21 Years Later

TigerBlog went to put his new chair down on the beach Saturday afternoon when he noticed a woman about 10 feet away who was glaring at him.

What was the issue? He couldn't figure it out. Maybe it was his "Princeton Lacrosse" shirt? Was she a hater? 

Eventually, TB moved further away. Then, about 30 minutes later, he noticed that the woman was yelling at a different guy who had sat down where TB was before. This time, the man yelled back at her. Then they both turned the other way.

At one point, TB walked up to the guy to ask what had happened, and he said she felt he had the whole beach and why did he have to sit so close to her, even though he was nowhere near her. As it turned out, though, the guy was a Princeton fan, a football season ticket holder for that matter. 

He and TB spoke for awhile about the Tigers, about his seats, about his former career as a pilot for United. Nice guy.

This is a great time of year to be at the Jersey Shore. It's post-Labor Day, so the crowds are mostly gone. The weather is perfect — and it was especially so on Saturday, when it was sunny and 80 degrees with a cooling breeze off the ocean.

It was a day at the beach. Yesterday was not. 

Those two sentences are literal and figurative.

Saturday was Sept. 10. For TigerBlog, it's always a bit of a surreal day, a reminder of what the world used to be like. 

Yesterday was Sept. 11. That's always a day to remember when the world changed.

It's been 21 years now since nearly 3,000 people died in the terrorist attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon and in western Pennsylvania. It's hard to believe that most of the current Princeton students weren't even born yet on the day of the attacks.

When TigerBlog was flying back from North Carolina last weekend with the field hockey team, he explained to the freshmen that before 9/11, anyone could go up to the gate simply by walking through the metal detector. If you were meeting someone who was flying in, you could stand at the gate and see them as they got off the plane.

It's a world they never knew. 

This is what TB's memory of 9/11/2001 is, something he's written many times before:

He was dropping off TigerBlog Jr. at the University League Nursery School, on the far side of the parking lot outside Jadwin. It was the most perfect weather day, crystal clear, sunshine, no humidity, not a cloud to be found.

TB dropped TBJ off at the school, and the woman who was the office manager said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.

TigerBlog walked outside, looked up, and thought "how in the world did that happen?" By the time he got to Jadwin, he found out how.

Most of that day was spent huddled around the only television around, the one in the athletic training room in Caldwell Field House. It was a day where people spoke very little, where everyone had dazed looks on their faces.

By mid-afternoon, he went back to get TBJ at the nursery school. He can still see the children, swinging on the swings, playing in a sandbox, oblivious - happily oblivious - to what had happened to the innocence of the world outside that playground.

Later that night, after it was dark, TigerBlog walked outside to the end of his driveway and looked up. There were no planes in the sky. They'd all been grounded. TB remembers it vividly, the sight of the stars, without planes, above a world of confusion, angst, uncertainty, fear.

In fact, when TB got to Jadwin that day, the first person he saw was John Mack, now the Ford Family Director of Athletics and then in his first year of working in the department. 

There were 14 Princetonians who were killed on 9/11. There were hundreds more who were near Ground Zero when it all happened.

One of those who died was men's lacrosse player John Schroeder. TB wrote about him a year ago on the 20th anniversary.

When TB went to meet with John's father Jack, he was struck by the American flag that hangs in his kitchen. The stripes are composed with the names of every person who was killed that day.

It's an overwhelming thing to see them all there and to imagine all of their stories. And, each time the anniversary roles around, there are people who mark another year without them.

Sept. 10 is the last day of innocence.

Sept. 11 is the day it all changed. It's a day that always needs remembrance, and reverence.

Rugby's First Home Game, Greg Busch Is Back, PLL Playoffs And More

The Princeton Department of Athletics had its first staff meeting of the 2022-23 academic year yesterday.

As he sat in the Frist Multi-Purpose Room, TigerBlog thought back to the first time he attended one of these meetings. Back then, the man who was leading the one yesterday, Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack, would have been in high school.

TB figured, somewhat weirdly, that maybe a third of the people in the room weren't even born yet during the five years he spent covering Princeton back at the newspaper. Yikes

One of the highlights of the meeting yesterday was the presentation by women's rugby head coach Josie Ziluca on the rules of the game. TB has seen some rugby and has the most basic sense of how it works. Hearing from Josie was pretty enlightening.

Ziluca and her team made their varsity debut last weekend at Sacred Heart. The team plays at home (on the Washington Road field) for the first time as a varsity program tomorrow at 1 against Army. 

The game will be the team's alumni appreciate day. This is a huge year for the rugby alumni group, who had such great experiences and successes while the program was on the club level. Now that it's varsity, there is a great deal of pride for those who helped pave the way.

TB knows enough about rugby to know that it's a wild sport to watch. Admission tomorrow and for all women's rugby games is free.

What else can TB tell you today? 

* Also at the meeting yesterday was Greg Busch, who will be the new Senior Associate Director of Athletics/Student-Athlete Experience. He replaces Allison Rich, who left to become the Director of Athletics at New Hampshire.

Busch, who has spent the last 17 years at Rider, is a 1999 Princeton graduate who was a member of the men's soccer team. He has also been an adjunct professor at Rider, and he's had TB come to speak in his class.

Before he went to Rider, though, he first worked at Princeton. In fact, Busch and TB used to make the Senior-Athlete banquet video, back when it was done on iMovie and done by two relative novices who spent hours and hours watching the little pinwheel spin around and around as the file got bigger and bigger. It was frustrating as anything TB has ever done here, but on the plus side, he did get to know Busch and realize what a great person he is.

When TB texted Busch to congratulate him, this was the response he got:

Btw just thinking- do u want to start recording the senior student-athlete banquet acknowledgement video on iMovie now?  Should be ready by reunions with the multicolored circle spinning for the next 9 months…

Ah, some memories will last forever. 

In the meantime, Greg Busch will be a great addition to the Princeton senior staff. 

* The Premier Lacrosse League will hold its semifinal games tomorrow at Audi Field in Washington, D.C. Princeton will be well-represented there. 

It will start with the Waterdogs and Whipsnakes at 1 and be followed by the Archers and Chaos around 3:30. The Waterdogs include Princeton alums Michael Sowers and Zach Currier. The Archers have Princeton alums Tom Schreiber and Ryan Ambler and is coached by former Tiger head coach Chris Bates.

A week ago, the four Princetonians combined for 10 goals and four assists in their quarterfinal wins. 

You can watch the games on ESPN+, and the Whipsnakes-Waterdogs game will also be on ABC.

* TigerBlog wrote about the women's soccer team here yesterday and wrote about Princeton and women's soccer for goprincetontigers.com.

TB wrote a feature story about Princeton's leadership in the National Women's Soccer League, centered around alums/team owners Kara Nortman (Angel City), Chris and Angie Long (Kansas City) and Mark Wilf (Orlando).

Nortman was a keynote speaker at an event at the recent UEFA Women's Championship in England, where the home team won the championship in front of 87,000 fans at Wembley Stadium. That event, and the Women's World Cup, have helped build the NWSL into a stable cutting-edge league that is seeing nothing but growth.

You can read the story HERE.

* In addition to the women's rugby game tomorrow, there are also home events in field hockey (today at 4 against No. 7 Syracuse), men's water polo (Princeton Invitational all weekend) and women's soccer (Sunday at 1).

There are also other events that aren't too far away, including another field hockey game at No. 15 Rutgers at noon Sunday and the HYP cross country race tomorrow in Franklin Park.

The complete athletic schedule is HERE.

Tigers Host Tigers

The third most common nickname among American four-year college teams is Tigers.

What are the first two? TigerBlog gives you a few paragraphs to think about it. 

There are in fact 72 schools whose nickname is Tigers. The first of all of them was, of course, Princeton, who came dangerously close to being called the "Lions" after the Class of 1879 gift of two Lions "to guard Nassau Hall."

Lions, though, would give way to Tigers soon enough. It actually sort of started on Thanksgiving Day 1876, when Princeton and Yale played football. It was on that day that the team wore uniforms for the first time, all black ones with a "P" on the chest.

Eventually, the team added orange stripes on the sleeves. Orange became the color of choice in honor of William of Orange of the House of Nassau, who was an 18th century English king. 

In 1882, after one of those games with the black jerseys with orange stripes, a newspaper story credited Princeton with "fighting like Tigers," and it stuck.

Meanwhile, back in the present day, you'd think that with so many teams who are nicknamed Tigers that there'd be a lot of Tiger vs. Tiger games. In reality, there are hardly any.

One of those games is tonight, though, when the Tigers (Princeton) play host to the Tigers (LSU) in women''s soccer. Gametime is 7. Admission is free.

LSU, from the SEC, comes in with a record of 4-0-2. The game tonight will be the first of two in New Jersey for the Tigers, who also play at Rutgers Sunday. Rutgers is the only team to have beaten Princeton so far this year. 

The Tigers (the LSU ones) have already played two games in California, three in Louisiana and one in Mississippi. They were an NCAA tournament team a year ago. 

LSU has never played an Ivy League team before or played a game in the state of New Jersey before.

As for the Tigers (the Princeton ones), prior to tonight, the only other time Princeton played a team from the SEC was in 2004, when the Tigers (assume TB means Princeton's the rest of the way) knocked off Vanderbilt 3-0 in a game played at Penn. For the record, Emily Behncke had two of the Princeton goals that day, while the third came from Esmeralda Negron.

That win improved Princeton's record to 3-0 on the season. The Tigers would finish 19-3 and reach the NCAA Final Four that year, an accomplishment that was a first — and remains an only — for an Ivy women's soccer team.

The 2004 season opened, by the way, with Texas A&M, who is now in the SEC but back then was still in the Big 12. Princeton won that game 2-1 on goals by Diana Matheson and Negron in the first six minutes. 

Princeton is also home Sunday (at 1) against George Mason, a team that Princeton doesn't have a lot of history with but what history does exist includes something huge. Tonight's game will be the eighth between them, and George Mason (they're the Patriots) has a 4-3 edge, though Princeton won 3-1 last year in the only game they've played against each other in the last 20 years. 

The first game in the series was a huge moment in program history, as it was the first NCAA tournament game Princeton ever played in women's soccer. The Tigers would win that one 1-0.

If you're wondering who scored the first NCAA tournament goal in Princeton women's soccer history, the answer is Kerry Shaw, who headed in a cross from Kathy DeBoer with 11 minutes to play.

Princeton will play Thursday (at Hofstra) and Sunday (home against Delaware) next week as well. After that is the Ivy opener on Sept. 24 at Yale. 

Also, the answer to the question of the most common nicknames? Hawks is second. And No. 1?

Eagles. 

TB wouldn't have guessed that. He'd have figured Lions or Bulldogs, which happen to be four and five on the list.

And as a reminder, it's Tigers vs. Tigers at 7 tonight on Sherrerd Field.

There'll Never Be Another Georgie Buck

Our Man Buck
There once was a guy named Buck,
Was always around when teams needed luck.
Fields needed seeding, courts needed cleaning,
Clocks weren't working, lights were blinking,
Panic was everywhere, mayhem was extreme,
But a call to Buck made everything peaceful and serene.
He seeded the fields, cleaned the courts,
Fixed the clocks, turned on the lights and iced the rink,
Just when everything appeared lost and out of sync.
Buck to the rescue, he averted the brink.
He retired one day, while kids were at play,
He bowed out with grace, saying good luck from Georgie Buck,
Coaches and players may come and go,
But everyone knows that Buck ran the show.

- Pete Carril  

It's next to impossible for TigerBlog to think of George Boccanfuso without thinking about Pete Carril, and so it is that the sadness of having now lost both of them in a span of two weeks is a bit overwhelming.

Just as there will never be another Pete Carril, there will never be another George Buccanfuso. And if a fraction of the people who follow Princeton Athletics know the name "George Buccanfuso" who know the name "Pete Carril," it doesn't change the impact that he had here.

If you do know him by name, it's more likely that you know him by the only name that TB ever called him: "Georgie Buck."

If you knew him personally, you knew what a kind, gentle, giving, happy, funny — and really, really hard-working — man he was. You knew his raspy voice and easy laugh. You knew Phyllis, his wife of 67 years, almost all of that time spent on the Princeton campus. 

You might not have known that the longest time he was away from Princeton were the four years he spent in the Army, including serving in the European and Pacific theaters during World War II.

More than anything else, you knew his work ethic.

Georgie Buck passed away on Aug. 29, at the age of 96. It was two weeks to the day after the death of Coach Carril.

There's sadness to that, to be sure. There's also some sort of eternal happiness to that, knowing that two men who meant so much to each other, who gave so much to Princeton, are united again.

Carril came to Princeton in 1967, or 20 years after Georgie Buck was on the payroll. Georgie grew up in town and on campus, where his father John was the head of the athletic grounds crew beginning in 1920 and lasting 47 years. Before any of that, John worked on the crew that built Palmer Stadium — in 1914.

As for Georgie, he followed in his father's footsteps beginning in 1947. He'd "retire" from Princeton in 1989, though he never actually stopped working.

Every day in Jadwin Gym, there was Georgie Buck, mop in hand, floor to be cleaned. There was Georgie Buck, fixing the clock during a game. There was Georgie Buck, doing whatever it was that needed to be done.

He did this in his 70s. He did this in his 80s. He did this in his 90s. 

When he was well into his 80s, he fell off a scaffold and broke a bone in his neck. This was confirmed by an x-ray, which he waited five days to get. He was a tough guy. 

He and Carril were cut from the same cloth, and it's not surprising that they got along so well. Carril never called him George either. In fact, he rarely called him Georgie Buck. From Coach, it was usually just "Yo Buck."

When TB first became the men's basketball contact, Carril insisted that there be a bio of Georgie Buck in the media guide. He also wanted his poem "Our Man Buck" to be included. It's the poem that TB started with today.

TB went back and watched the 2017 video on goprincetontigers.com about Georgie Buck. He could not help but smile when he watched THIS.

You can hear Carril talk about Buck. You can hear Gary Walters and Mitch Henderson talk about him as well. Phyllis is in it as well.

You can also get a real sense of who the man was, and you can hear the raspy voice that TB mentioned. 

Georgie Buck was always good to TB. He was always good to everyone at Princeton. It won't be the same to walk into Jadwin Gym and not see him. 

Rest in peace, Georgie Buck. 

Say hi to Coach.

The Deciding Vote

After TigerBlog posted the picture of the Princeton and Penn field hockey teams last week, he received this email:

"When have you have seen Tigers and Quakers who were smiling together before?"

That's easy. Here you go, from 2017:

That's Zack DiGregorio, at the time a Penn student, before he and TB did the stats for a men's lacrosse game at Franklin Field. Zack was a student-worker in the Penn athletic communications office.

See? A Tiger and a Quaker, unless you consider TB to still be a Quaker nearly 40 years after graduation. Or, with all of Zack's close ties to Princeton Athletics through his father Steve, maybe he's more a Tiger than a Quaker.

For his money, TB will call this a Tiger and a Quaker. When Zack worked as a student, he worked for Michael Mahoney and Chas Dorman. Of course, Chas is now a Quaker turned Tiger, as he now works for the Princeton OAC.

Zack, by the way, turned his back on what could have been a great career in athletic communications to go into politics. TB supposes it's noble.

Had Zack stayed in athletic communications, he would have had a vote for the possible name change for the organization that since 1957 has been called "College Sports Information Directors of America."

As you recall, TB has mentioned this twice now. The vote was held last Wednesday, with the results announced late Thursday — and the results were stunning.

First, TB will remind you of what was on the ballot. The choice was either to keep the existing CoSIDA name, or to change it to "College Sports Communicators." 

Then, he reminds you of what it would take to make the name change. There were two things that had to happen: 1) at least 10 percent of eligible voters had to vote and 2) at least 60 percent had to vote to change.

So what happened? 

Well, there were 3,619 eligible voters, so obviously 362 votes were necessary. The total number of votes was 1,235, so that satisfied the first requirement.

Next, the vote was 741 votes to make the change and 494 votes not to make the change.

In case you don't have your calculator with you, the percentage of yes votes would be the number of such votes divided by the total votes cast. That would be 741/1,235 — or .600000.

Not .601. Not .600001. Exactly .600000.

Had one person who voted "yes" instead voted "no," the percentage would have been .59919. If one person who didn't vote had instead voted "no," the percentage would have been .5995.

That's just craziness.

TigerBlog voted "yes" for the proposal. It's very weird to think that had he simply clicked "no," then it wouldn't have passed. How many times have you heard that every vote counts? And how many times have you thought no election can ever be decided by one vote.

TB had never heard of a voting for anything where one vote either way would have swung it, so he did  a search. It turns out it has happened once on the federal level, in a New York Congressional race in 1910, when Charles Bennett Smith defeated incumbent D.S. Alexander 20,685-20,684.

So now what? CoSIDA, as it's always been known, will be rebranding. TB voted yes because he thinks the term "sports information" is part of a bygone era of the profession. 

Sports Communicators is a more modern name, as well as one that does a better job of reflecting what exactly those in the profession do these days. This is from the story on the website:

The name change is a major step in a larger strategic plan to highlight the association’s evolution and expansion. This move better aligns with its membership makeup and further positions the organization to support and advocate for its members who serve in the communications, digital and creative college sports industry, regardless of position or title.

TB is okay with all of that. At the same time, he's always liked the "CoSIDA" acronym. 

CSC? He'll get used to it.

He has to. After all, he's the one who cast the deciding vote.

Hanging Out At Gate B4

Exactly three weeks from today, the Princeton field hockey team will open its Ivy League season with a home game against Penn.

On that day, they'll be opponents. Rivals.

TigerBlog isn't sure what exactly the word is to describe what the teams were yesterday, but it definitely isn't opponents or rivals. 

They were travel partners, and not in the traditional Ivy sense of playing the same opponents on opposite sites in a weekend. They were actual travel partners, as in traveling together. 

They were practice partners. They were dinner companions. 

It was quite an interesting day for the two, uh, rivals.

Princeton and Penn both open their seasons today at the University of North Carolina, where Penn will play Louisville at 2:30 and then Princeton will play the host team at 5. Come Sunday, it'll be Princeton-Louisville at 11 and Penn-UNC at 2. If you're keeping track, UNC is ranked second, Louisville is ranked ninth and Princeton is ranked 13th.

Princeton's original plan to get to Chapel Hill was to take a flight that left Newark at 9:30 yesterday morning. The original itinerary for the teams' practices was for Penn to have UNC's game field at noon and Princeton at 3.

It all started to go a little pear-shaped when Princeton's flight was cancelled Wednesday night. The Tigers scrambled to get on a different flight, which left Philadelphia at 8:49 yesterday morning. 

Or at least was supposed to.

Princeton left Jadwin Gym at 5:30 to go to the Philly airport. There was no line at security, so everyone was through by 6:45, leaving two hours until departure. 

That's where Princeton and Penn first crossed paths. The Quakers were on the same flight.

The plane was to leave from Gate B4. It came from Indianapolis to Philly very early yesterday, and it was sitting at the gate looking good to go by 7:30 or so. The board said "On Time" in big letters.

When it came time to board, though, there was an announcement that no traveler wants to hear: The flight is delayed due to "mechanical problems with the aircraft."

The very nice people at the gate said they'd update everyone every 15 minutes. In the meantime, the Princeton team and the Penn team were on opposite sides of the waiting area, both teams sprawled out, Princeton in orange "Princeton field hockey" sweatshirts and Penn in gray "Penn field hockey" sweatshirts.

Eventually, they started to do what you would expect, which is to start to mingle. It's the kind of sport where most people know someone on the other team. 

Every 15 minutes came the update: "No update." Eventually, the two coaching staffs talked about the best way to get to North Carolina in case the flight never left. Charter a flight? Rent a bus? Rebook? 

Pretty much every food stand in the gate area had either an orange or gray sweatshirt stop by. There was laughing, singing, social media posting (Gracie McGowan deserves the credit for that).  

The time the flight was supposed to leave came and went. So did 10:30. And 11:00. For the entire time, a man around 35 or so stood in front of the desk, as if the call to board was going to come any second. TB told him he admired his optimism. The man responded that he had been on the flight from Indianapolis to Philly and that he "knew first hand the plane was working before."

Finally the announcement came: This plane is being replaced by a different one that is at Gate A11.

It's about a seven-minute walk from Gate B4 to Gate A11, so all the orange and gray sweatshirts made their way along. There was another shorter wait there, and then it was wheels up at noon, just after the captain said that the issue with the other plane was "a problem with the fuel, and well, we need the fuel to fly the plane." She made a good point.

So now it was take-off, five and half hours after everyone got through security. The flight itself took 50 minutes, 50 very smooth minutes. As the plane landed, the captain wished "both teams good luck."

Of course, Penn had already missed its practice time. Princeton's coaches offered Penn one half of the field for the Tigers' slot, and so there they were back together again, on opposite sides of the field. 

If that wasn't enough, it turned out that the teams had made reservations in the same restaurant, and so there they were again, eating together.

In all of TB's time at Princeton, he's never seen anything like it. The two teams became an extended Ivy family, three weeks before they meet each other again.

When TB was doing his interviews for his book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton, one of the common themes was that through the decades, the details of the games blurred considerably, but the moments together away from the games were never forgotten. 

TB thought of that while he watched the scene play out. Maybe Princeton and Penn will win this weekend. Maybe they won't. Those details will fade.

They will always remember the time together at Gate B4, and for the rest of the day. 

It was certainly an adventure.

Do You Remember

Here is something for you to start the new month:

Okay, so it's not the 21st night of September. Still, it is September, and that is the name of the song.

That video was recorded in 1990 in Japan. That's around the time that TigerBlog saw Earth, Wind and Fire in New York City, and it's among the absolute best concerts he's ever seen.

TB's favorite song by the group is "Fantasy," which is up there with the best songs he has ever heard. Across the board, though, the group has such a unique and powerful sound that he can't think of a single song of theirs that he doesn't like.

So now it's September. August certainly flew by, right? 

TB starts out the month by sending his congratulations to his colleague Elliott Carr on his recent engagement to Colleen Doherty, who works as event and administrative coordinator at the Ivy League office. The two were recently in Australia, Elliott's home country and a place he hadn't been able to go since the start of the pandemic.

You have to travel a long way to find a nicer person than Elliott. TB is very happy for the two of them.

Being that this is September, there are some other pieces of news for TB to share, though none are as big as Elliott's news.

First, TB has a new title, his 10th all-time at Princeton. This one is his favorite: Senior Writer/Historian.

That sounds pretty good, right? And speaking of titles, that leads him into the second thing he wants to mention.

Of all of his titles, none of them has had the phrase "sports information director" in it. Yesterday was the day for members of the College Sports Information Directors of America to vote on whether or not to change the name to College Sports Communicators.

TB wrote about this when the issue was first presented and said he wasn't sure how he was going to vote. He ultimately voted in favor of the name change, largely because he believes that the term "sports information" conjures up images of a profession that doesn't exist anymore. The organization has had the name, by the way, for more than 60 years now.

He's not wild about the name "College Sports Communicators," and he does like "CoSIDA" as a nickname. Still, he voted for the change, because, you know, change is often a good thing. Maybe "College Athletics Communicators" might have been better.

The results of the voting will be known today. TB will let you know. To change the name requires a 60 percent "yes" vote and a minimum of 10 percent of the eligible voters to have voted. The number that TB is most interested in is actually the percentage of people who voted.

Lastly, today — Sept. 1, 2022 — marks TB's first day on the NCAA men's lacrosse rules committee. It's a four-year term, and TB is one of four new members of the eight-person panel. Maryland head coach John Tillman is the chair, and there is representation across all three NCAA divisions. There's also a mix of coaches (five of them) and administrators (three).

TB has taken a unique road to the committee. His playing career is limited to an over-40 league in which he tore his patella tendon. His coaching career consisted of six years of coaching his son.

His lacrosse background is in communications. He has helped write the rules of statkeeping, which has required anticipating every conceivable scenario that could happen in a game. He's always been interested in the intricacies of the rules, and he has some ideas about ways to improve the way the game is played. 

At the same time, there have been a great number of changes made to the game over the last few years, almost all of them for the better.

He joins the committee on what is an off-year, since rule changes are for the most part enacted every other year. There is a chance to make rules changes that require immediate attention, but for the most part, this first year will be spent observing, discussing and getting a lot of feedback.

His term runs through 2026. 

Anyway, welcome to September.

Cutdown Day

If the Princeton men's lacrosse team couldn't win the NCAA championship last spring, then TigerBlog is glad that it was Maryland that did. 

Maryland defeated Princeton 13-8 in the semifinals and then Cornell 9-7 in the final. In doing so, the Terps became the first team since Loyola in 2012 — meaning the first team in the shot clock era — to hold both of its Final Four opponents to under 10 goals. Maryland also prevented the 2022 Tigers from becoming the first team in program history to be in double figures in every game of a season.

The accomplishment of the Maryland defense speaks volumes about the team's defensive coordinator, right? And who would that be?

It would be Jesse Bernhardt, himself one of the top defensemen in the world the last decade. Why was TB rooting for Maryland if Princeton couldn't win? It's because Jesse Bernhardt was Princeton's defensive coordinator before he went on to Maryland. 

Bernhardt spent one season at Princeton before being replaced by the current D coordinator, Jeremy Hirsch, who himself built a defense that made it back to Championship Weekend. 

As for Bernhardt, TB learned a lot about him in the one year he was at Princeton, including that his favorite movie is "The Great Escape." He also learned about the Bernhardt family, with his father Jim, older brother Jake and younger brother Jared.

Jake is the offensive coordinator at Maryland, joining his brother on the staff this year after five years at Vermont. Jim's sport was football, and he was a longtime professional and college coach.

And Jared? Well, he's just an athletic freak. Like his two older brothers, he played lacrosse at Maryland, winning the Tewaaraton Award in 2021. He would certainly have been a dominant force in the Premier Lacrosse League, except he wanted to use his remaining year of eligibility to play college football.

He did so last year at Ferris State as a quarterback. He was so good at it that Ferris State won the Division II national championship. Then he signed as an undrafted free agent with the Atlanta Falcons, who brought him in as a wide receiver.

 To recap, Bernhardt played one year of college football as a quarterback and then went to an NFL training camp as a wide receiver, a position he has never before played. What happened next? He stood out all through the summer, and yesterday he made the team as the roster was trimmed to 53.

Of course, a lot happens after "final" cuts and before the first kickoff of the regular season. Still, it's quite a testament to what kind of athlete Bernhardt is. 

The day of the final cuts is always a brutal one in the NFL. There are players who are so close to fulfilling a lifelong dream who have that door slammed shut in their faces. For most of the ones who are cut and not picked up by a practice squad, their football days are likely over.

Also, the difference between a player who makes it and a player who doesn't has to be minimal. The stress has to be significant in the hours leading up to the deadline.

Princeton grad Jesper Horsted found himself on the right side of the cutdown day as he made the Las Vegas Raiders' 53-man roster. Again, as is the case with Bernhardt, who knows what could happen between now and the opener.

Still, Horsted has continued to be what he has always been since the first he put on an NFL uniform with the Chicago Bears after being a key cog in Princeton's unbeaten 2018 team (John Lovett, the 2018 Bushnell Cup winner as Princeton's quarterback, was put on injured reserve by the Miami Dolphins last week).

Horsted moved from wide receiver at Princeton to NFL tight end. He was with the Bears for three years, splitting his time between the active roster and the practice squad. His career regular season stats to date are 10 receptions for 108 yards, and three of those catches have gone for touchdowns. 

TigerBlog has written this before several times, and he stands by it: given a chance to play regularly, Horsted will be a consistent contributor who will put up solid NFL tight end numbers. 

Hopefully he gets that chance in Las Vegas this year. 

He cleared a big hurdle yesterday.

Perfect Start

TigerBlog got this text message from Zack DiGregorio yesterday after TB wrote about driving Pete Carril's old car:

Your blog today reminded me that, when Coach sold my dad the silver 1997 Mercedes, there were two things he left in the car: the scent of cigars that, even years and years later, never totally left, and a cassette tape of the “Sounds of Greece”

That sounds right. 

TB wanted to share that with you to get started today. He also is reminded now of a different quote that he used to hear a lot at this time of year, back when he was a sportswriter. 

He's told you this before, but you probably don't remember. When it was still Trenton State College (as opposed to The College of New Jersey), the athletic program had a kickoff luncheon before the first athletic events of the year. 

Each year that TB attended, the college president said the same thing: "I predict that every Trenton State team will go undefeated this year."

That, of course, drew laughs and smiles. Not shockingly, it never came true, but hey, dream big, right? 

To that end, every Princeton team is currently undefeated for the 2022-23 academic year. Will it stay that way? Um, probably not. 

On the other hand, for right now, there is a "0" in the cumulative loss column. There's a "2" in the cumulative win column, courtesy of the women's soccer team, who opened its season with a 4-2 win over Colgate and a 2-0 win over Fairfield this past weekend.

The two wins gave Princeton a sweep of the first Ivy League Player of the Week and Rookie of the Week awards. Heather McNabb was the former, after she had three goals and an assist against Colgate, and Kelsey Wozniak was the latter, who had her first collegiate goal and first two collegiate assists on the weekend. 

Princeton puts its perfect cumulative record on the line this week with 13 events in five days, beginning Thursday with the women's soccer game at Rhode Island. A day later, there will be three more teams in the mix. 

The first 12 of those 13 events will be on the road. The home game will be Monday at 4, when the men's soccer team hosts Vermont, an NCAA team a year ago who defeated Princeton during the regular season in Burlington.

Before that the men's soccer team will be at Rutgers Friday at 7 in a great matchup for this time of year. Princeton went 7-0-0 in the Ivy League a year ago, but the Tigers fell 1-0 to the Scarlet Knights before the league season began. Rutgers is 1-1 after a win over Nebraska-Omaha and a loss to Creighton to start its season last week.

The field hockey team also plays Friday, at second-ranked North Carolina. The Tar Heels are 2-0, with wins over Michigan and Iowa, ranked third and fifth. Princeton, ranked 13th in the preseason, will also play No. 9 Louisville in Chapel Hill Sunday. Princeton went 10-7 last year against the same kind of brutal schedule that this year's team will face, and that team did not graduate a single player.

The women's volleyball team will be playing in Towson's tournament, starting Friday with matches against Morgan State and Towson. The next day marks the varsity debut for the women's rugby team, which plays at Sacred Heart. 

The men's water polo team will playing over the weekend at Navy, which means visiting former Princeton coach Luis Nicalao (an all-time TB favorite). The home debut is the following Saturday, when the Tigers host Army. You'll have four chances to see the Tigers play at home, and if you've never seen rugby, it's well worth the time.

If you look at the composite schedule, you'll see it still shows that this is August. As such, there are mostly empty boxes on the calendar, which means there are no Princeton events on those days.

If you flip to September, you'll see far fewer blank boxes. That means that Princeton teams will be off and running.

They're perfect now through one weekend. It won't stay that way, of course, but it doesn't mean that they won't be trying. 

A Few More Coach Stories

It's been two weeks since Pete Carril passed away, and TigerBlog continues to hear from people who want to share their own stories of the man so many of them knew as simply "Coach."

Pretty much all of them have been great.

It's a real testament to just how many people were touched by Carril through the years. He was definitely the kind of person who made an impact on you when you met him, even if it was only once. He's not someone whose words were easily forgotten, and he took over any room he was in with a simple "Yo."

TigerBlog has shared a few Carril stories with you already, but here's another one:

There was a time when an overseas coach came to Carril and asked him to travel with him to teach his team Carril's offense. Instead of that, Carril told the other coach to come see him and he would teach him and then he could teach his team. 

"After about 10 minutes," Carril said, "I said to him 'no offense, but it would take less time for me to fly there and teach them than it will to stay here and teach you.'"

For some reason, as TB was driving this weekend, he was reminded of how Carril drove a large, dark blue Oldsmobile that the University gave him as part of his contract. When Carril retired, he either gave the car back or the University took it back (and discontinued the practice), but however it happened, the car became part of the department's motor pool. 

That was when there was a motor pool, so department members could sign out cars to go on the road. TB signed out Carril's car for every away men's basketball trip, and the car became known as the "Hall of Fame car."

The first time TB used it, he found Carril's umbrella in the trunk. It became a symbol, something that stayed in the car and went unused forever, or at least as long as TB had the car.

TB hasn't thought about that car in a long time, and he's not sure why he thought of it over the weekend. It did make him smile.

The Princeton men's basketball team has been in Spain for almost all of the time since Carril's death, which seems somehow appropriate and, well, respectful, given that Spain was the home of Carril's father Jose and Carril was very proud of his Spanish roots.

Here's part of how the team spent its Sunday:

Spending this Sunday in a different kind of temple. #CampNou #FCB #LosTigresEnEspana pic.twitter.com/lWeldFyt2Q

— John Mack (@jlmack00) August 28, 2022

That stadium is the home of one of the highest profile teams in all of sports, FC Barcelona. The stadium seats 99,384 (no idea why they didn't push it past 100,000, but okay). 

The home team played Real Valladolid yesterday, winning 4-0. If TB had to guess, he figures that it was an incredible experience for the Tigers in a series of incredible experiences. It also appears that the team had good seats.

Okay, one more Coach story. 

There haven't been too many bigger characters in Princeton Athletics history than former longtime volleyball coach Glenn Nelson. He might be the only one who didn't call Carril "Coach," since he called everyone "Cuz." 

Nelson was a great volleyball coach and a great storyteller. He could have had a long career in comedy had he gone in that direction.

He and Carril were close. They played a lot of tennis together through the years. After Carril began coaching in Sacramento, he'd come back to Jadwin in the summer. On one such occasion, he came into TB's office when Nelson happened to be there. 

They had this actual conversation: 

Nelson: Coach, remember how I asked you to get me some Sacramento gear and you gave me those shorts?
Carril: Yes.
Nelson: Here's your wallet. It was in the pocket.

Then he flipped it back to him. 

Ah, TB has a million more just like that one.