On Sale Now

TigerBlog begins today by rescinding his shout out to himself yesterday, when he said he'd be posting his feature story on Ryan Croddick, the goalie who was the Most Outstanding Player at the Final Four as Princeton won its seventh NCAA men's lacrosse championship.

As it turned out, the story won't be posted until today. He promises. He even got a handful of notes yesterday wondering where the story was. 

TB gave you the first paragraph yesterday. Here's the second: 

The eye blinks at around the same rate. Even the complex computer that is the human brain, equipped with its billions of neurons, cannot process a moment in time so small. So how to explain the man on the other side of the table, then? Maybe it’s as simple as acknowledging that to him, traditional measures of time are irrelevant. 

That whets the appetite. The entire story runs more than 7,500 words, which makes it the single longest feature story TB has ever written, other than chapters in the women's history book. You can buy that HERE, by the way.  

In the meantime, another week has come and gone, which means that as of today, Princeton is just three weeks away from the start of the 2026-27 athletic year. How can that be, right? 

It will begin on Aug. 20, when the women's soccer team will host Loyola. That will be Game 1 of nearly 700 athletic events between that game and the NCAA track and field championships in June.

Speaking of Princeton soccer, there is the matter of the men's team. The Tigers are coming off a 15-2-2 season that saw them go 7-0-0 in the Ivy League without allowing a single goal in any of those games and earn the No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament. 

The 2026 season begins Aug. 28, at home against Villanova. That game will be followed by another home game three days later against Portland, which sounds like an interesting matchup. 

There aren't many bigger Princeton Athletic fans anywhere than men's soccer coach Jim Barlow. When his team isn't playing he can be found watching any number of other Princeton teams play. 

This is why it wasn't surprising to TigerBlog to see Barlow make a tiny cameo in a video on the ticket page. You can see the video HERE; did you find Barlow? 

The ticket page now has five separate entries to buy season tickets for the upcoming 2026-27 regular seasons. Those five are football, men's and women's basketball and men's and women's hockey; HERE is the link to the main ticket page. 

All five of those teams have their own storylines heading into their coming seasons. Maybe the biggest one will be the debut of Lauren Gosselin as the women's basketball coach, after she had been part of Carla Berube's staff for so many years. 

Princeton returns four starters from last year's team, which went 26-4 and won the Ivy League and Ivy League tournament championships. From 1985 through 2009, Princeton women's basketball won two Ivy titles. Since then, the team has won 12 more and played in 11 NCAA tournaments. 

Princeton Athletics has undergone numerous changes since TigerBlog first came around back in the late 1980s. Right up there with anything has been the growth of women's basketball and especially women's basketball attendance, which has increased several times over in the last 15 or so years. 

What's most noticeable about that growth has been the number of men and boys in attendance at the games. Princeton women's basketball has become a terrific event each night. 

The men's team has a long history of being a great draw at Jadwin Gym. Every football game on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium is a happening. 

Both the men's and women's hockey teams are coming off great seasons, the women with an ECAC regular season championship and NCAA tournament appearance and the men with a dramatic run at the ECAC tournament before finally falling in overtime in the championship game. 

Hobey Baker Rink? It's quaint and historic, and game nights there are something if you've never been to one.  

The football team opens its season Sept. 19 at Bryant before the home opener seven days later against Albany. Then there are two straight trips to New York City, for the Ivy opener at Columbia and a non-league game at Wagner. The season finishes with four home games among the final six. 

And this will all be kickoff very soon. Tickets? On sale now.  

 

 

Shouting Out

Before anything else today, TigerBlog would like to give a shout-out to the men and women who took the pothole-decimated roads around his house and turned it into what you see here. 

Fresh oil and chips for everyone. Don't get the reference? It's what the sign said when the road was recently paved. TB mentioned it last week. 

Who else is worthy of a shout-out today? 

Jami MacDonald had a goal and an assist as Canada did in fact defeat Wales very early yesterday morning at the women's lacrosse World Championships in Tokyo. The Canadians finished the round-robin portion at 3-0 and advanced to the quarterfinals, which begin began today. 

Canada was to play the host Japanese team at 7 pm local time, which, if TB is doing this correctly, would be 6 am in the Eastern United States. If so, then the game might already be finished by the time you read this. 

The winner of the Canada-Japan game will play Friday against the winner of the game between England and the Haudenosaunee. That game started at 2 am today, so unless you were either up really late or really early, that game is now over. 

The other side of the bracket has Israel and Australia and the United States against Puerto Rico. Those games are probably over by now as well. 

The finals will be Sunday. The last three championship games matched the U.S. and Canada. 

Meanwhile, TB sends a shout-out to his longtime friend and former colleague Craig Sachson, who, along with TB's current athletic communications friend and colleague Warren Croxton and another Princeton Athletics employee whose name might be familiar (head football coach Bob Surace) are ridiculously avid Philadelphia 76ers fans. 

TB texted them yesterday to ask if they were okay with having their team assemble a roster of completely unlikeable players. To that, Craig responded with: 

Not sure what you’re talking about. If you remember correctly, we’ve always loved Lebron. And Jaylen Brown. 

Well played, Craig. Surace, for his part, said he was bummed that Draymond Green resigned with Golden State or it would have been yet another member of the unlikeable club. Surace also referred to the coming rivalry with the New York Knicks (also known as the NBA champion New York Knicks) as "our dream team against Villanova."

It's an interesting phenomenon, of course. If you've always rooted against a player and suddenly he's on YOUR team, do you suddenly like that player? 

TB has always thought of that when thinking about where some of his all-time favorite Princeton athletes might have gone had they not come become Tigers.  He would have had to root against all of them, though he would never have liked them in the first place since, you know, they could have been Tigers and chose not to be. 

Next on the shout-out list would be all of the Princeton rowers who won medals at the U-23 World Championships in Duisberg, Germany. The men's four race had, obviously, 12 total medalists. Of those 12, nearly half — five — are Princetonians. Tristan Wenger and Marcus Chute made up half of the gold medal boat from Great Britain. 

You can read more about that HERE.  

The women's open team had four rowers who won medals, including Joely Cherniss and Lauren Dubois, who won gold with the United States eight boat. You can read about the women's success HERE.

Another shout out goes the way of the four women's hockey players who will be competing at the USA Women's National Festival next week: Uma Corniea, Megan Healy, Gabby Kim and Rosie Klein. As it says in THIS story: 

At the conclusion of the camp, USA Hockey will name the U.S. Collegiate Women's Select Team, which will face Canada in a three-game series Aug. 12-15 in Richmond, British Columbia.

Lastly, TB sends himself a shout out. Coming up later today (or maybe already, depending on what time he gets this posted) will be his latest feature story, this one on Ryan Croddick, the goalie on the NCAA championship men's lacrosse team this past spring and the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. 

Here's the first paragraph: 

A ball moving at 80 miles per hour will travel 10 yards in 0.256 seconds. That’s two-hundred-fifty-six-one-thousandths of a second. Two-hundred-fifty-six-one-thousandths of a second.

 

As the great writer John Irving once said, the first paragraph should tell the entire story of a novel. TB thinks this paragraph does that for his feature on Croddick. 

Tokyo Time

Sometime around last fall, TigerBlog snapped a picture of a dog who appeared to be driving a car. 

TB said something like "he seemed to be good at parallel barking." Barking. Get it? 

This is a picture TB grabbed yesterday. The dog driving this car is definitely dialed in for safety, as he is checking his sideview mirror before heading out.

Of course, he decided he needed to turn around, so he made a three-point turn. You know what they call those? K9-Turns. Darn funny, that TigerBlog is.  

Anyway, how did TB and the rest of the world survive without the ability to grab a phone and snap a picture of a dog in the sideview mirror? Seriously, TigerBlog didn't even own a camera before smart phones took over the majority of picture taking in the world these days (unless you count the many great professionals Princeton Athletics uses). Now he takes pictures of almost anything, especially dogs who appear to be driving cars. 

TB did a search for what percentage of photos take these days, and he found some pretty incredible stuff, according to the PhotiAiD report analysis, if it is to be believed (and who knows what can be believed these days, right?).

You can read it for yourself: 

In each mobile phone, users can typically store approximately 2,795 photos.

Globally, more than 92 million selfies are being clicked regularly in 2025.

In America, average people check their smartphones six times a day to take a photo.

As mentioned in passport-photo.Online, around 1.8 to 2 trillion photos are taken on mobile annually, representing 5 billion photos captured daily and 57,246 every second.

That's incredible, no? Also, what percentage of photos taken are taken on a smartphone? TB will give you until the end to guess. 

While all this is being pondered and processed, there's the matter of something going on this week on the other side of the world. Specifically, that would be the World Championships of women's lacrosse, currently underway in Tokyo. 

You can root for the United States if you like. The Americans are clearly the favorite, having won the gold medal in nine of the 11 previous events dating to Year 1 in 1982. The only team to win besides the USA? 

That would be Australia, who won in 1986 and 2005, both times in the U.S., in Haverford and Baltimore. The United States has won the last four, defeating Canada in the final of the last three. 

The Canadians are the underdog but also the sentimental choice for Princeton fans, possibly. Why? Because recent Princeton graduate Jami MacDonald is making her full national team debut for Canada. 

MacDonald did win a silver medal with the Canadian team at the U-20 World Championships two years ago in Hong Kong, falling to, you guessed it, the United States. 

By the time you read this, Canada almost surely will have improved to 3-0 at the conclusion of the round-robin portion. Canada already had easy wins over Australia and Germany to start the tournament, and its final game in pool play was against Wales began at 2 am today Eastern Time.

Should Canada win (or already have won) it would clinch first place in Group B. Next up would be the quarterfinals, which will be held tomorrow. The semifinals follow Friday, and the championship game is Sunday. 

There are also two other Princeton alums who are competing in Tokyo, both for the Philippines. Those two would be Olivia Pugh, who graduated in 2022, and Sarah Nelson, who graduated in 2025. 

The Philippines went 1-2 in Group D, finishing behind unbeaten Israel and 2-1 Japan, the host. The top two in each group advance to the quarterfinals, which leaves the Philippines in the consolation rounds to play for 9th- through 16th-places.  

MacDonald had a goal and assist in the first two games. Nelson had two goals and one assist in the three games, while Pugh plays defense and has no stats on the tournament website. 

Oh, and according to that report? How about 92.5 percent of all photos are taken on smartphones, with 7.5 percent on traditional cameras. 

PLL Tigers

Mark it down. 

July 25, 2026. 10:40 pm. 

TigerBlog saw his first back-to-school commercial of the summer. Can Christmas music be far behind? 

When TB was a kid, by the way, he was sent off to school with a notebook and a few pencils. When his kids were kids, they were sent off to school only after an extensive search for every single item on the school supply list. 

"Noooooooo. They're out of those ridiculous multi-colored post-its that are the exact right size. Would it be okay to get the ones that are slightly larger? Will that set them back for an entire year of learning?" 

The back-to-school commercial occasion was watching the Premier Lacrosse League's Saturday night game between the Philadelphia Waterdogs and the weekend's host, the Denver Outlaws. He was rooting for Princeton, of course. 

That's his approach to the league. He roots for the Princeton alums. Wins and losses take care of themselves. 

There was a great deal to root for this weekend. In all, there were seven different Princeton alums who had either a goal or an assist, and they combined for a total of 13 goals and eight assists. 

And that doesn't even count the fact that both former Princeton head coaches in the league — Bill Tierney and Chris Bates — went a combined 4-0 on the weekend.  

Included in the Princeton success this weekend was the first professional goal for John Dunphey, who made his PLL debut for the Denver Outlaws after being a huge reason that Princeton won the 2026 NCAA championship. Dunphey, by the way, went from 39 total points his first three seasons at Princeton to 39 points his senior year alone. 

Dunphey's goal came Friday night in Denver, after a two-hour lighting delay. TB was about to give up on watching when the game finally began. 

He definitely wasn't watching the second game of Friday's doubleheader, which matched Tierney's Waterdogs and the New York Atlas. Michael Sowers scored the game-winner in that one (his third of the night) with 1:52 to go to give Philly an 11-10 win; the game ended after midnight in Denver, which put it after 2 am in TB's house. 

The Waterdogs had a very quick turnaround from Friday to Saturday, like a 19-hour turnaround, before playing their second game. How did Sowers do in that one? He went for three goals and three assists in an 18-8 romp while fellow former Tiger Zach Currier had four assists of his own. 

As of now, Princeton has three alums in the top nine in the league in assists: Sowers (first), Coulter Mackesy (sixth) and Currier (ninth). Sowers leads the league in points with 36 (18G, 18A), and he has a great chance to become only the fourth PLL player ever with at least 20 goals and 20 assists in a season. 

By the way, what Princeton player has the program record for most assists in a season by a midfielder? The answer isn't Tom Schreiber, who is quite likely the greatest passing midfielder of all time. It's Currier, who had 34 as a senior in 2017, along with 24 goals, 130 groundballs and the team lead in caused turnovers while winning 57 percent of his face-offs — and somehow was not a USILA first-team All-American. Has a midfielder ever had a better season than that? 

And, as always, when you talk about Currier, you don't fixate on points to define him. In the game Saturday night, Currier had 10 groundballs, giving him 14 for the weekend and 51 for the season, which is fifth in the league. 

TB loves that the PLL has a way to track the number of touches a player has in a game and by extension the season. Currier has 134 of them and has turned the ball over only three times. That's ridiculous as well. 

If Currier is fifth in the league in groundballs, who is fourth? That would be another Princeton alum, face-off man Andrew McMeekin, with 52 GBs. Meeks also happens to be leading the league, winning 61.3 percent of his face-offs. 

In another shake of the head, how was McMeekin only an honorable mention All-American this year? 

Chad Palumbo, who along with Dunphey, McMeekin and Ryan Croddick gives Princeton four PLL rookies this summer, had three goals as his Carolina Chaos defeated McMeekin's Cannons 13-12 in overtime Saturday (despite a 23 for 28 performance from McMeekin, including winning the OT face-off). Palumbo now has 13 goals for the season, second among first-year players behind the 16 of Ryan Stines, a Richmond alum.

The Sagacity Of It All

Ah, the sagacity of it all. 

TigerBlog stumbled upon the word yesterday and had no idea what it meant. Vocabulary isn't always his strong suit. Or maybe that's spelling. Or fixing stuff around the house. 

When he went to look it up, this is what he found: 

"Sagacity: the quality of being sagacious."  

Okay, how does that help anyone? Now you have to know what "sagacious" means before you can figure out what "sagacity" means. Pretty much anyone looking up "sagacity" now has to go look up "sagacious" as well? What, the good people at Merriam-Webster are in it for the clicks? 

*

Among the stories that have been cycling through goprincetontigers.com the last few weeks are the ones introducing the incoming classes for various teams. 

TigerBlog always checks these stories to see if there are any newcomers who went to his high school (Manalapan, in Monmouth County) or the high schools of his kids. It's rare that he finds anyone who has. 

Even Kayla Wong, the rising senior on the women's soccer team, attended Freehold Township High School, though her hometown is listed as Manalapan. Here's a fun fact: Manalapan and Freehold Township were built in the same year from the same exact floor plan, which means that if you walk into either school, the layout is identical. It's a bit freaky if you attend one and then go the other. At least it was in the 1970s. 

The other thing TB checks for when looking at the incoming stories would be relatives of current or former Princeton athletes. To that end, he couldn't help but notice an incoming women's track and field athlete named Lux Burgin, from Bronxville, N.Y.

Hmmm. She has to be the sister of Princeton rising senior men's lacrosse player Wilder Burgin, right? When TB texted Wilder, he confirmed it: 

"That is indeed my sister coming in…she couldn’t be more excited!"

Welcome to Princeton, Lux. And at some point, TB will do a deeper dive into Wilder Burgin and how he ended up with the role with the NCAA champions that he has — hint, see the picture:

*

While the subject is NCAA champions and trophies, a very belated congratulations to TB's former colleague Joanna Dwyer, who left Princeton to become the water polo and swimming contact at USC. Here she is with the NCAA water polo championship trophy the USC women won this past spring:

It goes without saying that the people who work in athletic communications work hard and do almost everything they do behind the scenes. It's great to see pictures like this, with the big smile and the obvious joy that goes along with them. It's not something a high percentage of TB's colleagues throughout the country will get to experience, and it's never something that should be taken for granted. 

*

Congratulations go out to Nika Kukharchuk, who is leaving her role as an assistant coach with the Princeton women's tennis team to become the head men's coach at Fordham. You can read more about that HERE.

There all kinds of examples of men who are the head coach of Division I women's teams. Are there many examples of women who are the head coach of Division I men's teams? TigerBlog doesn't think there are. 

He does know of one at Princeton. Susanah Occhi was the men's volleyball head coach in the 1970s, as well as the first head coach of the women's volleyball team. In fact, she and Penny Hinckley (who coached field hockey, basketball and women's lacrosse) were the first two paid women coaches in Princeton history.

TigerBlog has always thought there have been quite a few women coaches at Princeton who would have been great coaches for corresponding men's teams. 

Anyway, as TB texted Nika: "Go Rams!!" 

* 

Finally, if you were wondering what "sagacious" means, here you go: 

Having or showing an ability to understand difficult ideas and situations and to make good decisions : marked by keen and farsighted understanding and judgment : discerning, wise

This could be TigerBlog's new favorite word. He's always told his kids to "make good decisions." If you read his novel (okay, you can buy it HERE), the dedication says just that. 

Now he can shorten that to "be sagacious." Saves one word. 

Enjoy your summer weekend everyone. 

Fresh Oil And Chips

Pretty much every road near TigerBlog's house needed repaving after the winter and its accompanying potholes. 

Okay, so now it's July and it's all being done, which is fine. Better late than never at all. 

The potholes were pretty big. If you drove straight through most of them, for instance, you'd definitely need the services of Ron, the official mechanic of TigerBlog. Ron, by the way, fixed the destroyed sideview mirror on TB's car, if you were wondering from last week. 

You can see for yourself with the before and after: 

Well done, Ron. TB is pretty sure Ron, armed with a book and YouTube video, could perform open-heart surgery. 

Anyway, the roads have all been repaved, though not yet relined, which creates its own issues. You'd never guess that removing every marker on a road would cause so many problems, like the one where a car coming toward TB veered perilously close to requiring yet another new sideview mirror. 

Oh, And a bunch of these "Fresh Chips and Oil" signs have sprung up all around. 

Fresh Chips and Oil? It sounds like something on the menu at an English pub. 

"I'll have the Yorkshire Pudding."
"Okay, love. Would you like fresh oil and chips with that?"  
"A pint would go great with that, wouldn't it?"

Anyway, another Thursday has rolled around, and suddenly the start of the 2026-27 athletic year at Princeton is now just four weeks away. Once again, it begins with women's soccer, who will be home against Loyola on Aug. 20. 

That'll actually be the third game of the season for the Greyhounds. Loyola's opener? That would be Aug. 12 — 20 days from now — at home against William & Mary and former Tiger head coach Julie Shackford. Game 2 will be the 16th, also at home, against Arkansas. 

Loyola, by the way, had the rather different record a year ago of 5-5-8. Its Patriot League record was 2-2-5, meaning the team had more ties than wins and losses combined in its conference games. 

Princeton women's soccer, by the way, has never had a season where it had more ties than wins or losses. 

The Tigers will dive right into their schedule, with four games in 11 days to start: Loyola, followed by a game at Syracuse and home games against West Virginia and James Madison. Princeton plays 16 regular season games, half of which are in the summer in this "fall" sport. It's sort of the opposite of lacrosse season, where the team plays half its games in the winter of this "spring sport."

In other Princeton women's soccer news, Pietra Tordin, a Princeton alum, is having a big season in the National Women's Soccer League. A two-time first-team All-Ivy League selection and the 2024 Ivy Offensive Player of the Year, she was also the leading scorer for the U.S. at the 2024 U-23 World Cup as the Americans won the bronze medal. 

Tordin is in Year 2 with the Portland, and she has made a nice jump from a year ago. Here is the year-by-year comparison:

2025 — 26 games, four goals, 31 shots, no assists
2026 — 16 games to date, four goals, 20 shots, six assists

Those six assists, by the way, are tied for the league lead. 

As for the Thorns, they are currently in fourth place in the 16-team league. Next up is a home game tomorrow night against second place Gotham. 

The regular season runs through Nov. 1. A week later, the Princeton women's soccer regular season will end with a home game against Brown. 

Both of those will be here soon enough. 

What Did You Say?

As you may know, TigerBlog is a big fan of puzzles. 

His daily routine includes all of the following: Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections, Strands, Letter Boxed, Spelling Bee and all three New York Times crosswords (mini, midi and daily). In fact, he heard from Mark Bernstein of the Princeton Alumni Weekly about a story he's doing on people who do puzzles every day. 

The daily crossword yesterday included this clue: "Said ______ Ever." Five letters. 

"Said No One Ever." 

Inspired by that, TigerBlog decided to go back in the archives to see what some people actually did say after some big Princeton moments through the years. Here are a few he stumbled upon (and by the way, this took him way longer than simply writing 700 or so words would have): 

"Right now Kaz gets a great deal more publicity than Milton Berle." — Bob Lovell's commentary about Dick Kazmaier after his huge 1951 game against Cornell, shortly before Kazmaier won the Heisman Trophy.

"You can't dwell on the past. In two or three years, we're going to be a winning team. I know the tradition has been great here, even though the last few years have been bad," he said. "I hope to bring us back to that level." — Bill Tierney after being hired as Princeton head men's lacrosse coach in 1987. How'd that work out? He was right. In three years he had a winning record. Oh, and then he won six of Princeton's seven NCAA championships. 

"Two Princeton coeds, Marjorie Gengler and Helena Novakova, made a stunning debut in the Eastern College Women's Tennis Tournament this weekend by capturing first and third places from a field of 99 of the East's finest women tennis players." — Daily Princetonian blurb of Oct. 20, 1970, after Princeton's first varsity intercollegiate athletic event for women three days prior. 

"I think my teammates just have all the confidence in the world in me and I knew that if I missed that shot, they were getting good offensive rebounds. So it’s really hard not to shoot with confidence when you have teammates like mine.” — Grace Stone after she drained the game-winning three-pointer to beat North Carolina State 64-63 in the 2023 NCAA tournament opening round. Stone is now back at Princeton as Director of Women's Basketball Operations. 

"While countless Americans spent the Friday after Thanksgiving doling out exorbitant sums of paper, metal and plastic money in preparation for the holiday season, the women’s soccer team used a less tangible sort of currency namely, cohesiveness on both sides of the ball to buy themselves a trip to the Final Four." — Karl Micka Foos in the Daily Princetonian after Princeton's 3-1 win over Washington in the 2004 NCAA quarterfinals. 

"I was there for three years. I started at $500 and more than tripled my salary by the end. I made $1,700 my last year." — Cindy Cohen about her first college softball coaching job. She'd go on to put together a record of 560-277-3 at Princeton, with 12 Ivy League championships and back-to-back Women's College World Series appearances.

"When I heard that final buzzer, I threw off my helmet and my arm pads, and I just started sprinting toward my team. It was like a dream; it was the most incredible feeling I’ve ever felt. It was awesome.” — Goalie Christina Maida after Princeton's 3-2 win over North Carolina in the 2012 NCAA field hockey championship game. 

"When I was 15 I was hanging out in Exeter, New Hampshire, with the townies, smoking cigarettes." — Anne Marden, Princeton's only four-time Olympian, who won two medals in rowing.

"Picture Shaquille O'Neal (or Chris Young on his tip-toes). Now add four inches. That's how high Princeton senior Tora Harris soared Friday night to win his first NCAA indoor championship. Competing in Fayetteville, Ark., seven-time Heptagonal champion Harris entered the meet with a No. 1 seed, along with Adam Shunk of the University of North Carolina, both having cleared 2.25 meters (seven feet, 4.5 inches). In championship action, Harris improved his Princeton record to 2.26 m (7-5"), while Shunk faltered slightly in clearing 2.23 m to place second." — Daily Princetonian story of March 11, 2002. Two bonus facts: 1) the story was written by Emily Kroshus, herself an All-American track and field athlete at Princeton, and 2) Harris' 7-7 to win the outdoor NCAA title that spring is still the Ivy League record. 

 

Welcome To Princeton

Whether or not the World Cup final was a thing of beauty (it wasn't) to a more neutral observer, to your average Spaniard it couldn't have been prettier. 

TigerBlog doesn't know too many average Spaniards. He does know one who is hardly average — Princeton women's tennis No. 1 singles player Alice Ferlito. 

A rising senior, Ferlito was the top-ranked singles player in the ITF Northeast Regional rankings and a first-team All-Ivy League selection this past season. Ferlito, who played No. 3 doubles as well, helped Princeton to the Ivy League championship. 

Her hometown is Barcelona, and TB reached out to her to see if she was there for the game. This was the response: 

Yes I was in Barcelona jajaja. It was insane!!! The atmosphere was electric jajaja everyone was on the streets celebrating all night and it was so beatiful❤️❤️🇪🇸🇪🇸. It was so well deserved so it was such a special moment😆😆😆😆. I loved it and had so much fun celebrating it was one of the best days!!!! 

Here are some pictures she sent from the celebration, along with one from her Instagram:

Hey, Spain has now won the World Cup twice. There are no guarantees that it'll ever happen again, so you have to celebrate, right? 

TigerBlog was at Brown on a Sunday afternoon back in April when it poured heavily as Princeton won the women's tennis Ivy championship. He had been at Harvard the day before for men's lacrosse and the field hockey banquet in Princeton the day before that. 

If you remember, TB wrote about being at the hotel the night before the Harvard game with six other college teams in addition to Tiger men's lacrosse. One of those other teams was Duke baseball, in town to play Boston College. 

TB had no idea who was good in ACC baseball, so he looked it up. What did he find? It turned out that BC was ranked in the Top 25. 

BC would sweep three games from the Blue Devils that weekend, allowing only nine runs in the three games combined, on its way to the NCAA tournament. The 17 ACC wins were the most BC has ever had. 

TigerBlog thought back to BC baseball when he saw the news that Ryan Forrest has been hired as the new head coach at Princeton. Baseball at Princeton goes back, way back, in fact, all the way to the beginning of intercollegiate sports here. The first baseball game was also the first Princeton game, on Nov. 22, 1864, when the Tigers defeated Williams College 27-16. 

For decades, one of the best Princeton traditions was the baseball game against Yale on Commencement Day, something that began in the 19th century and lasted all the way through 1966. 

Forrest comes to Princeton after being the Eagles' pitching coach the last three seasons. Before that, he was the pitching coach at Air Force, where among the players he coached was Paul Skenes, the same Paul Skenes who transferred to LSU and is now one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball.  

Forrest's own playing career saw him pitch at Maine and Creighton. He has a master's degree in sport management from West Virginia, and he got his bachelor's degree from Maine. His major? Journalism. Not bad. 

Here is part of one of Forrest's quotes from the release about his hiring, which you can read HERE.

I am grateful for the opportunity to lead the baseball program in one of the most respected and prestigious departments in college athletics and to become part of such an extraordinary institution. Princeton is truly a special place, one that is committed to excellence in everything it does. That pursuit of excellence extends beyond the classroom and playing field, shaping leaders of character who are prepared to make an impact long after graduation. It is a privilege to join a community with such a rich tradition and a bold vision for the future.  

That says it all. 

Welcome to Princeton, Ryan Forrest. Hopefully your experience will be a great one as well.  

Everybody Breathe

Well, it's clear that somebody high up in FIFA controls the weather. 

How else to explain what happened for the World Cup final yesterday? After three days of barely being able to go outside and breathe in New Jersey, let alone play a sport, and then one day of ridiculous rain and thunderstorms all day, suddenly the heavens cleared, the sun shone brightly and the World Cup final was played at MetLife Stadium in as perfect as weather conditions get in New Jersey in July. 

So yeah, there has to be some connection between FIFA and the weather. Or maybe Fox Sports. Yeah, that's more likely. 

As much as TigerBlog hates to admit this, yesterday's World Cup final was essentially everything that American non-soccer fans don't like about the sport. Flopping. Scoreless tie into the second extra time, despite one team (Spain) that outshot the other (Argentina) 20-0 at one point. Microscopic offsides calls. Cards handed out that didn't necessarily seem to fit the moment. More flopping. 

Even ardent soccer fans might have to admit that the game, won by Spain 1-0, was a bit dull for the most part. There was so much on the line, and yet it never really seemed that the tension of the moment built. This had the same feel as a really boring Super Bowl. 

Meanwhile, what is there to make of the third-place game from Saturday, which was about the most entertaining soccer game ever played. Or the most meaningless. Or maybe both at the same time? 

The final was England 6, France 4. The 10 goals were the most scored in a World Cup game since 1982. 

The game had the vibe of either a pick-up game or an all-star game. Defense was optional. The goalies were left hanging out to dry time and time again. 

England went up 1-0 in the first two minutes and led 4-0 at halftime. France cut it to 4-3 and had several chances to tie it that left TigerBlog wondering how they could have missed. There was one spectacular goal after another. 

And yet it didn't really matter who won. When it ended, the players on the field, most of whom play with or against each other during their league seasons, acted like they'd just been to an awards ceremony or a party. Everyone smiled. 

It was great. Only it didn't really matter, which meant it really couldn't be great. Maybe it was more entertaining than great? With way, it was completely fascinating — Alexi Lalas pretty much said all of this on the Fox postgame show. 

So which game was better? The one that meant everything or the one that meant nothing? That's up to you to decide.

TB reached out to two people in England to see what they thought of the third-place game and if it mattered to them much. The first response, from saintly Aunt Mo, who had this to say: 

Everyone who watched it was thrilled but we are all asking why the manager changed tactics half way through the semi final.  The team players did not deserve that! 

Then there was field hockey rising sophomore Caitlin Thompson, one of the many Englanders who had been crushed by her country's 2-1 loss to Argentina in the semifinal. Here was her response to the question of did the people there care about the third-place game:

They didn’t before it started being that exciting 🤣 

The World Cup may be over, but there is still soccer to be played. Kevin O'Toole, the 2022 Roper Trophy winner as Princeton's top male senior athlete, signed a contract extension with New York City FC of Major League Soccer. His contract now runs through 2029, with an option for 2030. 

You can read more about Kevin HERE. Also, as a side note, Kevin's mother Nancy is the only parent of a Princeton athlete to attend high school with TigerBlog. 

Meanwhile, there's also this little tidbit of information. Today is July 20. The first Princeton Athletic event of the 2026-27 year is exactly one month from today. 

One month? That's correct. It'll be a women's soccer game, one month from today, between Princeton and Loyola. That's just 31 days away.

No more Wimbledon. No more World Cup. Princeton sports one month away.

And that's your Monday.  

  

Play Of The Day

TigerBlog went to SportsCenter yesterday to see if a former Princeton women's basketball player made the Top 10 Plays of the Day.

Turns out, nobody made it. They didn't have a Top 10 yesterday. Well not the regular kind at least. 

Instead, in honor of the All-Star break, ESPN went with the Top 10 plays in Major League Baseball to date this season. It was a series of home runs that were robbed, with a mixture of infield grounders that resulted in further robberies. 

The No. 1 spot went all the back to April 5, when Los Angeles Angels outfielder Jo Adell stole three separate home runs in one game against Seattle. The Angels lost 1-0, though it would have been worse had it not been for Adell's three gems. The last was the best, as he went completely over the fence and held on to the ball — and then celebrated with the fans in rightfield.

See for yourself:

There were many who posted that this was the greatest defensive game in baseball history. Most of those people never saw Ozzie Smith play shortstop or Brooks Robinson play third or Dwight Evans play rightfield and all, but yes, it was  really, really impressive. 

Still, where were the top plays for Wednesday? A few of them were in Atlanta, where Argentina defeated England 2-1 in the World Cup semifinals. 

What did the English coach have to say about playing in the third-place game tomorrow?

"None of our players and none of the French players want to play this match," Tuchel told reporters following the defeat. "They want to play the final. We gave everything to achieve that. Everyone plays to win the World Cup, but that’s how it is. We have one less day of recovery than France, but we will do it with professionalism." 

TB was right, it appears. 

Had ESPN wanted to do a Top 10 for yesterday, there were at least nine plays from that game in Atlanta that would have fit the bill, especially the two assists from Lionel Messi and a few of the saves from England goalie Jordan Pickford. 

The 10th? That was in Indiana. 

It came from Princeton alum Kaitlyn Chen, who had a wild game for the Golden State Valkyries in an 88-75 win over the Fever. To TB, Chen will always be a Princeton alum, even if she won an NCAA championship as a graduate student at UConn two seasons ago. 

Did anyone go into the game thinking that Chen would outscore Caitlin Clark? She did, 14-13. 

What's even more amazing is that Chen's 14 points came in just 10 minutes on the court. That's, hmmm, somewhere around 1.4 points per minute. 

There were three WNBA games Wednesday night. Chen was the only player in any of those games who scored more points than she minutes she played. 

Chen played the last two minutes of the second quarter without scoring. She was on the bench when the second half started. Then she came back into the game and went off. 

She'd score 12 of her points in the third quarter, with a layup early in the fourth to bring her to 14. It was her drive to the hoop as time ran down in the third, though, that would have easily been a Top 10 selection.

KC closing off the 3rd quarter on a 12 point tear 🔥 pic.twitter.com/deryJ55DHH

— Golden State Valkyries (@valkyries) July 16, 2026

As TB watched, he thought she was going to run out of time. Then he thought "at least she drew the foul." Then the shot went in.

Through it all, she was typical Kaitlyn Chen, a big smile the entire time. It was just another big moment in her young WNBA career, of which this is a breakout second year for both her and her team. Golden State was an expansion team a year ago, when it went 23-21 and earned a playoff spot as the No. 8 seed.

This season, Golden State is now 18-7, a game back of Minnesota for the best record in the league. The win Wednesday night was the team's eighth straight, and Golden State became the second team in WNBA history to have an unbeaten road trip of at least five games. 

The fifth of those wins was the one in Indiana. It came about largely because of Chen, who was 5 for 5 from the field and 4 for 5 from the line, along with three assists and a steal in just those 10 minutes. She continues to be a microwave off the Valkyrie bench, doing whatever is necessary to help the team win. 

And Wednesday night, that would have included a Play of the Day, had there been one.