCAA championship teams.
She won the Tewaaraton despite playing defense, something that no other men's or women's player has ever done.
TigerBlog thought of the irony of that as he saw Becker play defense Saturday afternoon on Sherrerd Field. Was this a game? No, she was chasing down her four children - and no, none of them had any more success in getting past her than her opponents did back when she was a player.
The occasion was a Reunions reception for men's and women's lacrosse and field hockey. There were familiar faces everywhere in the large crowd, for all three sports.
TigerBlog wrote this Friday (after the banquet, not before):
It breezes by, four years at Princeton. They go from names on a recruit release to the Grad College a few days before graduation in the blink of an eye.
And that's true for the undergrads.
The alums? That's a whole different story.
TigerBlog has heard coaches and athletes talk about Princeton in terms of the four years the athlete are there and then the 40 (and more) years that follow. If those four years to compete move quickly, they only start the clock on a lifetime of being a Princeton alum.
With all due respect to every other college on the planet, including TigerBlog's own alma mater, there can't be another school that engages its alumni the way Princeton does. And there can't be another alumni group that celebrates like Princeton.
If you take the whole Reunions event for granted because you're a Princetonian, then don't. It's something really special, and something really unique about the school.
TigerBlog wanted to stop by the lacrosse/field hockey reception. He didn't want to mess around with the parking, so he brought his bicycle, parked by the empty Grad College, and rode over to Class of 1952 Stadium.
Along the way, he saw all of the pageantry of Reunions, with the crowds, the jackets, the families and little kids, the orange and black everywhere.
For a Penn guy, it's pretty impressive.
TigerBlog didn't have a wristband, so he missed out on most of the festivities, mostly the Duran Duran concert Saturday night. He would have loved to have been there for that.
He did pedal from the lacrosse/field hockey reception to see one of his favorite events, the P-Rade.
The 25th reunion class was the Class of 1992, which was near the front of the line. TigerBlog was there to see the men's lacrosse alums, who marched with the NCAA championship trophy they'd won 25 years earlier.
About the same time that the lacrosse reception was beginning, the Class of 1967 was taking its annual class picture. At the same time, the class awarded an honorary varsity letter to Sam Isaly.
If you've been to a Princeton basketball game at Jadwin in the last few decades, you've probably seen Sam Isaly. He's there in a wheelchair, the result of a broken neck he suffered back when was a high school senior, back in 1962.
Sam went to the Western Reserve Academy prep school in Hudson, Ohio, where he played football and wrestling. He needed a year of recovery from his injury before he could attend Princeton, and he graduated in 1967, going from there to the London School of Economics to a long and highly career in the medical investing field.
And there he was, getting his letter presented to him by Gary Walters, also of the Class of 1967. Gary raves about Sam Isaly, about how he succeeded at Princeton, about his attitude, about how he never once felt sorry for himself.
And now, 50 years later, he was rewarded with the letter he surely would have won all those years ago.
It was just another special Reunions moment.
So was something else, something small, that happened back at the lacrosse event.
With all of the former players TB saw in a short time, one of his favorite moments was when he got to say hi to Trent Magruder, who had been a Daily Princetonian writer before he graduated in 2008. His very-identical twin Evan had been a back-up goalie for the lacrosse team. TigerBlog liked both of them very much when they were undergrads.
TigerBlog doesn't think he's seen either of them since shortly after graduation, on the team's trip to Spain and Ireland. There they were, though.
Evan is a law school grad. Trent? He is a surgical resident at Johns Hopkins. And there, a few feet away, was Justin Tortolani, who graduated as the all-time leading scorer for the men's lacrosse team with 120 goals, a figure that has been bettered just four times since.
Justin, in addition to being a former All-America, is a surgeon in Baltimore as well. TigerBlog introduced Trent to Justin, resident to surgeon. Justin told Trent to stay in touch.
That's how Princeton works, people.
Once you're one of them, you're one of them forever.
As it turned out, it was a bad idea, since he didn't use a word of it when he finally sat down to write post-banquet. Well, maybe not a terrible idea, since he figured he would use some of it this week.
His premise was where the women's athletic class of 2017 ranked all-time among Princeton's top female athletes. This is part of what he wrote:
If you want to say Caroline Lind is the greatest female athlete in Princeton history, you can definitely make the case. If you want to say it's Rachael Becker, you can make that case too.
Hey, he used it.
By the way, TigerBlog finds himself writing things that he doesn't use more and more these days. Maybe it's because he's more willing to trade off deleting a few hundred words that don't say exactly what he wants to say than he was before. Why is that?
Anyway, the point is that TigerBlog would put Rachael Becker up there with any female athlete who has ever played at Princeton. She won seven Ivy League championships between field hockey and lacrosse, and she remains the only Princeton lacrosse player, male or female, ever to win the Tewaaraton Trophy as the nation's top player.
Becker was a three-time first-team All-America in lacrosse, and she was the cornerstone of Princeton's 2002 and 2003 NCAA championship teams.
She won the Tewaaraton despite playing defense, something that no other men's or women's player has ever done.
TigerBlog thought of the irony of that as he saw Becker play defense Saturday afternoon on Sherrerd Field. Was this a game? No, she was chasing down her four children - and no, none of them had any more success in getting past her than her opponents did back when she was a player.
The occasion was a Reunions reception for men's and women's lacrosse and field hockey. There were familiar faces everywhere in the large crowd, for all three sports.
TigerBlog wrote this Friday (after the banquet, not before):
It breezes by, four years at Princeton. They go from names on a recruit release to the Grad College a few days before graduation in the blink of an eye.
And that's true for the undergrads.
The alums? That's a whole different story.
TigerBlog has heard coaches and athletes talk about Princeton in terms of the four years the athlete are there and then the 40 (and more) years that follow. If those four years to compete move quickly, they only start the clock on a lifetime of being a Princeton alum.
With all due respect to every other college on the planet, including TigerBlog's own alma mater, there can't be another school that engages its alumni the way Princeton does. And there can't be another alumni group that celebrates like Princeton.
If you take the whole Reunions event for granted because you're a Princetonian, then don't. It's something really special, and something really unique about the school.
TigerBlog wanted to stop by the lacrosse/field hockey reception. He didn't want to mess around with the parking, so he brought his bicycle, parked by the empty Grad College, and rode over to Class of 1952 Stadium.
Along the way, he saw all of the pageantry of Reunions, with the crowds, the jackets, the families and little kids, the orange and black everywhere.
For a Penn guy, it's pretty impressive.
TigerBlog didn't have a wristband, so he missed out on most of the festivities, mostly the Duran Duran concert Saturday night. He would have loved to have been there for that.
He did pedal from the lacrosse/field hockey reception to see one of his favorite events, the P-Rade.
The 25th reunion class was the Class of 1992, which was near the front of the line. TigerBlog was there to see the men's lacrosse alums, who marched with the NCAA championship trophy they'd won 25 years earlier.
About the same time that the lacrosse reception was beginning, the Class of 1967 was taking its annual class picture. At the same time, the class awarded an honorary varsity letter to Sam Isaly.
If you've been to a Princeton basketball game at Jadwin in the last few decades, you've probably seen Sam Isaly. He's there in a wheelchair, the result of a broken neck he suffered back when was a high school senior, back in 1962.
Sam went to the Western Reserve Academy prep school in Hudson, Ohio, where he played football and wrestling. He needed a year of recovery from his injury before he could attend Princeton, and he graduated in 1967, going from there to the London School of Economics to a long and highly career in the medical investing field.
And now, 50 years later, he was rewarded with the letter he surely would have won all those years ago.
It was just another special Reunions moment.
So was something else, something small, that happened back at the lacrosse event.
With all of the former players TB saw in a short time, one of his favorite moments was when he got to say hi to Trent Magruder, who had been a Daily Princetonian writer before he graduated in 2008. His very-identical twin Evan had been a back-up goalie for the lacrosse team. TigerBlog liked both of them very much when they were undergrads.
TigerBlog doesn't think he's seen either of them since shortly after graduation, on the team's trip to Spain and Ireland. There they were, though.
Evan is a law school grad. Trent? He is a surgical resident at Johns Hopkins. And there, a few feet away, was Justin Tortolani, who graduated as the all-time leading scorer for the men's lacrosse team with 120 goals, a figure that has been bettered just four times since.
Justin, in addition to being a former All-America, is a surgeon in Baltimore as well. TigerBlog introduced Trent to Justin, resident to surgeon. Justin told Trent to stay in touch.
That's how Princeton works, people.
Once you're one of them, you're one of them forever.
Friday, June 2, 2017
Finite Moments
Spencer Weisz laughed and Spencer Weisz got teary, and that's really what the night was about in a nutshell.
The occasion was the Gary Walters ’67 Princeton Varsity Club Banquet, the 20th such banquet, held last night at the Grad College. TigerBlog has said before that the average temperature for these banquets has been 70, since it's either 90 or 50. Last night, it really was 70, and it's hard to imagine a more perfect night for a banquet.
Early on in the banquet, Spencer Weisz - the 2017 Ivy League men's basketball Player of the Year - appeared on the video screens. The idea was to find a Princeton senior athlete and have him or her compete against other senior athletes in different sports, and Weisz was the athlete chosen to be the centerpiece of the video.
He was the perfect choice. For starters, he's a really good all-around athlete, and the person in the video needed to be a good all-around athlete.
For another, he has the right personality for it. He is naturally funny, without forcing it, and he comes across well on camera. Actually, he'd make a really good broadcaster.
So there on the screens, with his fellow seniors watching, was Weisz. He fenced with Peter Pak. He dove with Lisa Li. He played golf with Alex Dombrowski. He played volleyball with Brittany Ptak and Cara Mattaliano. He faced-off against Zach Currier. Tried to hit a softball against Claire Klausner. Played soccer with Haley Chow and Tyler Lussi.
Oh, and he threw the hammer with Julia Ratcliffe.
It made for a really good final product, the abbreviated version of which was shown at the banquet and the longer version of which will be available on the webpage shortly. The audience seemed to like it. They certainly laughed enough.
Then, about an hour later, there was Weisz on the stage. He'd just won the Roper Trophy as the outstanding senior male athlete, and now he was speaking.
This time, he was getting emotional. He didn't exactly break down, but he came close. It was from the heart. There can be no way to doubt that.
And it was great.
He talked about coming to Princeton with doubts. He talked about the honor of wearing "Princeton" across his chest. He talked about how his coach, Mitch Henderson, pushed him to get the very best of him. He talked about his teammates and the other coaches and how much they meant to him. He talked about his parents and all of their support, saying he could literally count on one hand the number of games of his that they'd missed.
It was a great speech, especially given that it was being done in an impromptu fashion.
In many ways, he was speaking for every senior there. Yes, he was one of the big award winners, so he got the microphone. But all of the senior athletes there had a similar story to tell.
It breezes by, four years at Princeton. They go from names on a recruit release to the Grad College a few days before graduation in the blink of an eye.
They have their own experiences along the way, but they all came here with uncertainty, they all became part of a team, they all had a coach who pushed them, and now they all sat there balancing the emotions of the moment - the joy of graduating from a place like Princeton, coupled with the finality of knowing that a glorious chapter of their lives had ended.
What had Sam Gravitte called them earlier? Finite moments.
Gravitte, the ultra-talented men's lacrosse player/actor/singer, gave the keynote address for the athletes, and his speech spoke of those competing emotions of the moment. He spoke of looking out at his 40 teammates - brothers, he said - in the audience when he was on stage in the musical "Once" and how much it meant to him.
He also, though, talked about walking out onto the stage with his fellow cast members after the last performance, and talked about walking off Sherrerd Field after his last-ever practice. Those are finite moments, he said.
The connection to Princeton doesn't end this week, of course. As a reminder, there were the two alumni speakers, Frank Sowinksi (men's basketball) and Lori Dickerson Fouche (softball). And University president Chris Eisgruber, who gave a rousing congratulations to the athletes before he introduced Dickerson Fouche.
Weisz was one of six finalists for the Roper Trophy. There were 10 finalists for the von Kienbusch Award for the outstanding senior female athlete.
It was as good a lineup of 10 senior female athletes as Princeton has ever produced. TigerBlog has mentioned this before. This group included Olympians, national champions, All-Americas, leading scorers, Players of the Year, on and on.
The winner, though, was Ashleigh Johnson of the women's water polo team, the one at Princeton and the U.S. one that won a gold medal last summer at the Olympics. The idea that the other nine weren't the winner shows you just how incredible the field was, and the fact that the winner was fairly obvious shows you how incredible Johnson is.
Like Weisz, she spoke about her coach, Luis Nicolao, and how he convinced her that she had the ability to be an Olympian when she didn't believe it. She talked about her teammates and how much they had supported her, despite how hard she pushed them. She talked about her mother and the support she'd gotten from her.
It was another emotional moment, in a night of emotion that was the start of a few days of emotions.
There is something about real emotion. It can't be faked. It can't be hidden. It can't be ignored.
And there it was last night, on display.
Laughter. And a tear or two.
And the knowledge that they'd given their all as Princeton athletes, they'd built relationships that they'll have forever - and that now it was pretty much time to go their separate ways.
Finite moments.
Infinite memories.
Thursday, June 1, 2017
The 25th Reunion Tent
TigerBlog did three things back on April 14.
One was his taxes. Wait. Actually, that might not be true. Oh, not because he wasn't procrastinating. That's how he's always been. He doesn't think of it as "procrastinating." He thinks of it as "deadline driven."
And the deadline to files taxes wasn't April 15th this year.
Actually, he might not have done his taxes until that Monday, since they weren't actually due until April 18 this year, which was a Tuesday. TigerBlog wonders why that was.
He gets that the 15th was a Saturday. And who wants to file taxes on a Sunday. Surely everyone had something better to do that day.
What was wrong with Monday the 17th, though?
Anyway, let TB start over.
He's sure he did two things on April 14.
First, he drove to Dartmouth for the Princeton men's lacrosse game the next day. And, he also wrote this in his blog:
Here is TigerBlog's mid-April lacrosse prediction: Maryland will win the NCAA championship in both men's and women's lacrosse.
Then, six weeks later, his prediction actually played out.
In the interest of full disclosure, it wasn't his only prediction. He also said this just before the men's tournament started:
For the final, he'll go with Maryland-Ohio State. For the winner, he'll go with Ohio State. No. Maryland. No. Ohio State. Hmmm.
So he was sort of right. It was Maryland-Ohio State in the final. He's pretty good at this.
Or is he? Let's just say he should have simply left it there.
This past Friday, he hedged a bit, when he gave these reasons:
1) Trevor Baptiste and 2) Bill Tierney. Maybe it's the fact that he spent 22 years with Tierney at Princeton, but TigerBlog will go with Denver. Especially if Baptiste wins face-offs the way he has been.
As it turned out, Baptiste didn't win face-offs the way he had been, Maryland squeaked by Denver, Ohio State snuck past Towson and then Maryland was fairly dominant in the final, one day after the Maryland women also won the championship.
It was only the third time that a team has won both lacrosse championships. Actually, it was the second-straight year, after North Carolina did so in 2016. The only other time? It was 1994, when Princeton did so.
Shortly after the game ended Monday, TigerBlog tweeted this:
For TigerBlog, this was NCAA championship No. 22 and his 22nd in the last 25 years. He was there with Princeton in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004. He's been there every year since as part of the official stat crew.Congrats @TerpsMLax @MarylandWLax. Welcome to the exclusive club Princeton started in 1994 and let North Carolina in last year.— Princeton Lacrosse (@TigerLacrosse) May 29, 2017
This past weekend was the longest one of them all, since the Division I semifinals and final were mixed in with the usual five games - Division I semifinals and final and Division II and Division III finals on the men's side. That was eight games in four days - including the Sunday marathon of the Division I women's final and the Division II and III men's games.
Yeah. It was great.
Each year at halftime of the Division I final, the NCAA honors the team that won the championship 25 years earlier. Each year TigerBlog would watch it and think of how many years it would be until it was Princeton who was out there.
The year would be 2017, the 25th anniversary of the first of Princeton's six championships.
TigerBlog has been around some great teams at Princeton, with some special moments. The most special to him has always been the 1992 men's lacrosse team.
Why? TB wrote about this once before, back in 2012. You can read it HERE.
Or he can give you the highlights.
TigerBlog had no idea what lacrosse was all about before he started covering Princeton lacrosse in 1990. Back then, Bill Tierney was the young coach of the team that was trying to make the leap to national prominence, and TB was on the sideline for all of it.
In 1991, the team lost a heartbreaking 14-13 triple-overtime game to Towson in the quarterfinals. The next year, the Tigers broke through, winning that first NCAA championship.
Tierney was the first lacrosse coach TigerBlog ever met. The players on the team - David Morrow, Justin Tortolani, Scott Bacigalupo, Mike Mariano, Kevin Lowe, Taylor Simmers, Scott Reinhardt, Andy Moe, Greg Waller, Ed Calkins and others - were the first players he ever saw play and got to know.
Before that, lacrosse was something they played in Baltimore and Syracuse and on Long Island, a game that was completely foreign to TigerBlog. Since then, lacrosse has come to be something pretty important for TigerBlog, and he has gotten to know all kinds of people in the sport who have become among his best friends.
And, of course, both of his children started playing at an early age.
His experiences with lacrosse have been among the most special in his life in so many ways, and they all trace their way back to that group of people.
It was chilly and cloudy back on Memorial Day 1992. There was rain in the area. Princeton would defeat Syracuse 10-9 in two OTs.
The weather was the same this past Monday, when TigerBlog walked around from one side of Gillette Stadium to the other, to where the 1992 Princeton Tigers had gathered prior to their appearance on the field at halftime. TB knew he was in the right place when he saw a tent that said "Princeton Lacrosse" on it.
The 25th Reunion Tent, as it were.
And there they were. The familiar faces. The ones who had meant so much to him when he was first starting out in the sport.
Had it really been 25 years?
The first person that TB saw when he got to the tent was Calkins, a middie who is now the president of the Friends' of Princeton Lacrosse. Then there was Bacigalupo, as great a goalie as who ever played. And Morrow, as great a defenseman as who ever payed.
And Moe, who scored that game-winning goal. Greg Waller was there. TigerBlog congratulated him on keeping the career and season ground balls records from Zach Currier, who came within one of tying Waller's 1991 season total of 131.
There were others, too, including the team managers.
TigerBlog had to go before the tent got too crowded, since he needed to get back inside the stadium. By halftime, almost all of the team was there, together again out on the field.
(photo by Laura Devine)
Nobody TigerBlog has ever met does reunions (big "R" and small "r") like Princetonians. This was another example of it.
The bond that these people formed together is unbreakable. They came to Princeton to play lacrosse for a coach who exuded confidence when perhaps none was warranted, and then they accomplished the extraordinary, joining a team coming off a 2-13 season and four years later winning an NCAA championship together.
When they came to Princeton, TigerBlog never gave lacrosse much of a thought and in fact had seen one college game in his life, back when he was at Penn.
When they left, TigerBlog was hooked on the sport - and grateful to the guys who had hooked him on it.
Twenty-five years later, he still is.
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