Let The Games Begin

The Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games will be floating down the Seine today. 

While a few events have already been played, the schedule starts full force tomorrow. Of the 26 Princeton athletes in Paris, there will be 12 who compete by the end of the weekend. 

Remember, the best way to follow #PrincetonInParis is on the Olympics site on goprincetontigers.com (click HERE for that) and Princeton Athletics social media. 

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The first Princeton athlete to compete in Paris will be fencer Hadley Husisian, one of the six Tiger undergrads in Paris. 

Husisian finished third in the epee at the NCAA championships as a freshman in 2023, which makes her one of the youngest members of the U.S. fencing team. She then took this past year off to try to qualify for the Olympics, and now she's in Paris at the age of 21 years ... and one day.

In addition to the Opening Ceremonies, Husisian also celebrates her 21st birthday today. Now that's how you celebrate in style.

Speaking of Husisian, she was part of the NCAA's "Olympians Made Here" campaign. More than 75 percent of the United States Olympic Team is made up of current or former NCAA athletes.

You can see her in this video (she's the third fencer to speak):

Olympians are built here and I think that is absolutely true 🗣️ Hadley Husisian#OlympainsMadeHere x @USAFencing pic.twitter.com/zi2Y2KngTs

— NCAA (@NCAA) July 25, 2024

Her Olympic debut is tomorrow at 10 am in Paris, which means 4 am at her family's home in Oakton, Va.

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Hey, everything can't be about the Olympics, right? In fact, not that far after these Games end, the NFL season will begin. Training camps are now getting underway.

TigerBlog's favorite team this year? It wouldn't be a team on the field (though he'll be rooting hard for Andrei Iosivas and the Cincinnati Bengals). 

No, it would be a broadcasting team. One of the teams that CBS announced for the season is play-by-play man Tom McCarthy (former Princeton broadcaster) with Jay Feeley and Ross Tucker (former Princeton offensive lineman).

There aren't too many people easier to root for than McCarthy and Tucker. And there aren't too many people who are living out their dreams the way they are. 

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TB's feature story on Beth Yeager was mentioned here yesterday. Again, if you didn't read it (yet), you can do so by clicking HERE. 

Yeager and the United States field hockey team will begin their Olympic run tomorrow at 1:45 Eastern against Argentina, one of the medal favorites. Can the U.S. get to the quarterfinals? That's the goal.

As you watch the Games on TV these next two weeks, you'll be inundated with stories about the athletes and what they've overcome to be there and all of the other glorification that the Olympic coverage employs.

What you won't see are the ones who aren't there, the ones who either just missed out on qualifying or, even more heartbreakingly, would have been there but suffered an injury. It puts those in both groups into the position of either giving up the Olympic dream or rededicating themselves to another four-year cycle.

One of the athletes in the second group is Jillian Wolgemuth, who played at Duke and who was Yeager's teammate through all of the Olympic qualifying. Instead of getting ready to play in Paris, though, Wolgemuth is out, having torn her ACL in the second-to-last game the U.S. team played before the Olympics. 

She wrote THIS for USA Field Hockey, which includes this:

I will likely cry when I see my teammates belt out the national anthem without me on Saturday and then play in some of the biggest matches of our careers. But more than that, I will be proud to have helped them get there. The Olympics is just another tournament. There will be more opportunities to compete at the highest level, to collapse on the turf after a running session, to be in the thick of it with my teammates.

She's someone to root for and to hope you see in Los Angeles in 2028.

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Finally, even as the Olympic Games kick off, remember — the 2024-25 Princeton Athletic year is four weeks away, with the women's soccer team at home against Miami.

Oh, and TB guarantees you that he will call the United States Olympic Team "the Tigers" at some point in the next two weeks. 

Enjoy the Games, and your weekend.

Super Excited

So here's a pretty good "Princeton In Paris" picture:

That's Sean Gregory on the right. As you know if you read here yesterday, Gregory — a member of the men's basketball Class of 1998 — is in Paris to cover these Olympic Games for Time Magazine. 

On the right is Kareem Maddox, Princeton Class of 2011. He's in Paris as part of the U.S. 3x3 men's basketball team.

That's four Ivy League championships and NCAA tournaments between them, by the way. 

The Games themselves actually began yesterday with some rugby and soccer games. The Opening Ceremonies are tomorrow. 

Can you imagine how nervous you must be right now if you are one of the people who is responsible for staging those Ceremonies? Forget the security part. Just having the entire night go smoothly has to be a ridiculous challenge. 

One of TigerBlog's formerly favorite Olympic events is out of these Games before they start. Who is it? That would be Britain's Charlotte Dujardin, the three-time gold medalist in dressage. If you missed this story, she voluntarily stepped away after a four-year-old video surfaced of her abuses when it came to, as the story said, "horse welfare." 

That was really disappointing for TB. He loves to watch the dressage and the precision, and he doesn't want to think that the horses are abused in any way to make them perform properly. 

The first full day of Olympic action is Saturday, and Princeton will be well-represented from the start. One of the athletes who will be making her Olympic debut will be Beth Yeager, the two-time first-team All-American in field hockey who will be back as a junior this year at Princeton.

TigerBlog met with Yeager back in March in Greenwich, Conn., for a story after she was part of the U.S. team's dramatic Olympic qualifying. He didn't run the story then, though, since she wasn't officially named to the final 16 for the Olympics until early June. 

Now with the first game for the Americans set for Saturday at 1:45 pm Eastern time against Argentina, TB has finally posted the piece. To give you a sense of just how emotional reaching the Olympics is, here is what Yeager said about the countdown of the final seconds in the game that put them in Paris: 

"I have never experienced anything like that. I was on the sideline, and with 20 seconds left, it was pretty clear that they weren't going to tie it. Then I was super excited, but I also had an inner peace. It was such a relief. I was so happy. We'd achieved something that we'd been stressing about for so long. After that, I became so emotional and starting crying. I was just overcome with emotion. I was sobbing for a long time. I'd stop. I'd start again. My teammates were making fun of me."

You can read that story on goprincetontigers.com HERE.

When the U.S. team plays its first game, Yeager will be on the field. She'll also have considerable support in the stands, since five of her teammates have traveled to Paris to be there. 

Yeager took last year off from school to be a part of the national team as it went through its arduous qualifying journey. She'll be back at Princeton this year as a junior, which means that she'll be playing in the Olympics, taking two weeks off and then playing for the Tigers.

The U.S. team came perilously close to missing the Olympics, first losing by a goal late against Argentina in the Pan Am Games final in Chile, where an automatic bid went to the winner.

Then there was the final Olympic qualifying tournament, in Ranchi, India. The U.S. trailed in the fourth quarter of its semifinal game against Japan, and had the Americans lost, they would have had to beat the host team in the third-place game to get to Paris. 

Instead, they rallied for a 2-1 win. Along the way, the U.S. faced elimination twice, in the group stage at the Pan Am Games against Uruguay (a 2-0 win) and then in the game against New Zealand in Ranchi, also in the group stage. The U.S. won that game 1-0 on a Yeager goal.

To come through all of that and finally get to Paris? 

To use Yeager's words, that has to be "super exciting," or really, something beyond that.

Bones In Paris

TigerBlog went to empty the compost bin the other day when all of the sudden his kitchen was besieged by fruit flies.

They were everywhere. It was awful.

So how do you get rid of them? TigerBlog took the internet and read that if you put a bowl with two cups of apple cider vinegar and a splash of dish soap and leave it on the counter, the fruit flies can't resist them.

Okay. What could be the harm? So TB put out two bowls on either side of the counter and then went about his business. 

About an hour later, he went back to check on the bowls. And what did he find? Basically every fruit fly in the neighborhood came back, dove into the mixture and, well, died. 

It was amazing. Things don't usually work that well. The only downside was the smell of the apple cider vinegar, which can be a bit overwhelming. Still, it was a good trade-off.

This is TB's public service announcement for today.

Meanwhile, the 2024 Summer Olympics in France are (un)officially underway. The first events, mostly early group rugby and soccer games, started today, with the official Opening Ceremonies to be held on the Seine Friday. 

TB mentioned yesterday that the best way to follow is the Olympic website and the best way to follow Princetonians in Paris is with the Princeton Athletics microsite.

To those two, TB now adds another way. 

Sean Gregory, the Princeton men's basketball alum from the legendary Class of 1998, has spent most of his professional career as a sportswriter for Time Magazine. One of his best assignments through those years has been his coverage of the Olympics, which is really second to none.

Gregory, whose nickname at Princeton was "Bones," is in Paris, sort of another Tiger In Paris.

The path to the Olympic village dining hall that used to be a Paris power plant feels like the UN of mess. Follow along these next few weeks for such killer observations and more! pic.twitter.com/HS1hyULtbw

— Sean Gregory (@seanmgregory) July 23, 2024

Bones covers the Olympics the way TB would if he had that job. He writes about the people more than the results, and he does so in a way that very few people can match. He is a truly great storyteller. 

For instance, remember yesterday, when TB mentioned that breakdancing is now an Olympic sport? Well, TB learned a lot more when he read the story that Gregory wrote about an Afghani breaker who found the sport in an unlikely way and in a very unlikely place. It included this paragraph:

So once Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Talash and her breaking crew had to make a wrenching choice: live under Taliban oppression and give up breaking, risk their lives in Afghanistan by continuing to break under the Taliban, or leave their families and flee the country to pursue their passion. “If you want to do something to reach your dreams, or want to tell people who you are, where you’re from, and what you want to do, then let’s go,” says Talash. “This is the moment we need to leave.” 

Then there was his profile last month about American sprinter Noah Lyles. It starts this way: 

Noah Lyles should be a miserable human on this suffocatingly hot May morning near Orlando. Two nights earlier, the U.S. sprint star was up until 3 a.m. in the Bahamas, waiting on a delayed drug test after a race. You can still spot fatigue under his eyes.

Lyles, however, can summon social energy on command, and today he’s yapping away between stretches and sprints: about his love of anime, how he needs a pedicure, how he’s the most fashionable guy in all of track and field. He had been absent from the past few practices while running in Nassau, where he and his 4 × 100-m relay team took first place. “We did miss you,” one of Lyles’ training partners, Paralympic sprinter Nick Mayhugh, tells him. “But did we enjoy the peace and quiet of the past two days? Yes.”

They make you want to read more, don't they? Well, you can if you click HERE and HERE.

It'll be more of the same for the duration of the Games.

Make sure you're following him for the next two weeks. He's another Princetonian in Paris to root for during these Games.

Tigers In Paris

TigerBlog was walking near a golf course the other day when a ball rolled across the cart path and under a bush near his feet. 

So what do you do in that situation? Do you leave it where it lies? Or do you help out a bit and kick it back across the path into a better lie?

Ah, golf etiquette. TB doesn't know much about it, so he did what he thought was best — he knocked it back out of the bush and across the cart path. Now it was just a simple chip to the green.

It is TB's sincerest hope that whoever's ball that was, that little gesture resulted in holing out and leading to a completely better life all around. 

Does that count as a good deed? Or was there a downside? No good deed goes unpunished, as Elphaba sang in "Wicked."

Of course, had it been a serious tournament or something like that, TB wouldn't have done what he did. You know, if it was the Olympics or something? Then they'd be on their own.

Golf is one of the sports that will be held at the Olympics, which begin this week in Paris. The golf event is actually being held outside of Paris, near Versailles.

TB's good friend Sue Byrne, formerly of Harvard Athletics, is one of the 45,000 volunteers (out of 300,000 applicants) who will help the Games go smoothly; she has been assigned to the golf tournaments. 

In all, there are 32 different sports in these Olympics, including the debut of — wait for it — breakdancing. Yes, breakdancing is now an Olympic sport. How do you score that?

So is surfing, which will actually will be held in Tahiti, which isn't really all that close to Paris. There will also be basketball, handball and soccer games all over France, hundreds of miles from Paris. 

TigerBlog has two favorite websites between now and the Closing Ceremonies Aug. 11. 

First, there is the actual Olympic website, which you can see HERE. This website has the schedules and results for every Olympic event, and in fact the first of those events will be tomorrow, with preliminaries in rugby and soccer.

The other one, the site he'll get the most use of, is goprincetontigers.com/tigersinparis. You can see that one HERE.

As you might surmise, this is the complete listing of all things Princeton for these upcoming Games, and there are all kinds of things Princeton that will be there. 

First and foremost, there are capsules on all 26 Princetonians who are competing. In case you've forgotten, that's a record for Princeton.

The Opening Ceremonies are this coming Friday. The first Princetonians to compete will do so Saturday. 

The website has a day-by-day schedule for all 26 Princetonians, with all times Eastern. Here is the listing for Saturday:

Kathleen Noble (Uganda) - Women’s Single Sculls Heats (4:12 a.m.)
Jonas Juel (Norway) - Men’s Quadruple Sculls Heats (6:30 a.m.)
Hannah Scott (Great Britain) - Women’s Quadruple Sculls Heats (6:50 a.m.)
Hadley Husisian (USA) - Women’s Individual Epee - Round of 64 through medal round (4 a.m. start)
Ashleigh Johnson & Jovana Sekulic (USA) - Women’s Water Polo vs. Greece (9:35 a.m.)
Beth Yeager (USA) - Field Hockey vs. Argentina (1:45 p.m.)

The site will be updated with results each day. Of course, you'll be able to follow all of these athletes on Princeton's social media as well.

TigerBlog long ago began to enjoy the non-marquee sports in the Olympics much more than the so-called "major" ones. To that end, he'll be watching his favorite event, the dressage, or "horse-dancing," as he likes to call it. Who knows what other events will capture his attention.

He'll pay attention to sports like swimming and track and field, the ones that get the most attention. And basketball? He'd be much more likely to be interested in the women's games if Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese were playing, like they were Saturday night when their WNBA all-star team beat the U.S. Olympians. 

Mostly, though, he's interested in the Princeton athletes.

Not all of the Princeton athletes there are in realistic position to win a medal, though some will. For all of them, this is the result of years and years of sacrifice and training.

It takes a lot to be an Olympian. Once you have that on your resume, it defines you forever. 

Air Currier

The Olympic Games begin this week in Paris, with some preliminary events (mostly in soccer and rugby) and then the Opening Ceremonies Friday.

The next Summer Games will be in 2028 in Los Angeles. What will be different about those games? For one thing, they'll include the sport of lacrosse.

Will Princeton be represented on the men's side?

Maybe some of the younger alums, or even current players, make the jump to the national team level? There are three players who make the most sense at this point, though they'll all be in their 30s when the 2028 Olympics begin.

As impossible as it is to believe, Tom Schreiber is already 32 years old, which means he'll be 36 when Los Angeles rolls around. Will he still be on top of his game? Michael Sowers is 26 years old, so he'll be 30 four years from now. 

Those two are Americans. On the Canadian side, there is Zach Currier, who will be 34 in 2028.

Currier may or may not be an Olympian in four years, though it's hard to imagine that he'll be slowing down any time soon. He certainly was going full-speed this past weekend, when the Premier Lacrosse League made its stop in Connecticut.

If you follow lacrosse history, you're familiar with the "Air Gait," made famous by Syracuse's Gary Gait. This past Friday night, Currier did his own version:

HELLO @SportsCenter & HELLO @CachZurrier 👋🤯@CachZurrier unreal Air Gait yesterday landed him at the #2 spot on #SCTopTen!

pic.twitter.com/KIDHMhqAxJ

— Philadelphia Waterdogs (@PLLWaterdogs) July 20, 2024

Uh, yeah. That's quite a move.

Do you comprehend how athletic you have to be to do what he did? Forget getting the ball to go in the goal past the goalie. How about trying that without any defense on the field? 

To scoop the ball the way he did and then time it perfectly to release the shot in midair and not land in the crease until the ball was in the goal? That's ridiculous. 

Also, Currier is lefthanded, very lefthanded at that, and he did that with his right hand.

Currier's play was the No. 2 Play of the Day on SportsCenter and the highlight of the weekend in Connecticut for Princeton alums. It was far from the only impessive performance.

The Tigers are well-represented in the professional outdoor league, and pretty much all of them showed up in Connecticut. In fact, there are six Princeton alums who play offense who are in the league, and all of them had at least two goals.

That's six players. And that's six players with at least two goals this weekend.

For the record, those six are Schreiber, Currier, Sowers, Ryan Ambler, Jake Stevens and Alexander Vardaro. Throw in three assists from both Schreiber and Sowers and a two-point goal from Currier, as well as an assist from shortstick defensive midfielder Beau Pederson, and here were the numbers for the weekend: 

* 11 one-point goals, one two-point goal, seven assists, 20 points.

Schreiber, Currier and Sowers get a ton of attention. 

Ambler does not, but he has quietly put together a great professional career. In fact, between the PLL and now-defunct Major League Lacrosse, Ambler has averaged better than a goal per game, with 77 goals in 74 games (and 38 assists, for 115 points).

In his game this weekend, Ambler's first goal came when he took a feed in the middle with his momentum towards the cage. It was obvious he was going to score even before he ever shot it. That's the mark of a great veteran scorer.

As for the newbies, Pederson has already established himself as one of the best SSDMs in the league. And Stevens and Vardaro? They both have six goals, a very solid total for a rookie. Stevens has gotten his six goals on just 12 shots, making him one of only 15 players in the league to have at least a 50 percent shooting percentage.

Stevens is Canadian. He's also young. Maybe he'll be an Olympian in four years. The Olympic style of lacrosse — the sixes — seems perfect for the way he (and Currier) play. 

Will there be Princetonians in the Olympic lacrosse in Los Angeles. For that, you have to wait four years. 

First there will be the Paris Games, with the 26 Princetonians who will be there.

And if you need lacrosse this weekend, the PLL will be in San Diego.

The Games Are About To Begin

Another week has gone by. Another summer weekend is here.

As it turns out, the first athletic event of the 2024-25 season for Princeton will not be five weeks from today. It'll be five weeks from tomorrow, as the women's soccer team will be hosting Miami on Saturday, Aug. 24.

In the meantime ...

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The Opening Ceremonies of the Paris Olympic Games are one week from today. As TigerBlog said a week ago, they begin at 8:24 pm in France. That's 20:24, which is the point of being so specific.

In case you're planning to watch the Games, there is a six-hour time difference between Paris and the Eastern Time Zone in the United States. 

Princeton will be represented by 26 athletes at these Games, of which 25 are current or former Tiger athletes and one of whom is a staff member who will run the marathon for Jordan. That's a record for a single Olympiad for Princeton.

The sport with the most Tigers will be rowing, which is also the sport all-time that has produced the most Princeton Olympians. This year, there will be nine Princeton rowers. 

Next up is fencing, which will have seven Tigers represented. There will be four in track and field, two in water polo and one each in field hockey, 3x3 basketball and swimming.

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TigerBlog wrote a feature story this week about Lizzie Bird, who will be running the 3,000-meter steeplechase for Great Britain for the second straight Games. Bird finished ninth in the event in Tokyo three summers ago.

Bird is way more than just a track athlete. For one thing, she graduated from law school at the University of Colorado in 2.5 years, between the Tokyo Games and the ones about to start. On top of that, she has already passed the bar exam.

Bird graduated from Princeton in 2017 after winning two Ivy steeplechase titles and one Ivy cross country title. She has made a huge jump from her college career to her international success, which includes a second-place finish in the 2022 Commonwealth Games and the U.K. record in the event. 

TigerBlog tweeted out the link to the story (which you can read HERE). Bird then responded with this:

Probably the only article you'll read that features the Battle of Trafalgar, steeplechase, and my 3-year-old niece.

If that doesn't get you to want to read it, then TB doesn't know what will. 

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Bob Newhart died yesterday at the age of 94. 

If you're in TB's age range, then you grew up watching "The Bob Newhart Show" as part of CBS's Saturday night lineup that included "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." You also probably watched "Newhart," his next sitcom, the one that had the most extraordinary ending of any series in TV history.

Don't believe TB? Watch every episode of both shows and then you'll get it.

Newhart was known for his deadpan delivery and perfect comedic timing. He's up there with the greatest of his time (and all time) — Newhart, Rodney, Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx and not too many others.

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TigerBlog saw almost everything that Bob Newhart was in, and he at one point probably listened to all of his comedy records (those were things you put on a turntable; look it up).

At the opposite end of the entertainment scale is Flavor Flav, someone whose work TB knows little about, other than his trademark giant clock necklaces. Some research yesterday reveals that Mr. Flav can play 15 different instruments and was a founding member of the rap group Public Enemy.

Oh, and apparently, he's good at water polo. Or at least he's tried water polo.

Flavor Flav supporting the women’s water polo team is one of the best stories in 2024 🥹 pic.twitter.com/EJ0zwxl1sx

— maddy 🍉 (@phxsunz25) July 15, 2024

There are two Princetonians in that spot, by the way. Ashleigh Johnson is the goalie, and TB feels like she didn't give her best effort on that shot. Jovana Seculic will also be on the U.S. team in Paris. 

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Have yourselves a great weekend. 

And remember — the first women's soccer game is now moved back a day.

Guest TigerBlog - Sail On, Sail On, Sailor

TigerBlog has a standing invitation to anyone who would like to borrow the floor here for a day. The people who have taken him up the most on this offer are men's soccer head coach Jim Barlow and Tad La Fountain, Class of 1972. 

Tad is back today with a story of Princetonians and Olympic sailing. He also pointed out a few errors on the list of Princeton Olympians, including having listed F. Gardner Cox as having a country of origin as "Princeton." 

Having said that, TB made the correction. He also hopes you enjoy what Tad had to say, because, as always, it's 1) very entertaining and 2) very well-written.

It was an entirely unexpected letter in early Spring 1968 – my senior year at Westtown School. This was long before Westtown became known for hoopsters such as Mo Bamba, Cam Reddish and Derek Lively, or even 30 years before Charlotte Kenworthy, who went on to captain the Princeton women's lacrosse team that defeated Georgetown in 2002 to win the NCAA tournament. It was about the same time that I was accepted at Princeton, but it was just coincidental that the letter was from F. Gardner Cox ’41. 

Gardner was the defending world champion in the 5.5-metre class and was mounting a campaign to become the American entry in the Olympics to be held in Mexico City/Acapulco later that year. His crew was stellar – Stuart Walker in the middle and Steve Colgate up in the bow. 

Dr. Walker had literally written the book – “The Techniques of Small Boat Racing” – that was the guide for every decent sailor back in the 1960s, and he was later to be inducted into the U.S. National Sailing Hall of Fame. Yale graduate Steve Colgate had been on the foredeck of American Eagle in the America’s Cup trials the previous year and had founded the Offshore Sailing School in 1964; he was also later inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame.

Living in Villanova, Gardner brought Dr. Walker up from Annapolis and Steve Colgate down from Long Island Sound for practice sessions on the Delaware just below Philadelphia International Airport. There were a couple of practice sessions that Dr. Walker was unable to attend, so Gardner was writing to invite me to fill in for him. I’m not aware of Miller Huggins asking a schoolboy to suit up for the ’27 Yankees, but it struck me as roughly equivalent.

For two glorious Sundays, I was Dr. Walker. We spent hours sailing out of the Corinthian Yacht Club in Essington, basically sail testing. As luck would have it, there was an identical 5.5-metre sloop in Philadelphia (somewhat unusual, as they were an “open” class with designs measuring conformity to a formula of measurements, rather than a “one design” class where the boats had to conform to an actual design), sailed by Don Cohen (who would go on to win the Bronze in Dragons at Munich/Kiel in 1972).  

By swapping sails between the boats and sailing them close together on identical headings, we could ascertain the better mainsail or jib or combination of the two. It could have been viewed as tedious, but to the 17-year-old me, it was simply glorious.

Gardner won the Trials with Cadenza and headed to Acapulco, where they had an unnaturally poor series and finished eighth. In the Princeton Olympic record, it shows Gardner’s nationality as Princeton; in fact, it should be corrected to United States.

There are other Princetonian sailors who have represented the United States. Herman (“Swede”) F. Whiton ’26 (not Whilton, as it shows on the list of Princeton All-Time Olympians) finished sixth in 1928 in Amsterdam in his 6-metre, was denied entrance to Germany in 1936 due to his outspoken criticism of the Nazis, then won the Gold in 6-metres in both 1948 (London/Torquay) and 1952 (Helsinki). Lockwood Pirie ’27’s Bronze in 1948 was a last-minute entrant – there was no American boat for the Swallow class, so Pirie (who happened to be in England) teamed up with Harvard grad Owen Torrey and gained the podium. Ferdinand P. Schoettle, Jr. ‘55 (not Schottle, as shown on the list) skippered the American 5.5-metre in Melbourne, with his classmate Robert Stinson, a third-team All-America lacrosse player, in his crew.

When Gardner Cox sailed for the U.S. in 1968, he was a teammate of Finn (the single-handed dinghy, not the nationality) sailor Carl Van Duyne, who had graduated earlier that year.  Like Cox and Schoettle, Van Duyne spent his summers sailing out of Mantoloking (N.J.) Yacht Club. When I started Princeton that fall, Carl’s log of running laps around the Dillon Gym floor was taped above the weight room scales.

Many of these Tiger Olympians had acquitted themselves well while sailing at the collegiate level. A glaring omission on the list of Princeton’s national championships (team and individual) is the compilation of Tiger sailing titles: three national dinghy championships, four women’s national championships and two single-handed national championships, all as club teams racing against varsity programs.   

The women’s titles are particularly noteworthy: four consecutive victories from 1974-1977, led by Collegiate Hall-of-Fame inductees Marilee Allan ’74, the late Nina Nielsen ’76 and von Kienbusch Award-winner Anne Preston ’77. The first five women’s teams also included two future University trustees, the chair of the University’s 250^th celebration and a future class president. Including the three women mentioned above, there are 11 Tigers in the Intercollegiate Sailing Association Hall of Fame (including Gardner, his brother Bill ’35 and nephew Bill, Jr. ’63), stretching back to Arthur Knapp, Jr. 1928, who founded the Princeton University Yacht Club as an undergraduate 100 years ago.

Any aspirations I harbored to attain a position on these lists faded over my undergraduate years like a dying breeze. But 35 years ago, my classmate Carl Arentzen – who had crewed for me senior year in winning the Ivy Dinghy Championship – invited me to crew for him in the Star districts trying to qualify for the Star Worlds later that summer.   

It was a daunting task – the Star is considered the most competitive and prestigious class of sailboats and I had never sailed in one. I flew to Chicago, we trailed the boat up to Green Lake, Wisconsin and raced together for the first time in 17 years. We took the first race, and in so doing beat a former Bronze winner, the alternate Star skipper to the previous year’s Olympic team, and a winner of one of the races in the previous Star Worlds.  That evening, the best way to celebrate was an ice cream cone at the next town over – Princeton, Wisconsin.   

Sad to relate, the wind came up the next two days and it became painfully apparent why all the other crews seemed to be 10 years younger, six inches taller and 40 pounds heavier. The obvious conclusion was that desk work was not the best preparation for competing in the most competitive class of sailboats at that level. 

Now I have an 18-foot Cape Cod catboat with 500 pounds of lead in the bilge (and that’s before I sit in the cockpit!), which is old, heavy and slow. I can relate very well and have developed an intense understanding of the wisdom of linking “cocktail” and “cruise.”  

 If one is in the autumn of one’s years, one needs to suck all the marrow out of summer’s pleasures.  And it’s true: the older I get, the faster I used to be. But when the sail fills and the boat heels and the bubbles in the wake start moving faster and farther behind, decades get dropped quickly and the teenager within feels extremely close.   

I’m sure every Tiger who has wiggled a tiller knows exactly of what I write, including all those mentioned above. If they are now sailing on courses that are spiritual and no longer watery, then it’s the best way I can memorialize them.

Six Months From Today

The high temperature in Princeton yesterday was 99 degrees.

Why not just call it 100?

It reminds TigerBlog of the Princeton Football record for rushing yards in a game, which was set back on Sept. 26, 1992, in Palmer Stadium. TigerBlog was in Palmer Stadium that day.

As an aside, it's become more and more amazing to TB how few people who work in Princeton Athletics ever saw a game in the old stadium, which was torn down after the 1996 season.

Anyway, back then, stats were still kept by hand, and Keith Elias ran for 299 yards (on 25 carries, with four touchdowns) that day. TB suggested pushing his rushing total to 301. Who would know? 

Were it 300, it might seem fishy. But 301? Nobody would question that. He was only half-serious at the time, but hey, like he said, who would know? 

Also, Princeton needed every inch Elias got that day. The final score? Princeton 38, Lafayette 35.

This was in the Daily Princetonian after the game:

The corps of seniors Chris Theiss, J.C. Stilley and lan Lombard and juniors Chris Cyterski and Scott Miller played a tremendous game, opening gaping holes and regularly allowing Elias to break into the secondary. 'The line was incredible," saidElias. 'They work so hard for me, I've got to work hard for them." 'They're the ones who should get their names in the book for the record."

They're not in the record book, but TB remembers all five of them. And 32 years later, they get to be remembered at least.

Elias broke the record that had previously been held by Homer Smith, who ran for 273 against Harvard in 1952, also at Palmer Stadium. Guess who was at the game? According to the Prince: 

The crowd of 35,000 included Massachusetts senator John Kennedy. 

Trivia question: Elias had two games with at least 260 rushing yards, and Smith had one. There are three other Princeton players who have rushed for at least 260 yards in a game. Can you name them? The answer is at the end.

Today is July 17 (happy birthday to Bryce Chase). If it seems odd to be talking about football today, then imagine how odd talking hockey is. Ice during a heat wave like this one? 

The lead story on goprincetontigers.com yesterday was the release of the 2024-25 men's hockey schedule. This coming season will be Year 1 as Tiger head coach for Ben Syer, who comes to Princeton after coaching at Cornell.

His first team will play 29 games, of which 17 will be at Hobey Baker Rink. The story on GPT pointed out that a date to circle on the schedule was when Syer would host the Big Red for the first time. 

TigerBlog saw that the date of that game was January 17. It took TB about five seconds until it dawned on him that January 17 is exactly six months from today. 

Princeton and Syer will be in Ithaca on Nov. 23, which is four months away. Four months? That's a blink.

Princeton will play all of its ECAC league games, and it will also play two non-league games against each of Ohio State, New Hampshire and Bentley. All of those games will be at Baker, where Ohio State has never been and where New Hampshire has not been since 1983. 

Syer had this to say: 

"It all comes together to hopefully produce an amazing experience for our players, staff and supporters this season. I can't wait to be behind the home bench at Baker Rink and embrace the energy of everyone in such a historic environment."

It is a great environment. That's for sure. It has the history of being 100 years old, but it remains a great place to watch a game, with every single one of the more than 2,000 seats pretty much on top of the ice. 

Trivia answer: 

Dick Kazmaier (262 vs. Brown, 1951), Jordan Culbreath (276 vs. Dartmouth, 2008), Collin Eaddy (266 vs. Yale, 2018). Only Eaddy did so on the road.

Canadian Tiger

So TigerBlog saw a picture on X Sunday, and his first through was "hey, that's Margie Gengler-Smith."

Gengler-Smith, of course, is one of the three great Gengler sisters, along with Nancy and Louise, who played sports at Princeton in the 1970s, during the earliest days of women's athletics here. In fact, Gengler-Smith was one of the first two women to compete for Princeton, when she played in the Eastern tennis championships with her partner Helena Novakova back on October of 1970.

It was only when he looked a little closer at the picture that he saw all these other people were in it: 

Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, Benedict Cumberbatch, Margie's husband Stan Smith ... and, oh yeah, Princess of Wales Kate Middleton, Princess Charlotte and Kate's sister Pippa.

That's the effect of being at Princeton for as long as TigerBlog has been. Hey, it's Margie and a bunch of other people who look somewhat familiar.

The Wimbledon men's final saw Carlos Alcaraz defeat Novak Djokovic for the second straight year and do so in dominant fashion, 6-2, 6-2, 7-6. Djokovic held off three straight match points on Alcaraz's serve in the third set, but that was it. 

Afterwards, in his on-court interview, Djokovic was asked about playing against an opponent who was so "hot." Djokovic played it off well. 

Then Alcaraz was asked about the upcoming England-Spain European championship soccer game, which was a tough question for the 21 year old. Oh, and Alcaraz, despite being 21, already ranks eighth all-time in career earnings on the pro tour.

Spain then broke England's heart with a late goal to win the Euro title 2-1, after England had tied it up earlier. That was a rough one for the English. 

The day of big international events ended with the game between Colombia and Argentina for the Copa America championship, which Argentina took 1-0 on a late goal, one that came even later than it otherwise would have after the start was delayed. Oh, and Lionel Messi got hurt.

It was the team that finished fourth that really impressed TB, though. That would be Canada, which lost to Argentina in the semis and then lost the third-place game on PKs to Uruguay.

The Canadians are now coached by Jesse Marsch, one of the most unique Princetonians TigerBlog has ever met. He's very much in the mold of his coach at Princeton, Bob Bradley, for whom he was an All-American.

Marsch can be defined by many of the same words as Bob Bradley: loyal, intense, intellectual, thoughtful, smart. 

Marsch played for 14 seasons in Major League Soccer, with 31 career goals. He then followed Bradley into coaching; in fact, his first assignment was as Bradley's assistant with the U.S. men's national team. 

He has gone on to be the head coach for teams in Canada, Germany, Austria, England and the U.S. — in addition to spending a year as Jim Barlow's assistant in Princeton. Marsch, like Bradley, coached in the English Premier League, in his case with Leeds.

And now he is the head coach for the Canadian team. If you watched him in the Copa America, you saw all of those attributes TB mentioned on full display.

He also made headlines when asked about any possible interest he might have in the U.S. job, now that it has come open after the team's disappointing performance in the Copa America. This is what Marsch said about that:

"I'm not leaving this job. I have no interest in the U.S. job. And to be fair, unless there's a big shift in the organization, I don't think that I'll ever have any interest in that job in the future. So I'm really happy here. I couldn't be happier actually in terms of what it's like to work with the leaders in this organization and what it's like to work with this team."

Pretty strong words.

Along the long road he has taken in his coaching career, he has never forgotten where his first loyalty was born. He and Princeton head men's basketball coach Mitch Henderson are incredibly close, and Mitch spoke of their friendship often during his team's Sweet 16 run in 2023.

He remains forever a Tiger, a Canadian one these days. 

Two Weeks Out

Maybe it should still be the Power 5 after all.

The top five conferences in terms of having produced Olympians for the United States this summer are:

1. Big Ten (116 athletes)
2. ACC (98)
3. SEC (85)
4. Ivy League (47)
5. Big 12 (28)

Don't worry, Big 12. You're not the only league that's looking up at the Ivies. 

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games are now just two weeks away, with the Opening Ceremonies to be held on the 26th, 14 days from today. By then, a handful of games will have already been played in soccer, team handball and rugby.

The Opening Ceremonies for these Games will be different than what you're used to, by the way. Instead of having all of the athletes gather in the massive stadium, the parade will be held on water this time around.

The Seine is the river that cuts through the heart of the city, and it will be on boats on the Seine that the 10,500 athletes will make their way through Paris, ending near the Eiffel Tower. What time does the parade of athletes begin? That would be 8:24 pm local time, which is 2:24 Eastern time.

Why so specific? Because 8:24 pm is also 20:24. Clever, right? 

If you've ever been to Paris — and TigerBlog is a veritable expert on the city, having spent 28 hours there once — then you know that this will make for an epic parade. You also know that there are countless buildings that stand next to the river, which has made security a major challenge. 

How much has gone into that aspect for the Opening Ceremonies alone? That would be north of $1 billion. Hopefully it turns out to be money well spent.

The United States Olympic Committee formally announced its rosters for Paris Wednesday. It also announced that 75 percent of U.S. Olympians played in college as well. 

There might be some people who are surprised that the Ivy League ranks fourth in the number of athletes produced, but they shouldn't be. The Ivy League may not have the money that those other power conferences do, but it does have a commitment to broadbased athletic participation and the lure of knowing that an Ivy education and an Olympic dream can go hand-in-hand and always have.

Princeton has produced 13 representatives for the U.S. team, or more than one-quarter of the league's American athletes who will be in Paris. Even more impressively, of those 13 athletes, there are five who are current undergraduates. 

Princeton has had three athletes win gold medals and come back to compete as Tigers afterwards: Bill Bradley in basketball in 1964, Ashleigh Johnson in water polo in 2016 and Sarah Fillier in ice hockey in 2022. Will anyone be added to the list this year? 

Johnson is aiming to become the first Princeton athlete to win gold medals in three different Olympiads. The only other Princeton athlete to win in two different games besides Johnson is rower Caroline Lind (2008, 2012).

If Johnson can make it three golds, then that would also ensure a fourth Princetonian to join the list of returning gold medalists. Jovana Sekulic will be Johnson's teammate on Team USA in Paris. 

The other current undergrads who will be in Paris for the United States are field hockey player Beth Yeager and fencers Hadley Husisian, Tatiana Nazlymov and Maia Wentraub.

Princeton has an extraordinary Olympic history, dating to the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, where four Tiger athletes combined to win nine medals. Since then, Princeton has been represented in every Summer Games except in 1952 in Helsinki.

The 13 American Olympians will be joined by an equal number from Princeton who will be there for other countries. There will be three from Great Britain, three from Norway and one each from seven others.

The 26 Princeton athletes will be the most the school has ever sent to one Olympic Games.

You'll be able to follow all of the Princetonians in Paris right here and through goprincetontigers.com and the Princeton Athletics social media channels.