First Of Many, Coach

TigerBlog nominates the following for the broadcasting Hall of Fame:

Commentator No. 1: "When Michelsen was six, he told his parents that if they made him play lefthanded, he'd quite tennis."
Commentator No. 2: "When my son was six, he said he wanted to be a space invader. We probably shouldn't leave the big life decisions to six year olds."

Genius. Just genius. It was uttered by Andy Roddick during yesterday's match between Alex Michelsen and Francis Tiafoe. For some context, the broadcast had just shown video of Michelsen as he threw tennis balls into the crowd lefthanded and then throwing a football righthanded. 

TigerBlog, by the way, thinks that Roddick is an incredible announcer. He and John McEnroe should broadcast all sports. 

In other news, what was the name of the Central Connecticut State men's basketball coach back in 2007-08? Howie something. It'll come to TB. 

While he thinks of that, TB does remember the CCSU-Princeton game of Nov. 11, 2007. It was a 59-57 Tiger win, and it came in Sydney Johnson's first game was head coach. Dickenman. Howie Dickenman. That's it. 

TigerBlog was escorting Johnson into the postgame interview room, which at that point was in what used to be the D level conference room at Jadwin. As Sydney walked in, Dickenman walked out, paused and said these exact words: "First of many, Coach." TB remembers it as a very thoughtful and genuine gesture. 

These days, by the way, Johnson is the head coach of the WNBA's Washington Mystics, who are 24-16 now with a playoff berth clinched. A year ago? Washington was 16-28. 

Another former Princeton men's basketball player, Will Venable, is orchestrating a similar turnaround, though his is in his other sport, baseball. Venable has taken the Chicago White Sox from 60-102 and 28 games out of first a year ago to currently 75-68 with a three-game lead in the American League Central.  

Of course, no coach ever forgets Win No. 1. This past weekend at Princeton, there were two No. 1 wins. 

One of them wasn't exactly a first win. It was more like win No. 149. 

It belonged to men's water polo interim head coach Derek Ellingson, who has been on the staff since 2004 and has been the head women's coach since 2019. Ellingson led the Princeton men to a 3-0 start at Navy's tournament last weekend, when the Tigers defeated George Washington, Air Force and Salem by a combined score of 62-25. 

Princeton will now have five matches this weekend at home at its own Invitational, including one against last weekend's host. You know who coaches Navy's men, right? That would be the great Luis Nicolao, who was Princeton's head coach for 844 wins between the men's and women's team. Ellingson was his assistant. 

Ellingson's team will play St. Mary's Friday at 3:30, Navy Saturday at 9:30 am, San Jose State Saturday at 5, Pepperdine Sunday at 12:30 and Mount St. Mary's Sunday at 3:30. For the California teams, it's a rare time of playing indoors. 

For an actual Win No. 1, TigerBlog refers you to Karameli Fa'ae'e, who led her team to a 52-17 win over La Salle in her first game as Princeton's women's rugby head coach. Here is what she had to say after the win: 

"I'm proud of the effort and commitment the whole squad showed yesterday. With no preseason match, this was our first real test of the new systems. We saw debut appearances, players returning from injury, and others stepping into new positions for the first time. There's a lot of room to grow, and that's what makes this exciting. I'm grateful to the whole staff, to the community and family who came out, and most of all, to our team captains for the leadership that made this platform possible." 

TB knows next to nothing about rugby, but he does know from meeting Fa'ae'e that she is very impressive, very smart and very confident. He also knows enough about rugby to know that it's a fast-moving sport with a natural appeal to it, which explains why the team has been drawing well since its inception. Up next is a Sunday (noon) home game against Long Island U.  

Congrats to Coach Fa'ae'e. Where is she taking the program? That's TBD. Will she ever forget Princeton 52, La Salle 17.

No chance.  

After Review

This past weekend was the one where Princeton had six different teams being their seasons, with some ups and a few downs. 

The two biggest ups came from the women's rugby team and the men's water polo team, both of which brought their head coaches their first wins with their programs. While TigerBlog was going to start there, today, he decided upon further review that he had to talk about technology today. 

See what he did there?  

With apologies, those stories and more from the past weekend can wait a day. Technology was just too big a story in college athletics this past weekend. 

TB wonders how many video reviews there were in all of the Princeton athletic events that happened this weekend. There were enough in the two field hockey games he was at in North Carolina that he lost track. He's sure there were some in the other sports as well. 

By the way, don't take for granted that these reviews just happen. The explosion of replay has fallen to the multimedia departments in schools around the country, and those people have more than handled the task.  

Officiating is tough. Theoretically, the ability to do reviews should help. TB is just not sure. In fact, he thought of this as he was switching between two events Saturday night in his hotel in Chapel Hill.  

On one channel, you had US Open tennis without line judges, only computerized out calls. 

On another 20 channels, you had college football, where games are stopped for measurements after the ball is spotted by the side judge, without any technological advance from when teams originally got a first down for gaining 10 yards. Chains, after a hit-or-miss spot? Still? 

Which is better? Good question. 

If you pay attention at all to anything, you saw Saturday night what can happen when the human element is eliminated from sports. Cans of worms worse than a bad call come spiraling into the night. 

TigerBlog is referring obviously to the end of the Western Michigan-Michigan game at the Big House. As you know by now, Western Michigan seemed to have won the game 12-7 when a Michigan Hail Mary attempt sailed past the end zone as the stadium clock went to 0:00.  

In the entire history of the world, dating back earlier than the dinosaurs, such an ending would have stood without controversy. Only since the advent of video review has this become an issue. And so what happened? The replay officials reviewed it, put one second on the clock and watched as Michigan converted this time. Final: Michigan 13, Western Michigan 12. 

Ah, but this only satisfied the people who wear Maize and Blue. To the rest of the world, this was clearly a travesty. And why wouldn't it be? As anyone who watched the game could see, the clock on the NBC broadcast reached 0:00 before the WMU player touched the ball. 

Game over.  

The Big Ten officials would later put out a statement about how there were two clocks and how the replay booth only saw the one that had 0.4 seconds on it when the ball was touched. As a result, the clock had not yet reached all zeroes, and so one second was put back up. 

This led the questions of 1) why were there multiple clocks and 2) which clock is official? This is from the NCAA football rulebook: 

Game Clock. Playing time shall be kept with a game clock that may be either a stopwatch operated by the line judge, back judge, field judge or side judge, or a game clock operated by an assistant under the direction of the appropriate judge. The type of game clock and the location of the game clock operator shall be determined by the game management. The game clock operator may be located on the sideline or in the traditional press box area. If the clock operator is in the traditional press box, it is recommended the location is between the goal lines. This location shall be shielded from public interference and shall afford a direct and unobstructed view of the playing field. The game clock shall not display tenths of seconds. 

Do with that information what you will. By the way, one of the complaints that TB and so many American fans have about professional and international soccer is that only one person has the official time, as opposed to the stadium scoreboard. Part of American sports is that everyone in the building knows how much time is left and knows what 0:00 means. 

TigerBlog is now entering his second term on the NCAA Division I men's lacrosse rules subcommittee. He was part of the committee when video review first came to the sport, and he can tell you that what happened in the game Saturday night could not happen in men's lacrosse because the stadium clock is official and it can only be used for replay purposes if it is burned into the video feed (the only exception is new for 2027 and involves using a stopwatch to determine a 15-second count to be able to challenge certain plays, which is nowhere near what happened the other night).

As TB has said many, many times in committee meetings, the last thing you want is for an outcome of a game to seen illegitimate, and that's what the Western Michigan-Michigan game feels like. This takes TB back to his original question? Which is better? The impact technology has had or living with the human element? 

Video review has not done what it was supposed to do, which is to correct egregious errors. Now? There are too many reviews and there are too many head-scratching outcomes. 

At the first video review at Princeton-North Carolina field hockey Sunday, TB had this to say: 

"After review of the play in the field hockey game, Michigan football has been awarded another play." 

It got some laughs, though it's not the kind of joke you want if you're in charge of the rules.  

 

Flight 1890, The Sequel

Bless Dina Rizzo's heart. 

The associate head coach for the Princeton field hockey team doesn't give up easily. 

Ah, but that part of the story will have to wait. That part happened around noon yesterday, long after the field hockey team's day began. 

 In fact, the team bus rolled out of the Caldwell Field House parking circle slightly before 4:30 am yesterday. The team had a flight to catch at Newark Airport, a 7:15 departure for Raleigh-Durham ahead of today's season-opener against No. 18 Old Dominion at the University of North Carolina, whom Princeton will play Sunday. 

The Tigers, by the way, are ranked second nationally in the National Field Hockey Coaches' Association poll this week. 

To get on a bus at 4:30, one has to be awake significantly earlier than that. For TigerBlog, that meant somewhere in the 2:45 range. It was okay, though. The flight would get into RDU at around 8:45, and then there would be time for a nap before practice began in the afternoon. 

Right? 

Wrong. 

Princeton arrived at Newark around 5:20 or so and was easily through security around 5:50ish. Everything proceeded as normal when boarding started. As he walked onto the plane, TB mentioned to head coach Carla Tagliente that they'd done all that and it still wasn't even 7 am. 

Oh, and what in the world possesses people to eat burgers and have beer around 6:30 in the morning, which is what more than one person was doing. On the other hand, there's no time for digressions in this story. 

The team was settled in mostly in the back of the plane. TB was in seat 34B. The middle is not his favorite, but it was a short flight. 

The pilot came on to welcome everyone to United Airlines Flight 1890, complete with her "greetings from the flight deck" report. She said that due to traffic and weather, flight time would be 1:19, a little longer than usual, and that the plane would have a cruising altitude of just 8,000 feet. That seems a bit low, but she explained that the higher elevations were being saved for the planes heading to Florida. 

Okay. That's not a big deal. The flight attendants went through the safety instructions, the plane pushed back and the taxiing began. That's when things started to take a turn. 

For the next two-plus hours, the plane visited various parts of the Newark Airport tarmac. The pilot eventually returned to say that a warning light had come on and, guess what, Flight 1890 would be heading back to the gate. Or at least some gate. 

It took a while for all that to be sorted out. Then it was time to get off the plane, around 9:30. Keep in mind that it's about an eight-hour bus ride from Princeton to Chapel Hill, so that would have put the team in North Carolina around 12:30 or a little later with a few stops. 

For the passengers, though, it was back to the terminal. United offered $15 food vouchers, and other than that it was hang around and wait. First the monitor said the flight would go off at noon. Then 12:20. Then 12:40. That's a lot of time to be killed.  

Interestingly, nobody seemed all that annoyed. Maybe it was sort of an "everyone's in this together" situation, for the Tigers and for everyone else on the delayed flight. Even the two pilots were hanging around the concourse. 

Out the window it was clear that maintenance was working on the right engine. It seemed like there was one technician with one screwdriver, and TB isn't sure if that made him feel better or not. 

Oh well. More time to kill. And that's where the part of the story about Dina comes into play. 

At some point, Dina got an excited look on her face. Who is that guy? What guy? That guy!! That guy there!!! He looks familiar. Overhearing her, another passenger said "That's the Giant's QB1. That's Jaxson Dart."

And it was. There he was, with his girlfriend, calmly walking to a gate for a flight. 

Dina said "I have to get a picture with him" and sprinted after him. As she did this, it took TB back to the last time this happened. Ironically, it was at the UNC field hockey stadium last November, as Princeton practiced for the Final Four. Dina is a huge New England Patriots fan, having grown up walking distance from Gillette Stadium. She wanted to get a picture with UNC football coach Bill Belichick, who was inside the facility giving a pep talk to the Tar Heel field hockey team. 

Dina waited and waited and waited — and then Belichick gave her the brush-off, even when she told him she was from Walpole. 

Would it happen again? Would Jaxson Dart pull a Belichick? Turns out Dart is a pretty good guy. Here's the proof:

That's Dina on the left. That's Olivia Caponiti and Izzy Morgan on the right; those two went to get a picture of their own as well. 

TB then walked over to where Dart was sitting and thanked him for being so approachable. He also told him the Belichick story, something that he and his girlfriend chuckled at. Dart then wished Princeton good luck, and TB did the same for him. Before he walked away, TB turned back and said "and try not to take so many hits."

Then it was back to reality. There would be a new plane and a gate change, with a resulting walk back to where the first flight started out before it parked at a gate far away. The flight began boarding at 12:30, and the pilot came on and announced "Welcome To Flight 1890, The Sequel." She was very good at reading the room, or at least the plane. Keep in mind, every single person on the plane had gotten up around the same time as TB, but she kept everyone from losing it. 

There was still one hurdle to clear. The luggage had to be moved from one plane to the next, something that fell through the cracks between the morning crew and the afternoon crew. As such, it wasn't until around 2:00 that the plane actually took off. It landed at RDU exactly one hour later, though it seemed like 15 minutes.

If you're keeping score, it was 10.5 hours from the time the team left Caldwell until it landed in North Carolina. It was only 8.5 hours from the time of boarding the first plane to landing on the second one. 

Anyway, the team made it. The season is starting today. 

It was a long day — but ultimately a fun one. It's the sort of misadventure that will make for great stories in the years and decades to come. The players on this team will be talking about the day they got stuck in Newark Airport long after they forget who won and who lost this weekend. 

And now it's time to play.  

Congrats Alex

The Department of Athletics Welcome Back staff meeting was held yesterday in Jadwin Gym. 

Near the beginning, Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack asked everyone who was at a staff meeting for the first time to come forward. TigerBlog was on the end of his row in the stands, and he had to get up into the aisle to let someone in his row head down. 

As he stood there, someone behind him who was also walking down paused to let TB go in front of him. 

"First meeting?" he said to TB.

That made TB chuckle. 

In the world of college athletics, there will be always be turnover year over year. It's the nature of things. There was a time (a long time ago) when it was in fact TB's first meeting. These days, there are only a handful of people who have been here longer than he has. 

In fact, he's pretty sure there's only football coach Steve Verbit, ticket officer Stephanie Sutton and women's open rowing coach Lori Dauphiny. TB and women's squash coach Gail Ramsay are tied, since they started on the same day. 

The parade of new faces was great to see. Most, but not all, are early in their careers. Others are new to Princeton but not the world of college sports. 

One face that TB was glad to see there was that of Alex Henn, his Office of Athletic Communications colleague. Alex is in Year 3 at Princeton, after she graduated from Georgetown. 

Why single her out? It's because she was recently promoted. 

Elliott Carr recently left the OAC to become the Assistant AD for Strategic Communication at some other school somewhere, a school where he traded his orange and black for green. Given that Elliott stands 6-6, that makes him truly representative of the Big Green of his new employer, Dartmouth. 

Even though he left for an Ivy League rival, Elliott deserves a few words of praise from TigerBlog, especially since there haven't been too many nicer people who ever walked into Jadwin Gym. He came to Princeton single and left for Hanover with his wife Colleen and son Leon.

No matter where his career takes him or whatever big events he gets to experience, it's likely — or actually almost a certainty — that he'll never have anything that matches his time with the Princeton men's basketball team during its run to the 2023 Sweet 16. Elliott was the men's basketball contact for that magical ride, and he was a great representative of Princeton in every way. 

TB wishes him the best in Hanover. It was great to work with someone so upbeat, friendly, willing to help and easy going. 

To nobody's surprise, Alex has been promoted into Elliott's spot. Many of the same things that TB said about Elliott apply to her (other than the fact that she's more than a foot shorter). 

From Day 1 Alex has shown the same kind of work ethic as Elliott. She also has the qualities that you need to have to be successful in this field, which certainly isn't for everyone. And TB isn't talking just talking about the skills for the job. 

Alex in some ways reminds TB of himself with the way she walks the fine line of being the biggest fan of her teams while also having enough professional distance to not be a cheerleader. It's a difficult balance, and she does it extraordinarily well. 

It's been nearly 40 years since TigerBlog first started covering Princeton Athletics during his newspaper days. This is Year 33 of being on the University payroll. 

If you asked him all those years ago if he could see himself at Princeton in 2026, he would have said "yes" in a heartbeat. He sort of said that to Alex the other day, that she could, if she wanted, have the same longevity here. She certainly has all the components for it, as well as an innate leadership quality that might one day take her into the administration once she has more experience. 

Can she see herself at Princeton 30 or so years from now? That would be 2056. That's a pretty big projection. 

For now, she has a very well deserved promotion, for which TB congratulates her. 

Princeton Athletics is very lucky to have her.  

Class Is In Session

Happy first day of classes!!!

TigerBlog, as you probably know, is very stingy with his exclamation points, so the first day of classes must big. And it is. 

TB remembers his first-ever college class. It was a political science class held in the University Museum, opposite Franklin Field. He also remembers his last-ever college class, which was a history class in the David Rittenhouse Lab, in front of the Palestra. 

If he knew then what he knows now, he probably would have at the very least spent those four years in between rooting for Princeton. He also would have made a few investments in up-and-coming companies, like Apple and Microsoft.

He did go to college with someone who was one of the first computer science majors in the world, TB supposes. He got a job with Microsoft after graduation and was paid a small salary and additional stock. The last time TB saw him wasn't in person. It was on the cover of a magazine, with his picture and the headline "What Do You Do When You're 30 And Have $250 Million?"

Fortunately, there are things more important than money, and as such, TB wouldn't trade all of this for that kind of wealth (he would be okay if his salary got bumped up to nine figures). 

TB is writing this from a bench outside his eye doctor's office. His new lenses came in, and he figured that he might as well use the hour it would take to switch out the old ones to get this done and then move on to his next project (he'll have more on that later). He's wearing his backup glasses, which, by the way, he hates. Why did he get these in the first place? 

To his right is a man who got pulled over by three police officers for going the wrong way on a one-way street, though in fairness, there are detour signs up for road paving everywhere and it was a bit confusing. On the other hand, it does say "Do Not Enter" a few yards from where he was pulled over.

To his left is the actual street paving and with it the smell of the tar. It's the same smell TB smelled when he walked down Spruce Street on his way to that first class all those decades ago, and this smell has always taken him back to that moment. 

To all Princeton students, good luck and remember — the University is filled with people whose full-time job it is to help you. If you are overwhelmed, make sure you reach out and take advantage of them. That's what they're here to do. 

This is especially true for freshmen. Miss TigerBlog did so her first year, and the help she got was immeasurable in preparing her for the early days of being an MAE major. 

Meanwhile, if you missed it Monday night, the men's soccer team had itself a great performance and a huge 2-0 win over a Portland team that was ranked third in Division I. The two goals came late in the second half of what was a tight game throughout, one with the feel of postseason rather than early season. 

The first Princeton goal came with 16 minutes left from Noah Hammerschmidt, a freshman from Brooklyn. It was also the first of his career. The second came four minutes later, from Kevin Kelley. Both goals were brilliantly set up by Bardia Hormozi with passes that are best described as either "perfect" or "beautiful" or both. 

Hammerschmidt's goal came, obviously, before he ever took a college class. It's always fascinating when that happens. Freshman fall athletes have been on campus for a few weeks now, becoming acclimated to the athletic side of their experience. 

Now begins the academic side. Some, like TigerBlog, will go four years and not one class more before embarking on a career. 

For others, this is the start of a run of education that will stretch beyond 10 years and end with MDs, P.hDs, JDs and even MD/P.hDs. Whatever the path, best of luck to all of them. 

This is, after all, why they all chose this school.  

They'll be glad they did.  

Welcome To September

Welcome to September. 

When you think of summer, you don't really think of September. That's more for back-to-school, the coming of autumn, the start of football season, the cooling of the temperatures. Still, most of the month is still in summer — and comes complete with the best weather of the year. 

In fact, as someone who grew up near the Jersey Shore, TigerBlog can tell you that there are few better times of year to go down the Shore as they say than September. Crowds? Nope. Great weather? Yup. Parking? Lots of it.  

The majority of the U.S. Open tennis tournament will be held this month, though it did start in August. Of course, the match between Sofia Kenin and Venus Williams seemed like it might not start until October or so with the way that the Novak Djokovic-some other guy match was going. 

As it turned out, some other guy took down Djokovic in five long sets, giving Djokovic his a first-round loss in a Major pushing Williams and Kenin to a first serve at 12:10 am. Kenin won the match 6-2, 7-6, finishing it off just before 2 am. 

Can you imagine waiting around not knowing what time your match is going to start, only to have the match before yours go on forever? How do you know what to eat and when? How can you ready to play after midnight? 

This September was going to be a difficult month for TB on one front, at least on one front. Why? That's because his four-year term on the NCAA Division I men's lacrosse rules subcommittee was to end on Aug. 31, 2026. 

Had it really been four years? Yes it had. Time flies, as everyone knows, though this had been a really quick four years. TB felt good about his time on the committee, including serving as chair the last two years. He was part of the introduction of video replay into the game, and he was also part of recognizing that the game had 1) had major overhauls the previous few cycles and 2) that it was now in a good place and didn't need huge changes again. 

And just like that, it was supposed to be over. Until it wasn't. Instead, he finds himself reappointed for another four-year term. Just like that, yesterday was no longer the end and today is Day 1 of the new beginning. TB's quest to rid the game of live-ball timeouts continues. 

In other lacrosse news, TigerBlog has seen some of the returning players from the men's NCAA championship team of this past spring and has asked them all the same question: How many times have you watched the video? 

The answer is always the same: "a lot." That would be TB's answer if you asked him. He's watched in a lot, or, more accurately, a whole lot. 

The video was the one, well, hopefully you've seen it by now. If not, click HERE. 

That's crazy impressive. It was largely a Ben Heske production. Now you can watch his latest, which he did for the women's team: 

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A post shared by Princeton Women's Lacrosse (@princetonwlax)

This video has the additional benefit of being narrated by Rachael Becker DeCecco, a two-time NCAA champion at Princeton herself (2002, 2003) and still the only Tiger to win the Tewaaraton Award as the top player in college lacrosse. These days Rachael is one of the driving forces behind the success of the Premier Lacrosse League and now the Women's Lacrosse League.  

Both videos showcase what the Princeton Lacrosse experience is. Between the two teams, there are 10 NCAA championships. 

Only Maryland has more combined titles with 18, four by the men's program and 14 by the women. Well, that's sort of the case. Syracuse officially has 10 men's championships and no women's championships, though the 1990 championship remains technically vacated. UVa is tied with Princeton with 10, also with seven men's and three women's. 

Clearly there is great tradition here. And clearly these videos do such a great job of capturing that. 

And with that, happy September.  

 

Game Night, Game Week

TigerBlog was driving along a highway the other day when he saw a car on the side of the road with its trunk up. 

As he drove past at 70 miles per hour or so, he noticed that the driver, a man who appeared to be in his 30s or 40s, had set up his golf bag behind the car. TB's thought? 

"Hey, buddy, you're probably going to have to take a drop on this one."

In other comedy news, TigerBlog Jr.'s girlfriend Veronica is one of nine children, and her mother does stand-up. This was from one of her shows this weekend:

"If you take two kids to the park and bring one back, that's a 50. That's an F. If you bring nine kids to the park and bring back eight, that's an 89. That's a B+."

Not bad, right? And that doesn't even take into account possible grade inflation. 

Ah, but seriously folks. TigerBlog will be here all week. 

Well, not really. He's heading to North Carolina Thursday for the start of field hockey season, which begins with the Conference Crossover in Chapel Hill. Princeton will play Old Dominion Friday and then  the host Tar Heels Sunday. Penn will also be there to play the opposite schedule. 

The field hockey team is one of six Princeton teams who will be kicking it off this week as the calendar turns from August to September. In addition to field hockey, there is also women's volleyball (at Colgate's tournament), men's and women's cross country (at Providence's invitational), men's water polo (at Navy for three matches, none of which are against the host) and women's rugby (at La Salle). 

The schedule brings with it 1.5 head coach debuts for Princeton. Derek Ellingson, the women's water polo head coach, is the interim head coach for the men's team for 2026 after Dusty Litvak left Princeton to become the women's head coach at Loyola Marymount. Ellingson has been at Princeton since 2004, as an assistant with both teams and for the last seven year as the women's head coach, with a:

148-46 (.763) overall record and is 48-8 (.857) in CWPA play. His teams have won two CWPA championships while he has served as head coach (2023, 2024) and have played in two NCAA Tournaments with a trip to the national semifinals in 2023. :Overall since his arrival on campus in 2004, Ellingson has been an assistant or head coach for 11 CWPA Division championships and 14 CWPA Conference championships while guiding teams to 14 NCAA Tournaments. 

That's from his bio. 

The women's rugby game Saturday in Philadelphia will be the Tiger head coaching debut for Karameli Fa'ae'e. You can read more about her HERE.

In the meantime, there's the matter of the two teams who have already started their seasons. That would be the two soccer teams. 

The women were to have a game Thursday against No. 22 West Virginia, but the thunderstorms forced that to be postponed. The Tigers did get to play yesterday, defeating James Madison 2-0 on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. 

The two goals came courtesy of Isabella Garces, who now has three in three games, as well as three of the five her team has scored. The three goals equal her season total from last year and are one off of her high for a full season after she had four in 2024. 

The women will play two straight games against Big Ten teams next, both on the road, with stops at Ohio State Thursday and Rutgers Sunday. 

And all of that brings TB to the men's team, who will be home tonight against Portland at 7. This is a huge opportunity for the Tigers after a 1-1 tie against Villanova in the season-opener Friday night.  

Portland and Princeton have never met before, and the Pilots are coming all the way across the country for just the one game. A year ago the teams combined to go 29-4-6, and they have both been highly ranked in the preseason. 

Princeton will also be home Friday against James Madison.  

Guest TigerBlog - Emilia Reay And Fresh Tiger Stripes

TigerBlog has a standing invitation to anyone who wants to submit a guest entry here.

 

Not too many have ever taken him up on this offer, though he was pretty sure he knew someone who would. That would be Emilia Reay, a rising junior at Princeton who first came onto TB's radar early in her freshman year, when she started covering field hockey for the Daily Princetonian. 

 

It's not always easy for someone that young to walk into a college press box and not be intimidated. In Emilia's case, she was more intimidating than intimidated. She certainly announced her presence at least. 

 

In addition to her writing, you can find her Princeton Athletic commentaries on her Instagram page "EmiliaReayCameToPlay." 
 

Emilia spent her summer working for USA Lacrosse, where she wrote, worked with national teams, studied up on the game's history and did pretty much any task that came up. She took TB up on his offer to write about her experiences there, which follows here: 

 

The USA Lacrosse Museum was in dire need of some fresh tiger stripes. I might be a little biased though… 

I’m Emilia Reay, and TigerBlog let me write about the best exhibit at HQ, my stomping grounds all summer long since I was USA Lacrosse’s Digital Media and Editorial Intern. 

I learned a lot while I worked there this summer. For starters, when you’re on the field with the U15 development teams, you actually have to pay attention, unlike when you’re on the field with the Princeton team. The kids are great, don't get me wrong, but there were some close calls because their shots “had too much helium,” as ESPN’s Anish Shroff says. It’s one of my favorite broadcasting lines. I actually got to interview him for my Dana Boyle story. If you’re a loyal TB reader, you should have seen that link two weeks ago. 

 

Alright, if you made it this far even though this isn’t TB’s writing, I won’t make you wait any longer for the best exhibit at HQ. Here’s the Orange and Black I’m talking about, and it’s none of that Orioles stuff that rips off Princeton’s signature color combo:

My coworker Paul sent me that second photo. He’s in charge of making sure the museum’s national champion exhibit is up-to-date. When Paul and I realized that I wouldn’t be in the office to witness the changing of the guard from Cornell to Princeton in the Men’s DI Champion display, I suggested he at least take down the red gear while I was there. I even offered to do it myself to speed up the process!

While I was interning, the “Mag Team” banned me from writing about Princeton. I mean, I go to the school, I worked for the team, and they won the whole thing, so of course I’d rather write about them than other people from other programs! After all, none of the interns could say their schools won the national championship. 

Around HQ, Princeton is well represented. The field is named after none other than legendary Princeton coach Bill Tierney. What about the walkway around that field? It couldn’t be named after another Princeton coach, could it? 

 

Oh yeah, it’s the Chris Sailer Trail. Then there are nods to other Princeton players in the promenade’s pavers, the National Hall of Fame, and the tunnel out to Tierney turf. What’s not to love?

Whenever I was waiting on an edit, I read the magazine archives. I took some home every weekend too. I started with the first editions, all the way from 1978, and then I exclusively read Princeton covers. In my first round of reading, there was an address label for Howard Krongard on a 1979 cover. I came to find out he was a stellar Princeton goalie. And nobody knew him as Howard. It’s Cookie. More on that here.

 

 

I’m glad I was at USAL this summer of all summers to intern there. Next stop: Tiger Town! 

 

Poll Position

TigerBlog spent Sunday afternoon at the rooftop pool at Miss TigerBlog's building in Washington, D.C.

As settings go, this one was pretty near perfect. The roof is about 20 stories up, and the view from the pool has Arlington to the right, the Washington Monument to the left and the rest of the Mall in between. 

As you may know, this past Sunday was the Freedom 250 Indy Car race through the Mall. Prior to the start, there were a series of flyovers above the course. 

Of course, the flyovers don't suddenly end when the course is flown over. In this case, the planes continued on a path that took them essentially over the rooftop pool, something that was just amazing to see. And hear. Especially hear. 

The highlight was when two F-35s pulled out of a formation and peeled off on their own, one of which did a vertical climb through the clouds while the other made a 180-degree turn. 

All of this happened so close to MTB's pool that it felt like the pilots were waving. It also obviously drew the attention of everyone at the pool, and in about 15 seconds the entire group had moved to the fence to watch and listen. 

Oh, and they all had their phones out to record — everyone but TigerBlog. His instinct was to record, but then he was too mesmerized in the moment to do so. It was like the old times, being in the moment instead of trying to capture the moment for a video that would hardly ever be played. 

Ultimately, he didn't pay any attention the race itself. For today, he would like to talk about "poll" position, not "pole position."

He'll start with tennis. The ITA released its preseason individual rankings, and Princeton senior Paul Inchauspe was ranked second in Division I in singles, tying the highest ranking in program history, along with Matija Pecotic, who reached No. 2 in December 2012. 

The No. 1 player in the preseason is Dylan Dietrich of UVa. The NCAA individual championships are in the fall now, if you recall. Inchauspe was a semifinalist a year ago.  

Princeton's other ranked men's players were Landon Ardila, who along with Inchauspe start out at No. 13 in doubles, and Aleksandar Mitric and freshman Simeon Stankovic, who ranked No. 74 in doubles. That's not bad for a player who has yet to hit a ball on a college court; then again, Stankovic was also ranked as the No. 9 incoming player and No. 92 in singles. 

Alice Ferlito was ranked 73rd in singles on the women's side. 

In other rankings, the Ivy League has released several of its preseason media polls. Princeton was ranked No. 1 in men's soccer, women's soccer and women's volleyball, all of whom won their Ivy titles a year ago. 

Remember, the women's soccer team is home tonight at 7 against West Virginia and Sunday at 11 am against James Madison. The men open their season at home tomorrow at 7 against Villanova, with Portland here Monday at 7. The women's volleyball season opens with three matches next weekend at Colgate. 

Of all the polls, though, TB's favorites are in field hockey, and not just because it's one of the teams he covers. No, it has to do with the Princeton-Harvard rivalry. 

If you remember, these two have dominated Ivy field hockey for the last decade. Since 2016, in fact, Princeton and Harvard are a combined 107-1 against the rest of the Ivy League schools. Can any rivalry in any other sport say that? 

The teams met three times last year. Harvard won the regular season matchup and, with it, the Ivy title, since the teams were both 6-0 against everyone else. Princeton then won the Ivy League tournament championship, defeating, of course, Harvard in the final. 

Round 3 came in the NCAA semifinals, where Princeton won 2-0 before falling 2-1 in double overtime to Northwestern in the championship game. 

To start 2026, Harvard is the preseason No. 1 in the Ivy poll, followed by No. 2 Princeton ... but then there is the NFHCA Division I coaches poll, also released this week. In that one, it goes Northwestern, North Carolina, Princeton and then Harvard as the top four. 

Princeton starts its season next weekend with games against Old Dominion and North Carolina, both in Chapel Hill. 

Goodbye Dolly

In this day and age where it's hard to find any common ground, TigerBlog is pretty sure there is one thing almost all Americans could agree on. 

Everyone loved Dolly Parton. 

The famed country singer passed away yesterday at the age of 80. The news was startling to TB — and probably to almost everyone when it was first seen. 

If you think that she wasn't as universally beloved as one can be these days, then consider these two headlines: 

"Dolly Parton, Country Music Queen and Humanitarian, Dead at 80."

"Dolly Parton, Beloved Singer and Global Icon, Dead at 80."

The first is from CNN. The second is from Fox News. Since when do they agree on anything? Dolly Parton united them.

Her first album, entitled "Hello I'm Dolly," was released in 1967. She'd record 49 more in nearly 60 years after that debut — and she wrote the often-redone song "I Will Always Love You."

This is from her obituary: 

Referred to as the "Queen of Country", Parton was one of the most-honored female country performers in history and received various accolades, including 11 Grammy Awards and three Emmy Awards, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, including a humanitarian honorary Oscar win in 2025, six Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award. Parton sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling musical artists of all time. 

This was from her family yesterday: 

A message from the family of Dolly Parton. pic.twitter.com/9DNRgRx0uH

— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) August 25, 2026

TigerBlog didn't intend to start today with a Dolly tribute, but it seemed necessary for someone who writes every day. Rest in peace, Dolly.  

As near as TB can tell, Dolly never performed in Princeton. Maybe the closest was a 1982 Triangle Club spoof that included "Five to Nine," a take-off of the movie "Nine to Five." 

Is there a Princeton Athletics segue in there? 

Princeton head men's lacrosse coach Matt Madalon recently came back from a family vacation in Dollywood, located in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. It is annually the most attended tourist attraction in the state. Madalon said the news was "so sad." 

The news of Dolly's passing reached TB when he was at Monmouth yesterday for the field hockey scrimmage. Tiger head coach Carla Tagliente said that she liked Dolly Parton very much, for the movie "Steel Magnolias" as much as for any song. Clem Houlden, one of the Tiger captains, had her mouth drop open at the news while saying that she liked the song "Nine To Five" very much. 

Athletic trainer Lauren Roethlisberger, who yes is a cousin of the former quarterback, was probably the most shaken by the news. She's more than 50 years younger than Parton was, and she also loved her, showing how many generations were touched by Dolly's music and persona. 

The scrimmage did provide TB the chance to break in his new camera, though that does seem an unfortunate word choice. Armed with one 45-minute lesson, TB did his best and did manage to capture a few shots that he liked. 

He got these two, for instance, though neither of them scored a goal:

He also got this one of Ella Cashman, who did score:

TB gives himself a B for his first time shooting with the new camera. He'll have plenty of chances to practice moving forward. And if he can sneak in dog pictures, so much the better. 

The scrimmage itself was a good first look at the team that went to double overtime in the NCAA final a year ago. As TB watched it on the hot summer turf at Monmouth, he thought that it was a long way from there to Louisville, the site of this season's Final Four. 

The preseason Ivy League poll and the national coaches preseason poll were both released yesterday. TB originally was going to write about those, but they'll have to wait until tomorrow. 

For today, it had to be Dolly. Her passing had to touch even the coldest of hearts. 

She was certainly loved.