Introducing The Head Coach

The Princeton men's lacrosse team is at Harvard tomorrow at 1 in a Top 10 matchup that will go a long way in helping determine the Ivy League championship and the site of the upcoming Ivy League tournament. 

As amazing as it might seem, there are only two weekends left in the regular season. Princeton will play at home against Dartmouth next Saturday, while Harvard will be at Cornell (who plays Dartmouth tomorrow). Right now, Princeton, Harvard and Cornell are in a three-way tie at 3-1 for first place in the league. 

The ILT is a mere 14 days away. The NCAA selections are only 16 days away. With its two Top 10 RPI wins and five Top 20 RPI wins, Princeton is pretty likely to hear its name called for the fifth straight year. 

Speaking of how time flies, Matt Madalon is now 10 years into his tenure as the head coach of the men's lacrosse team. Prior to that, Madalon had never been a head coach on any level, though he'd been an assistant and coordinator in Division III and at Princeton, as well as a very accomplished player in college and in the pros. 

The Princeton head coaching roster is loaded with names who have that sort of background. In fact, you could say most of Princeton's head coach were never a head coach prior to coming here. 

And now, to that list, you can add Lauren Gosselin. Maybe "list" isn't the right way to put it. Maybe "successful formula" works better. After all, those first-time head coaches have pretty much across the board been winners. 

A week after announcing that she had been hired as the 11th head coach in Tiger women's basketball history, Princeton formally introduced Gosselin in Jadwin Gym yesterday afternoon. 

It started with this video, which if you haven't seen yet, you definitely need to watch: 

Winning.

That's what @Coach__LB is all about. pic.twitter.com/2clZL8nirO

— Princeton WBB (@PrincetonWBB) April 9, 2026

You know what line was great? The part about going around the country and ending up back at Jadwin Gym. And the response of the players speaks a great deal about who Gosselin is.

When someone becomes a head coach for the first time, the No. 1 question isn't about sport knowledge or Xs and Os or really anything else that enables that person to get the job. That's all for interviewing and resumes and cover letters and such. 

Externally, at least, it's about how that person steps out of the shadow and into the spotlight. That's what it means to be the head coach. 

Will this person be able to be the lead singer? Not every former assistant can make that jump. 

If Gossselin's performance at yesterday's event is any indication, then she clearly can. She's been at Princeton for seven years on the staff of Carla Berube (who left to become the head coach at Northwestern), and in that time, she found herself, in her words, in "the nitty-gritty."

Now, as she said, she moves into "a CEO role." As such, she said that there will be a transition for her. 

TigerBlog was curious to see how she did, and like probably everyone who watched, he was wildly impressed. She spoke to her players about her commitment to their development — on the court and off — and to her own development. 

TB was really taken by that comment, since he's pretty sure he's never heard it before. Isn't that the kind of coach you'd want to play for, right? 

She thanked all of the people who have enabled her to get to this point, beginning with her husband Andrew and baby son Luke. She thanked Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack and those on the search committee. She thanked her players, who clearly believe in her. She was congratulated by video by some of the program greats she coached, as well as Berube and her former colleague Lauren Dillon.  

In this day and age, the inevitable questions about the transfer portal had to be asked of her, and she handled them flawlessly. Why Princeton? She handled that perfectly too. She mentioned all of the first-time head coaches she has as colleagues and said she'd be knocking on the doors that she hasn't already. 

She still has to complete her staff, but she did announce that Jordan Edwards will be staying on at Princeton. 

And she mentioned the billboard, the one on Route 1 that announced her arrival. She did so in a way that was humble and humorous. It was another moment that she played just right. 

As in her first major appearance as the Princeton women's basketball lead singer, Lauren Gosselin served up a big hit. Her personality came through. Her competitiveness came through. 

And, as she also said, she's excited to get to work. Opening day is still nearly seven months away. 

For a spring day in Jadwin, the new head coach couldn't have had a better performance. 

 

Logistically Speaking

TigerBlog walked in from the parking garage yesterday with Kimberly Keenan-Kirkpatrick, the Director of Operations for the men's and women's track and field programs. 

Keenan-Kirkpatrick has had quite the accomplished career, in both coaching and administration. She set several school records as a runner at Kent State before going to Seton Hall Law School, and she then spent 25 years working in administrative roles, lastly at Syracuse. 

She then jumped back into coaching, at Colgate, before coming to Princeton in her current role in 2023. 

If you think it's easy to be the Director of Operations for track and field, consider that this weekend alone Princeton has athletes who are competing at five different events in four different states: California, North Carolina, Virginia and New Jersey. That's a lot of logistics to sort out. 

To expand on TB wrote yesterday about his experience with the tennis teams, each sport has its own culture and own way of doing things. What is unheard of for one team is commonplace for another. Princeton would never send teams to multiple locations in most sports. In track and field, it happens all the time. 

This weekend is another example of that. For the record, you'll have Tigers at the Wake Forest Invitational, the Virginia Challenge (in Charlottesville), the Mt. Sac Relays (in Walnut, Calif), the Bryan Clay Invitational at Azusa Pacific, and the IC4A championships at Rutgers.  

That's a lot of logistics to have to coordinate. Flights. Ground transportation. Hotels. Meals. Training times. Athletic medicine. That's not easy. 

Oh, and the Bryan Clay Invitational? From its website, it advertises itself as: 

"the fastest and largest collegiate meet in the US! Set next to the stunning Azusa foothills in Southern California, we promise as electric atmosphere, fantastic weather and incredible competition."

What more can you ask for than that?  

The Penn Relays will be next weekend. 

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It's Cup season — and not just the Stanley Cup, whose playoffs will be starting soon. 

No, this is Cup season for intercollegiate rowing. For someone who loves history the way TigerBlog does, the genesis of pretty much all of the Cup for which the various crews race is fascinating. 

In all there are 17 Cups between Princeton's lightweight and heavyweight men and lightweight and open women. Some date back to the 1800s. Others are more recent and bear the names of some of Princeton's greatest coaches. 

You can read more about Princeton's Cup history HERE.

This weekend will have the heavyweight men at Harvard for the Compton Cup, a race that dates to 1933. The lightweight men are home with Penn and Georgetown for the Wood-Hammond Cup, which goes back to 1941. 

As for the women, the open team is home against Yale, Virginia and Tennessee for the Eisenberg Cup, the oldest one the women race for, going back to 1975. The lightweight women are off this weekend. 

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The baseball team is home for three this weekend against Penn, with two Saturday beginning at 11:30 and then a third game Sunday at noon. 

The top four teams in the league will reach the Ivy League tournament and play for the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. With nine games to be played (or 10 for Harvard and Brown), the Tigers are two games back of fourth place. 

Penn will come to Clarke Field in third place at 8-4, one game out of first. After this weekend, Princeton will be at Dartmouth for three and home against Harvard for three. Harvard is in fourth. 

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The women's lacrosse team is at Brown Saturday, with the opening draw at noon. With two regular season league games left for all eight teams, there are essentially five teams who are competing for four Ivy tournament spots — and Princeton and Brown are two of them. 

Yale is in first place at 5-0, followed by 4-1 Penn. Princeton, Brown and Cornell are all 3-2. 

Princeton and Brown have already beaten Cornell, which means that both teams would hold the tiebreaker over the Big Red. Making it tougher for Cornell is its schedule, which has Penn this weekend and Yale next weekend. 

Princeton will host Dartmouth next weekend, while Brown will be at Penn. 

Should Cornell lose twice, then Princeton and Brown would be in the Ivy tournament no matter what. Should Cornell win twice, it would be putting itself in position to host the tournament with some help (i.e, a Harvard win over Yale Saturday). That's how many different permutations there are. 

Here's a simple one: The Princeton-Brown winner clinches an ILT spot. 

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The full weekend schedule is HERE. 

On The Bus

 

See this picture? 

If you're in TigerBlog's basic age range, you'll recognize it as example of what was known every Saturday on Wide World of Sports as "The Thrill of Victory." If you don't know the reference, click HERE.

Also if you're in TB's age range, then 1) that still gives you chills and 2) you don't need him to tell you that the ill-fated ski jumper was Vinko Bogataj. Somewhat famously, at the 20 anniversary dinner for Wide World of Sports, Muhammad Ali asked Vinko for his autograph. Oh, and Vinko is still alive, now 78 years old. 

Meanwhile, the woman in the picture is Princeton women's tennis sophomore Pearlie Zhang. Her thrill of victory captured here came when she scored the deciding point in Princeton's 4-3 win over Cornell this past Friday in Ithaca. 

Sort of.  

The actual thrill came about 30 minutes before that, except TigerBlog didn't get a good picture of it. So what did he do? He asked her to recreate it.  

And hey, that's exactly how she looked after she delivered the last winner. So who will ever know the difference, right? 

The win at Cornell was followed Sunday by Senior Day back in Princeton, as the team honored its lone senior, Eva Elbaz. If you haven't read TB's feature story on her yet, you can HERE.

The day was important for more than just that, though. This match, well, matched the last two Ivy League teams who hadn't lost — 4-0 Princeton vs. 4-0 Columbia. 

Princeton toughed that one out, winning 4-2 when Alice Ferlito won a tiebreaker to complete a straight-set win at No. 1 singles for the deciding team point. Paige Gandy, the newest member of the Princeton creative team, was there to get Sunday's Thrill of Victory moments:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by PRINCETON WOMEN'S TENNIS (@princetonwtennis)

 

TigerBlog is relatively new to being the Princeton tennis contact, but it hasn't taken him long to be all in  on the two teams. 

It's been a struggle for the men since the league season began, as the team has been riddled with injuries. Before that, Princeton was the highest ranked Ivy League team and had won the eight-Ivy-team ECAC championship. 

Even with the injuries and the accompanying struggles in the league, where the Tigers have not yet won a match, Princeton is still very much in the hunt for an NCAA tournament spot heading into the final weekend, which will feature home matches against Yale Saturday and Brown Sunday. 

It'll also be Senior Day for the men Sunday, with three seniors: Top Nidunjianzan, Sebastian Sec and Ellis Short. 

The women will be at Yale Saturday and Brown Sunday. A win either day guarantees no worse than a share of the Ivy League championship. Two wins would mean an outright championship, no matter what else happens in the league. 

For TigerBlog, the experience with the tennis teams has been, in one word, fun. They're both fun groups — and where else can you see all of the men's and women's players in one group team photo:

TigerBlog jumped on the bus to Cornell to see what the difference would be between traveling with the teams he's used to (field hockey, men's lacrosse) and a different one (in this case, women's tennis). He's very glad he did. 

For starters, there are 11 players, as opposed to 24 field hockey players or 52 men's lacrosse players. That alone changes the whole dynamic. Here is one of his main observations: the volume level of the women's tennis bus is pretty much halfway between that of field hockey (loud) and men's lax (very not loud). 

Also, it was a much less regimented trip. By the nature of having so many more players, the other teams need to have might stricter itineraries. 

Mostly, though, it was a chance to get to know a group of coaches and players he didn't know at all a few months ago, to figure out the personalities behind their stats and their styles on the court. And to see them compete for their goal, of an Ivy championship. 

TB has been doing this for a very long time. He has always said that the best part is the opportunity to work with some of the greatest young people you'll find anywhere — and to hopefully do at least a little to help them have the best experience at Princeton they can. 

The trip to Cornell? It was definitely worth it. 

12-0

So TigerBlog got home way past midnight the other night after traveling with the women's tennis team to Cornell. 

He walked into his house and went to toss his empty Snapple bottle into the recycling bin — only to notice it wasn't there. That was quite the shock.

The TV was there. Every other item of value was there. The only thing missing was the recycling bin. 

Did someone break into his house and steal it and nothing else? It was quite the mystery.  

Hmmm. He did remember that before he left on the trip he had taken the recycling out. Also, his next-door neighbor is away on vacation, and she asked TB to pick up her mail. As he pieced it together, he surmised that he had left the bin outside after putting her mail into the box she left in her shed and that it had blown away.

He looked around for it and saw no trace. Maybe one of the many deer or wild turkeys who stroll by all day walked away with it? Is recycling big in the deer/turkey community? 

Then his neighbor's daughter showed up. She lives about a mile away, and she was coming by to get something from her mom's house. Maybe she knew something? 

And she did. She had seen it out and assumed it was her mother's, and so she put it into her house. Now TB has it back where it belongs. 

It's not the most fascinating of stories, TB supposes. Still, the feeling he had when he realized he had a missing recycling bin and nothing else? That was bizarre. 

Oh, and he'll have more on women's tennis tomorrow. 

For the rest of today, there's the matter of a team that is 12-0 in the Ivy League right now. TB speaks, of course, of Princeton's softball team. 

It's not easy to be perfect this long into a season for any sport. It might be hardest in baseball and softball. There are just those games where everything you hit finds a glove and everything they hit finds the grass. 

Princeton stayed unbeaten by sweeping Penn this weekend to reach that gaudy 12-0. By contrast, no Ivy League baseball team has fewer than three league losses after the same number of games. 

Like TB said, it's not easy.

In fact, it got TigerBlog wondering how many teams there are among the 31 Division I softball conferences who have a team that is currently unbeaten. The answer? Three. 

There's Princeton. There's also Washington, in the Big Ten. So that's TigerBlog's employer and BrotherBlog's employer. 

Unfortunately, there are only two of them If only there'd been a third sibling who worked at Southeastern Louisiana. Then they could have had all three covered. 

Once again, TB borrows from his friend and colleague Andrew Borders for more information on Tiger softball: 

It's the third 12-0 Ivy start in program history for Princeton, which also started, and finished, 12-0 in 1995, the first year the Ivy played 12 league games, as well as in 2008, when the team started 14-0 on the way to an 18-2 record, setting an Ivy wins record that Harvard (2011) and Dartmouth (2013) later matched. The Tigers' current run is the best start for any team since the league went to seven three-game series ahead of the 2018 season.  

That's impressive stuff. It gets more impressive when you dig deeper. 

In those 12 Ivy games, Princeton has committed exactly six errors. The rest of the league averages 17 errors between them. Princeton leads the league in ERA by more than run per game. It leads the league in batting average as well. 

None of this is surprising, given that whole 12-0 thing. 

What's left on the schedule? There are three more Ivy weekends, which for Princeton means three at Yale, three at Harvard and three home against Dartmouth. There's also a home doubleheader tomorrow against Monmouth, starting at 4:30. 

Harvard is in second, at 8-4. Dartmouth and Yale both have four wins at this point. 

What does it all mean? The Tigers certainly look to be in great shape for a fifth-straight Ivy championship. The path to the NCAA tournament, of course, runs through the Ivy League tournament, which will be at the home of the league champion. 

Getting to 12-0 is great. There is still a long way to go. 

A Day For Brycie

TigerBlog can guarantee you that Bryce Chase will laugh when he reads this. 

He can also guarantee you that Bryce will give TB a hard time next time he sees him. 

Having opened with that, when TigerBlog first saw the news that an endowment had been established to create the "Bryce Chase ’63 Offensive Coordinator" position with Princeton men's lacrosse, he wondered why the offensive coordinator and not the defensive coordinator.

Then it dawned on him: Bryce is offensive. 

Just kidding. Just kidding. Sort of. 

Here's the first paragraph of TB's feature story on Bryce from nearly 20 years ago: 

The curse words that fly from Bryce Chase's mouth at a rate of two or three per paragraph are there merely as punctuation marks, rather than subjects, verbs or even the more extreme modifiers. You can forgive him for this for a bunch of reasons. First, he's not using them to be offensive. Next, he'll be 68 on his next birthday, so who's going to teach him new tricks anyway? Lastly, who would expect any different after learning that he spent eight years in the United States Marine Corps? 

Yes, Bryce is famous for his, um, salty language. As TB wrote, though, they're punctuation marks. 

The truth is that Bryce is actually one of the most sincere, most tenderhearted, most caring, most genuine people TB has ever met. Actually, that'll probably annoy him more than when he was called "offensive," probably because Brycie knows it's true. 

If you don't believe TigerBlog, you can ask any of the Princeton men's lacrosse alums who flocked to Sherrerd Field Saturday. They came to see Princeton play Penn — a game the Tigers won 20-8 — but they also came back for Brycie, on the occasion of the formal dedication of that endowment.

TigerBlog has written that Bryce Chase is the backbone of the Princeton men's lacrosse program. He also wrote this, that Bryce was "a mentor and a friend, at times a calming presence and at others the voice of accountability, and always a fixture on the sideline for literally hundreds of young men who have played lacrosse at Princeton."

When you get to where Bryce is now, or, to a large extent, where TB is now, what you remember most are the people, the relationships you made, as much as any game or championship. One year turns into the next. One decade turns into the next. What year did that guy graduate? Which year was that game? 

Those specifics fade (well, not for TB, of course). What you're left with is what you saw if you were there Saturday — just a whole lot of love for someone who has been such a huge part of something that's special to you as well.  

It was everywhere Saturday. 

It was on buttons. It was on the players' shooting shirts, which were old-school white tops with Bryce's No. 31 on them. It was in Jim Mitchell's pregame speech in the team room. That's the same Jim Mitchell who is the first person to hold the title that now bears Brycie's name. 

It was in the stands, where the alums had gathered. It was on the field at halftime, where Bryce was joined by his family, as well as those who had made this endowment possible. It was afterwards, when the celebration continued. 

While that halftime ceremony was going on, the scoreboard said Princeton 8, Penn 6. This was a big game in terms of the Ivy League race and Princeton's place near the top of the national rankings. 

It was also a big game because of the man who was being honored. TigerBlog has to think that no Princeton player wanted to have to look Bryce in the eye if that game had gotten away, and so the Tigers went out and scored the first 12 goals after intermission. 

Princeton, Cornell and Harvard have all clinched Ivy tournament spots. Any of those three can host the upcoming tournament, as can Yale, who hasn't clinched a spot yet. 

With its early non-league season wins over Maryland, Syracuse, North Carolina and Rutgers, all of whom are in the RPI top 16, and with league wins over two other Top 20 teams (Yale and now Penn), Princeton is almost surely headed to the NCAA tournament for the fifth straight year. 

Next up is Harvard in Cambridge Saturday, which will be a big part of determining who the Ivy champ is and where the tournament will be. That's all for the future. 

No matter what happens the rest of the way, though, what happened this past Saturday will definitely be one of the 2026 highlights. And that's because of the man who was honored. 

Offensive? He likes to think he is. 

What he really is, though, is the guy who brought out all that love you saw Saturday at Sherrerd Field. 

Sorry Brycie. That's the truth.  

All The Good Things Wrapped Up In One

To all those who have taken the time to name their favorite snacks from long ago, TigerBlog says "thank you." 

Here's a partial list of what you guys apparently ate when you were young: 

* Devil Dogs (not bad)
* Swiss Rolls (A+)
* Ring Dings (eh)
* Snoballs (ick)

And, of course, many different kinds of Tastykake. The Juniors? Yes. The chocolate chip ones? Yes. 

The lemon ones? Yuck. 

A special thank-you to the Tastykake crowd, since you got TigerBlog singing "let's all take a tasty break and have a lot of fun. Tastykake is all the good things, all the good things wrapped up in one."

Oh, and this is from the Tastykake website: 

"It would take 14,080 Tastykake pies laid end to end to make a mile, but it only takes one bite to make a smile."

And with that ...

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The Princeton softball team has blazed to a 9-0 Ivy League start as it seeks a fifth-straight league championship and, should that happen, the host role in the league tournament. 

Up next for Princeton will be three games at home this weekend, with two games tomorrow (12:30 first pitch) and one more Sunday (also 12:30 first pitch).

There are currently four teams over .500 in the league, with Princeton at 9-0 and then Penn and Harvard at 6-3 and Columbia at 5-4. 

This seems pretty good: 

Heading into the week, Princeton led the Ivy League in doubles (54), doubles per game (1.86), fielding percentage (.978), fewest hit batters by the pitching staff (seven), hits (273), RBI per game (5.48), RBI (159), shutouts (three), WHIP (1.54) and winning percentage (.655).

That's from Andrew Borders' preview story on goprincetontigers.com, which you can read HERE. 

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Back in the 1988 season, the Princeton men's basketball team lost three straight Ivy League midseason games by one point — 52-51 to Harvard, 61-60 to Yale, 68-67 to Brown. The last two came on buzzer-beating shots, both after the Tigers had a double-figure lead in the second half. 

Those losses ended any hope Princeton had of winning the league, and the Tigers took an 8-5 record into the season finale at home against Cornell, who had already clinched the championship. Final score: Princeton 79, Cornell 58. 

TigerBlog was at that game, and he remembers the feeling that Princeton had unfinished business when it was over. In fact, that turned out to be the case — Princeton won the next four Ivy League championships. 

It was that three-game stretch that derailed the Tigers that TB thought of this past weekend, when the men's tennis team dropped back-to-back 4-3 matches at Harvard and Dartmouth, following an Ivy-opening 4-3 loss to Penn in the match before. As such, Princeton — a team hit by massively derailing injuries — takes an 0-3 record into this weekend's matches at home against Cornell today at 2 and at Columbia Sunday. 

Remember, Princeton won the ECAC tournament, an event featuring all eight Ivy teams, in February. 

Hopefully the future is the same for Billy Pate's team as it was for Pete Carril's back in 1988. Also, as far as the present, Princeton is still positioned well for an NCAA tournament at-large spot due to its strong non-league showing and the fact that Ivy League men's tennis is loaded. 

Consider the most recent ITA rankings, the ones that have Princeton at No. 37 and a total of five Ivy teams between 33 and 39, including this weekend's Princeton opponents (Cornell is 33 and Columbia is 34). 

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On the women's side, Princeton is at Cornell today and home against Columbia Sunday. The Tigers are 3-0 with wins over Penn, Harvard and Dartmouth and tied with Columbia in first place, one game up on Yale and Dartmouth. 

Princeton finishes the regular season next weekend at Yale and Brown. Wait, what? Finishes? Already? 

Like the men, the Princeton women are also hoping to play in the NCAA tournament, which begins the first weekend of May.

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The men's lacrosse team will be home tomorrow at noon against Penn. The Tigers finish the regular season with three Ivy League games each of the next three Saturdays, with a trip to Harvard next week and then a home game against Dartmouth after that. 

Princeton, with its high RPI and two Top 5 wins (North Carolina, Syracuse), is almost certainly NCAA tournament bound. The Ivy League tournament will be the first weekend in May, and Princeton still could be the host — as could Cornell, Harvard, Yale or Penn. Much more will be sorted out this weekend. 

Meanwhile, Princeton's Jake Vana has 11 goals and no assists this year. The record for most goals in a season at Princeton without an assist is 19, set in 1997 by Craig Katz. Even more amazingly, in the 2003 season, Princeton had two players who had 41 goals apiece and had seven assists between them (Jason Doneger had three of them; Sean Hartofilis had four of them). Who had all the assists that year? Ryan Boyle, who had 48.  

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The University of Michigan ended a rather dull NCAA men's basketball tournament with a rather dull win over UConn Monday night. In fact, other than the three-pointer that UConn's Braylon Mullins hit to beat Duke in the regional final, there weren't really all that many "shining moments" in this one. 

Speaking of Michigan, the Collegiate Water Polo Association women's tournament will be there beginning today. Princeton enters as the No. 2 seed and will face No. 7 Saint Francis in the tournament's first match, at 4:30. 

The host Wolverines are the No. 2 seed, and the winner of the Princeton-Saint Francis match will play the winner of the Michigan-Mercyhurst match tomorrow at 3. The other semifinal will have No. 1 Harvard against the winner of No. 4 Brown and No. 5 Bucknell. 

The championship match will be Sunday at 12:30, with an NCAA bid for the winner. 

Princeton's Shanna Davidson was named the CWPA Player of the Year after scoring 64 goals and adding 45 assists.  

Head Coach Lauren Gosselin

Story On Lauren Gosselin's Hiring As Princeton Head Women's Basketball Coach 

TigerBlog was in a hotel in New Haven the night before the men's lacrosse game at Yale a few weeks ago. 

The Tigers were hardly the only team staying there that night. There was a Division II women's basketball regional going on at Southern Connecticut State, and all eight teams were there as well.

As TB was wearing his usual "Princeton Lacrosse" gear, and since there were others similarly dressed, it was pretty clear that he was affiliated with the Department of Athletics. Armed with that knowledge, a woman in a "Bentley Basketball" sweatshirt walked up to him and asked him if he knew Lauren Gosselin.

The answer was, obviously, yes. The woman then introduced herself as Christiana Bakolas, an assistant coach at Bentley, one of the teams that was competing in the basketball tournament. 

She didn't as much introduce herself as she exploded into a conversation, in a very refreshing way. In about 30 seconds, TB thought of her as a good friend, though not as good a friend as Lauren Gosselin, about whom Christiana could not stop raving.  

It led TB to have this conversation with Gosselin. 

TB: "Met Christiana Bakolas, who says she's one of your best friends. Also, she's not very shy."
LG: "Small world. Yes, Christiana is not only one of my best friends. She was my maid of honor — the ultimate best friend! She is the best! And yes, she certainly is not shy :)"

Small world indeed. And that tells you a lot about Gosselin — genuine, caring, upbeat, lots of exclamation points and very, very competitive. Does that sound like anyone else? Hint - TB mentions her two paragraphs from now. 

This conversation happened shortly after Gosselin's team — the Princeton women's basketball team — won another Ivy League tournament championship. TB congratulated "her team" on the win and wished them luck in the upcoming NCAA tournament. 

At the time, the term "her team" had a different meaning than it does today. Late yesterday afternoon came the announcement that Gosselin has officially been named as the replacement for Carla Berube as the Tiger head coach, replacing her mentor after Berube became the head coach at Northwestern two weeks ago. 

Now it really is "her team."

This is what Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack had to say about the new head coach: 

I am very excited about this next chapter for our women’s basketball program. Lauren has quickly established herself as a rising star in the coaching ranks and we are thrilled that she and her family have chosen Princeton as the place they want to be. Lauren is a tremendous recruiter, and a first-class developer of talent who has been instrumental in the growth of our student-athletes over her time at Princeton. She is also extremely connected around the country having put together our team’s top-tier schedule that has continuously been the toughest in the Ivy League and allowed our program to show its strength against the country’s top teams. I have been fortunate to watch Lauren grow and excel as a leader and colleague over my time at Princeton and I am supremely confident in her as we embark on this next step as a basketball program.

Gosselin came with Berube from Tufts, where she spent a year as an assistant. The seven years that they spent together at Princeton have been wildly successful. 

The head coach always gets the credit and the attention, but programs do not achieve the level that the Tigers have without having a great staff all around. 

You have to be happy for Berube, who has made the jump to Northwestern. Hopefully she'll have a great career there.

You also have to be happy for Lauren Gosselin. She's done what you have to do to get this opportunity, which is put in her time, learning, developing players, recruiting, figuring out what she would do the same and what she would do differently. 

Now she has the chance to show all that. 

Take it from TigerBlog. Or from Christiana Bakolas. 

Lauren Gosselin is a very easy coach for whom to root. Princeton is in great hands, again.  

Hostess Cupcakes For Everyone

As a follow up to yesterday, if you're wondering what Martha Russo did with the money she won racing her brother's friends, this is what she texted TigerBlog: 

And I just wanted to let you know with the prize money for beating my bros friends we used the loot to buy Hostess Cupcakes -proven to boost hitting power on corners in FH!!  

TigerBlog thought that was worth including as a follow up. TB wonders what Princeton Athletics head dietician Hector Martinez things.  What are your thoughts, Hector? 

TB reached out to Hector after he got the text from Martha (who, by the way, is in Venice now with some of her new sculptures). Here's his response: 

"You know what they, 'a Hostess Cupcake a day kept the field hockey women swinging away.' It's the original pregame fuel. Obviously sports nutrition has come a long way since then, but there is something to be said for the role that fun foods, team traditions and post-match treats play in performance culture and team bonding."

 Hey, it was a different time. Most lockerrooms featured candy bars as halftime energy boosters. 

Also, from first-hand observation, Hostess Cupcakes have been replaced as the power source for penalty corners by either Smoothies or, in the case of Princeton's Beth Yeager, those little oranges, which she eats by the dozen. 

TB, by the way, was never really a "Hostess Cupcake" kid. He was more into Yodels. Remember those? Like elite athletes, TB grew out of Yodels long ago. He is not a Smoothie fan though, so he probably won't be taking any big penalty corners any time soon. 

The big Ivy League news yesterday was not about nutrition. Instead, it was the announcement that the Ivy League tournament in 2027 (somehow that's next year) will be played at the Palestra instead of at Dartmouth, the lone Ivy school who has yet to host. 

Interestingly, the league hasn't committed to anything beyond the 2027 tournament in Philly, as part of the building's 100th anniversary celebration. Where will it be? What will the format be? 

Those are all stories for another day. 

TigerBlog saw the story on the Ivy League website yesterday, though that's not why he went there. Instead, he was looking for the women's lacrosse standings. 

There's a big game tonight at 7 on Sherrerd Field as Princeton hosts Penn. There will be free Hostess Cupcakes to the first 10,000 fans (just kidding, just kidding). 

Princeton and Penn have played three league games, while the other six have played four each. Right now, Yale is at 4-0, followed by Penn at 3-0 and Princeton at 2-1. Princeton's loss is to Yale, while Yale and Penn (obviously) have not played yet.

There are three ways to look at the current Ivy women's lacrosse race. 

First, there is the matter of the championship, which as you know goes to the regular season champion. For that Princeton would need to win out and have Yale lose at least once. 

Second is the Ivy League tournament, in which the top four teams will meet at the home of the No.1 seed. Behind the teams in the top three right now are Brown and Cornell, who are both 2-2. Brown and Princeton both have wins over Cornell; Princeton's came this past Saturday by a 14-12 score. 

Tiger senior Jami MacDonald had five goals and two assists in that win over the Big Red. Abigail Roberts was named Ivy Defensive Player of the Week after putting these numbers in two games: 10 ground balls, six caused turnovers and six draw controls.

The final note in Ivy women's lacrosse is the NCAA tournament. Right now, Princeton has the second-best RPI in the league, at No. 18, with Yale at No. 16 and Penn back at No. 25. 

Speaking of RPI, North Carolina is the defending NCAA champion with an 11-1 record, the only blemish on which is an overtime loss to Northwestern, the team it beat in the championship game last year. What is UNC's RPI? It's 10. How is that possible? 

As for Princeton, the latest USA Lacrosse Magazine tournament prediction has the Tigers rather comfortably in the field, which it has Penn out. The NCAA field will have 29 teams, of which 15 are automatic bids and 14 are at-large.

If you're into these sorts of predictions, the Tigers are currently slotted to play Georgetown, with the winner to take on No. 1 Maryland. Ah, but that's for the future. 

For tonight, it's Princeton-Penn, at 7. 

And, again, there will be no free Hostess Cupcakes.  

Meeting Amie And Martha

If you walk into the Si Qin Family Indoor Tennis Center, you'll see photos and text that trace the history of the two Princeton teams. 

In one of those pictures, a black-and-white one, a woman in a "P" tennis sweater is following through on a shot. What do you see? A wooden racket, for starters. Looking closer, it's obvious that she's completely focused with her eyes dialed in on the ball that she just hit. 

The picture hangs there every day. The woman in the yellow sweater and blue jeans in front of it does not. In fact, this is her first time here — in this building, not at Princeton. 

This woman's face lacks the intensity on the one of the woman on the wall. Beyond that, they're the same face, since they are, in fact, the same woman. 

On the wall is Amie Knox, in 1977. In front of it is Amie Knox, in 2026. 

A few minutes earlier, TigerBlog looked down towards the far courts and saw another familiar face. This one belonged to Martha Russo, Class of 1985. 

This was a little more than a week ago. Prior to that, TB had never met either woman — at least not in person. 

Despite that little fact, he could tell you anything you want to know about them, since they were a big part of his book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton, entitled "I Can Do Anything." 

TB had spoken to them both and then wrote their life stories for the book. Until that day at the tennis center, though, he'd never seen either in person. It's a bit odd, "meeting" people whom you already "know" so well. 

It was like a family reunion of sorts, with hugs and smiles and telling stories and laughing. TB had to keep reminding himself that this was, in fact, the first time he'd met either. 

Knox won 11 letters and a von Kienbusch Award after playing field hockey, squash and tennis as one of only 17 women ever to letter in three sports at Princeton. She was a multiple time national champion in squash and Eastern champ in tennis. 

Russo was on her way to multiple All-American honors in both field hockey and lacrosse and ultimately the Olympic Games before two massive knee injuries ended her athletic career and opened a new door. 

It was that door that brought the two together and brought them back to campus. 

Of all of the athletes about whom TB wrote for the book, a number just short of 100, there were a few who stood out with the awe that they brought out in their former teammates who spoke about them. In his book, TigerBlog describes the way they spoke about Russo as "reverential." She was gifted with a different gear, one that enabled her to go from 0 to 60 faster than anyone else. 

TB smiles as he remembers the story Russo told him about how she would make money for her older brothers by racing their friends and never losing. That's one of his favorite stories in the book.  

Russo made the U.S. national field hockey team while she was still in high school, only to have her path to the 1984 USA Olympics went from sure-thing to over with the two knee injuries. The door that opened was in the art world, where she first studied at Princeton under professor Toshiko Takauzu. 

Knox, for her part, worked at ABC Sports for much of her career. She now makes documentary films, including one entitled "Time And Other Materials," centered around five artists, one of whom was Russo. Both grew up in Southern Connecticut. Both now live in Colorado, which is where they first came into each other's orbit. 

Meanwhile, one day before TB saw them at the tennis center, they were at the University Art Museum for a screening of that movie. One day before that, Emilia Reay happened to read the chapters about both of them in TB's book. 

If you haven't met the human jet engine that is Emilia Reay, you probably will at some point. She's a sophomore who is involved in basically everything, from creating videos for Mathey College to writing for the Daily Princetonian to working for TB at men's lacrosse games. She's headed this summer to an internship with USA Lacrosse. 

When TB pointed out to her that Knox and Russo would be on campus, Emilia went from never having heard of either of them to being the youngest person at the screening. And, of course, she came away with a photo of the three of them. 

TigerBlog was really happy to meet Amie and Martha. And he thinks that picture is such a great representation of Princeton. You have three women, one from the 1970s, one from the 1980s and now one from the Class of 2028. 

It's a meeting of generations, bound by their Orange and Black bond. 

Oh, and did TB mention that Emilia does frequent commentaries on her Instagram page. You can find them at emiliareaycametoplay.

Here's the one she did after meeting Amie and Martha:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by EMILIA REAY (@emiliareaycametoplay)

How good is that? Check her out on Instagram for more of those. 

Amie Knox and Martha Russo are two of Princeton's greatest athletes ever. Getting a chance to meet them, especially after having written about them, was a thrill. 

For TB, and for Emilia. 

Weekend Connections

As TigerBlog has often said, he's a big fan of puzzles. 

His daily routine includes the mini, midi and regular crosswords. There are Strands, Letterboxed and Spelling Bee. 

And Wordle. He recently saw a great cartoon that had a guy standing on the side of a highway holding a sign that said: "Today's Wordle Is ..."

And Connections, both the regular and the sports version. All of those are an every day thing for TB. 

As such, he saw this (before three different people sent it to him) the other day: 

There it is. Princeton. It's one of the four clues that refer to "offenses," along with pick and roll, triangle and motion. 

In fact, that has inspired TigerBlog to make his second attempt at a "Princeton Athletics" Connections edition. 

The first one didn't go too well, since it's really hard to find the balance between way too easy and impossible. This time, this is sort of a Weekend in Review Connections. 

And here you are:

Lightning || Cab || Spain || Mack

Softball ||  Word || Jackson || Miley Cyrus

Dom || Burchett || Atkinson || Maple Syrup 

The Academy || Women's Tennis || Rugby || Payne

Okay, figure it out? Again, it's not that easy to balance making it too easy and too hard. 

And now TB needs to give you a few paragraphs to work on it. Hmmmm. What should he talk about in the meantime? 

Well, here's something: TB is getting congratulations on his LinkedIn page for his work anniversary. It says it's his 35th year at Princeton. 

The only problem is that this isn't the case. He's finishing Year 32 as a Princeton employee, after five years of covering Princeton while in the newspaper business. So 35th anniversary? 

He's not sure where that came from. In fact, he's not even sure where his LinkedIn page came from, since he isn't the one who set it up. He's pretty sure that someone in the athletic department set them up for a bunch of people. 

Still, thanks to everyone who checked in on LinkedIn. 

Anyway, back at Weekend Connections. Did you solve it?

Here are the answers: 

* Lightning, Miley Cyrus, Maple Syrup, The Academy
* Atkinson, Burchett, Jackson, Payne
* Cab, Dom, Mack, Word
* Rugby, Softball, Spain, Women's Tennis

Did you get it right? 

Here are the way they're connected: 

* Lightning, Miley Cyrus, Maple Syrup, The Academy

This would be things associated with places where Princeton teams competed this weekend. 

Lightning? That would be Tampa, where the women's rugby team went 5-1 at the Tropical 7s, reaching the final of the event. 

Miley Cyrus? That would be Franklin, Tenn, which is Miley's hometown. That's where the men's golf team competed at the Mason Rudolph Championship. 

Maple Syrup? Vermont. In this case, Burlington, Vermont. That's where the men's lacrosse team was Saturday for a 19-5 win over the Catamounts in a game that was 13-0 at the half. 

The Academy? That's Annapolis, Md., where the men's heavyweight rowing team retained the Navy-Princeton Cup, winning every race of the day.  

 * Atkinson, Burchett, Jackson, Payne

This would be the 4x100 relay team of Brooke Jackson, Maisha Atkinson, Laila Payne and Franziska Burchett, who ran a 45.39 to win the event Saturday at Princeton's Sam Howell Invitational. It was the second-fastest time in program history. 

 * Cab, Dom, Mack, Word

This would be words that sound like the beginning of the first or last names of Princeton athletes who led their teams in scoring this weekend. 

Cab — Nate Kabiri of the men's lacrosse team, who had five goals and two assists at Vermont.

Dom — Graciela Dominguez of the softball team, who scored seven runs in three games, all wins, over Brown. The three wins improved Princeton to 9-0 in the league, something no team has done before since the league went to its current format of three-game series against each team in 2018. 

Mack — Jami MacDonald of the women's lacrosse team, who also had five goals and two assists, as  Princeton won a key Ivy League game against Cornell 14-12.  

Word — Grant Werdesheim of the baseball team, who scored three runs. This one gets a bit of an asterisk, since his teammate Jake Kernodle also had three. 

 * Rugby, Softball, Spain, Women's Tennis

This would all be multiple winners this weekend. 

As TB said, the women's rugby team went 5-1 at the event in Florida and the softball team went 3-0 at home against Brown. 

Spain refers to Jadon Spain, who won the 100 meter dash at the Sam Howell meet and who also teamed with Greg Foster, Jackson Clarke and Charlie Sexton to win the 4x100 relay. 

Women's tennis? The Tigers went 2-0, defeating Harvard and Dartmouth to improve to 3-0 in the Ivy League, tied with Columbia for first place.