Welcome To Charlottesville

 

TigerBlog starts out today by congratulating the seniors in the Princeton Athletics Class of 2026.

Those seniors were honored at the Gary Walters ’67 PVC Senior Awards Banquet last night in Jadwin Gym. The biggest award winners were Beth Yeager of the field hockey team, who won the von Kienbusch Award as the top female athlete, and Mitchell Schott of the men's swimming and diving team, who won the Roper Trophy as the top male athlete. 

TigerBlog? He wasn't there for any of it, which means he missed out on a chance to see former Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan, as well as the senior athletes, and even some parents, that he'd gotten to know. 

He did get a chance to go through about 250 photos that Shelley Szwast took from the event, and it made him feel like he was there. And it's also given him another chance to use a photo of the MacDonald family, because why not? 

So if he wasn't there last night, where was he? Charlottesville, Va. 

How long did it take him to get there? A little more than seven hours.

Somewhere along the line, TB started thinking of Waze as gospel, as if its traffic-avoidance and best routes came directly from the burning bush itself. That thinking has eroded through the years, and it probably reached its nadir yesterday on I-81. 

For some reason, Waze took TB west first and then south, as opposed to the other way around. At first, TB thought two things: 1) cool, he'll avoid I-95 and 2) he's never gone that way before, so it might be a nice change. 

Then two things happened. First, it rained for every second of his drive. And two, it turns out that the trucks that go on I-81 like to drive side-by-side, almost like they were holding hands, at a speed that does not quite equal the limit, or, for that matter, even come close to it. 

Going the way he did added another two hours to his drive.  

The best part was going past the James Madison football stadium. TB has never been to JMU. The second best part was it gave TB a chance to catch up on singing his show tunes. 

Everything else was the worst part. Even the fact that he had cookies with him didn't help all that much. 

The only thing worse than that ride would have been not having to make it yesterday in the first place. He's here for the NCAA men's lacrosse Championship Weekend, which for him is nothing new — this is his 32nd in the last 35 years. 

What makes this one especially exciting — and the reason he had to be here yesterday — is that Princeton is here as well and is the No. 1 seed. The Tigers will take on Duke tomorrow at noon on ESPN2 in the first semifinal, followed by No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 6 Syracuse in the other. The winners meet for the NCAA championship Monday at 1 on ESPN.

That's 21 NCAA championships between the four teams. 

Unlike many years, there is no clear-cut can't-miss team among the last four. It wouldn't be shocking if any of them had the honor of the dog-pile Monday. 

Princeton and Duke, for their part, rank third and fourth in Division I in scoring offense, averaging better than 14 goals per game each. The two did not play this year, but they did the two years before that.  

What was the score last year? Princeton 15, Duke 14. 

Will it be another shootout? Both teams are also really strong defensively. There's this, for instance: 

After allowing six goals in the first 18:39 of the Ivy League tournament against Yale (which averages out to 19.3 goals per 60 minutes), Princeton has allowed only 32 more in the last 221:21 (which averages to 8.67 per 60 minutes. Princeton allowed 186 goals a year ago in 17 games; through 17 games this year Princeton has allowed 168.  

That's from TB's pregame story on goprincetontigers.com, which you can see HERE. It has all kinds of information about the game, the teams and everything else. 

And when the game starts? All of those numbers go straight out the window. What's at stake is a spot in the national title game Monday. It won't be decided by the numbers. It'll be decided by the little plays here and there that go one way or another. And it'll be decided by how each team reacts when those little plays go against them. 

The forecast is rainy, just like it was on the drive down. This is no time for excuses though. When the first whistle blows tomorrow, there will only be four teams left in Division I. By the end of the day, only two will be left. 

These are opportunities to be cherished. And for leaving nothing on the field.  

Banquet Night

Did TigerBlog ever tell you the story about the time he had to escort a bunch of field hockey freshmen back from North Carolina for their orientation? 

It was back in 2022. Princeton was playing in the season-opening ACC/Ivy Crossover, which that year was at UNC. The schedule, though, had orientation for freshmen starting between the two games the Tigers were to play, so someone had to bring them back. 

Enter TigerBlog. He and the freshmen got up before dawn to get to the airport, and they were all back on campus in plenty of time. 

TB should have taken a picture with them that day. He could have contrasted it with this one, taken this past fall at the NCAA Final Four, where this group led Princeton to overtime of the national championship game: 

Time, once again, has done what it does. 

Those six with TigerBlog will be at the Gary Walters ’67 Senior Awards Banquet tonight in Jadwin Gym, along with the seniors from almost every Princeton sport. Missing will be TigerBlog and the 13 seniors on the men's lacrosse team, who will be in Charlottesville in preparation for Saturday's NCAA semifinal.  

For those who will be there, it will be a night of emotions, as it always is. It's a celebration of Princeton Athletics' seniors, a class that has put up winning numbers that no other class in Ivy League — and maybe any other league anywhere — has matched. 

There will be awards, with two field hockey seniors among the nominees (Beth Yeager for the von Kienbusch Award as the top senior female athlete and Helena Große for the Class of 1916 Cup for the varsity athlete in highest academic standing). The top male athlete will be announced. There will be awards for leadership and community service. 

There will be two alums honored, including former Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan. The banquet itself is named for her predecessor, the man who started the event and built it into what it is today. 

It was Gary who wanted to have a banquet to celebrate the awards that previously had simply been announced. He created most of the other awards that now are part of the evening. He saw it grow from a small gathering in the Jadwin lobby to outgrowing several other venues and now requiring the huge expanse of the back of the main floor. 

The banquet comes on Night 1 of Reunions, which brings with it the explosion of orange and black that annually descends upon the campus in numbers no non-Princetonian can even imagine. As it does every year, the banquet begins the sprint to the finish line of Commencement, held Tuesday, after Class Day Monday and the prom. 

The seniors who gather tonight have had vastly different experiences in their four years. A very small percentage of them will win awards, or were even nominated. 

Some have started every game or competed in every event without a scratch or anything more than a few bruises. Others spent more time in the training room than on the field. Most were part of at least one championship celebration. 

They did this across different venues, with different circles of friends. They'll be heading in many different directions once they have diplomas in hand Tuesday. 

They do all have one commonality. They've all, every one of them, had an educational and athletic experience that has changed them, molded them, tested them and ultimately prepared them for whatever will be next. 

That is undeniable. 

Those are all among the emotions that are for contemplating later. For tonight, the emotions that swirl around Jadwin Gym will be the ones that generate laughs, smiles, hugs — and lots and lots of pictures. It's a night to be spent together, as one big Princeton Athletics class, something that they haven't gotten to do that many times in their four years on campus. 

It's a night for happiness. It's a night to start the huge weekend that maybe, back when they were all at orientation, may have seemed so far in the future that it was impossible to contemplate. 

And now it is here. It's a special night, this night that Gary Walters envisioned and brought to life. 

It is every year. It's the best of what Princeton Athletics is.  

 

Pretty Flamingo

Here are two pretty fascinating pieces of information from TigerBlog's brain Snapple cap. 

First, flamingos are pink because they eat a lot of shrimp. TB can picture all these pink birds, one foot on the ground, the other pretentiously facing outward, as they complain about having to peal all these shrimp. 

While TB is on the subject, what color would they be if they didn't eat shrimp? Say they gave up on the shrimp and went to a diet of, say, sea bass. 

Then there's the second one. Tiger stripes are on their actual skin, not on their fur. 

It's clearly a sign of toughness. It's a rite of passage. You want to be an actual jungle Tiger? You better earn your stripes. And none of this stripes-on-fur stuff. That's for lions or giraffes or someone not as bold. 

TigerBlog has no segue from that to the women's open rowing team's Ivy League championship this past weekend, so he'll dive right into it. 

Oh wait, wait.  

Flamingos. Pretty Flamingo. Fast forward to 5:00 if you don't want to hear his story. Also, there is absolutely no mention of shrimp anywhere in the song, but it's still a classic. 

Okay, back to the Ivy League women's rowing championships — or at least a few days beforehand. TigerBlog saw Princeton head coach Lori Dauphiny as TB walked out of the last department meeting of the year, and he said "hello."

He could have said: "Good luck in the Ivy championships," but what would the point have been? Lori would have said "we really don't have a good chance," to which TB would have said "you said that last year, and the year before, etc." 

And then Lori would have laughed and headed away, on her way to the boathouse, to put the finishing touches on yet another championship.

For the record, Lori's team did in fact have a chance, a really good one at that. 

The Tigers won the first varsity 8 race by 3.5 seconds. Beyond that, Princeton also won the Shoemaker Trophy for the overall points title by one over Yale, 44-43.

🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇

So much gold!

The First Varsity of Lindsay Saunders, Amalka Delevante, Joely Cherniss, Anna Cowell, Michaela Ulicna, Ellie Smith, Cate Sauer, Laoise O'Donohue and Phaedra Van Der Molen cross the line 3.5 seconds ahead of Yale! pic.twitter.com/4nJZeudSfL

— Princeton Open Women (@princetonwcrew) May 17, 2026

What are the prizes? The first varsity 8 winner is crowned Ivy League champion. The points winner earns the league's automatic bid to the NCAA championships.  

By the way, make that nine straight and 10 of 11 Ivy titles for opening rowing.  

In this case, Princeton took both. The team found out yesterday its seeds for the NCAA regatta, which will be in Georgia next weekend. Where are the Tigers? The first varsity is fourth. So is the second varsity 8. The varsity four is 11th. 

The top three seeds in the 1V are Tennessee, Texas and Stanford. In the 2V it's Texas, Stanford and Virginia. 

If you've never been to an NCAA rowing championship, it's worth the effort. It's a rowing festival of the highest order. 

Meanwhile, the Ivy League championship won by the 1V was Princeton's final one of the academic year. Again, here is the full list: 

Fall: men's soccer, women's soccer, women's volleyball, men's cross country, women's cross country
Winter: women's basketball, men's swimming and diving, women's swimming and diving, men's indoor track and field, women's indoor track and field, women's squash
Spring: softball, men's lacrosse, women's tennis, women's open rowing, men's indoor track and field, women's indoor track and field

Okay, Count von Count. How about you count them all out for everyone?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 — Seventeen Ivy League titles. That ties the all-time league record, set a year ago by ... Princeton.  

And, again, that doesn't include field hockey, which won the Ivy tournament on its way to the NCAA final, or women's hockey, who won the ECAC regular season, or women's lightweight rowing, who won Eastern Sprints, or men's water polo, the NWPC champion, or men's heavyweight and lightweight rowing, who both won the overall points trophy at Eastern Sprints. 

Not bad. Not bad at all.  

Hep Cats

TigerBlog sat in the football locker room at Delaware Stadium Sunday about an hour before the start of Princeton's men's lacrosse quarterfinal win over Penn State to send the Tigers to the Final Four. 

It'll be Princeton-Duke at noon in Charlottesville Saturday. You can get tickets HERE. 

(Note — this will be the final lacrosse mention of the day). 

TB had set his alarm for 11 to watch the women's 3,000-meter steeplechase from the Ivy League Heptagonal track and field championships at Weaver Stadium. He wanted to watch Pia Beaulieu run for Princeton, and he thought that's when the race was to begin. 

His interest stemmed from the feature story he wrote about Beaulieu prior to the start of Heps. If you haven't read it, you can do so HERE. 

TB knew nothing about Beaulieu prior to speaking with her for 20 minutes or so last week. He came away from the experience with a pretty good idea of what Princeton women's soccer coach meant about how, when he first began to recruit her, that "the performance matched the personality."

To say that Beaulieu has a big personality is quite the understatement. She overwhelms you with her energy and her somewhat unpredictable changes of direction in her conversations, and she balances that with depth in what she says. It's a good double. 

Beaulieu was an All-Ivy League soccer player this past fall. With the end of the season, she was able to join the track and field team, and she came in sixth in the Indoor Heps mile, earning Princeton a point along the way to the championship. She had been seeded 21st, by the way. 

The outdoor season has seen her introduced to TB's favorite track event, the steeplechase. She seems to have enjoyed the introduction, since she moved into the 13th spot in the NCAA East rankings after just three times having run it. That's three, as in one-two-three. She also cut 28 seconds off between her first and third attempts. 

Her fourth time came in outdoor Heps Sunday. TigerBlog was looking forward to watching it, only to turn on ESPN+ to see that she was being interviewed after her win. Oh well. He had the start time wrong. Beaulieu didn't. 

How she won was pretty impressive. TB learned a new term from women's coach Brad Hunt — negative split — which is to say your second half is faster than your first. Beaulieu's first full lap in the seven-plus lap race was in 1:20.04. Her final lap was in 1:13.27. She won the race by nearly two seconds; there was another 10-second drop from second to third. 

Now that's impressive stuff. 

You know what else is impressive? How about the men's steeplechase? In that race, Princeton had five runners in the final and they only went 1-2-3-4-5. What? How is that even possible? 

Brian Boler won the event, followed in order by Jackson Shorten, Marcelo Parra Ramon, Sebastian Martinez and Franco Parra Ramon. And then? There was a nearly 10-second drop down to the first non-Tiger across the line. 

Even with Beaulieu's win, Brown actually got more team points (12-10) from the women's race. On the men's side, there were 31 points awarded in all for the steeple — and Princeton got 30 of them. TB wonders if a team has ever taken the top five spots in a Heps race before. 

As for the overall, Princeton's men and women destroyed the field, both winning easily. In fact, they won by a combined 135 points. 

In doing so, both teams completed yet another "Triple Crown" of Heps titles in cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field. The last time both Princeton teams did so in the same year was ... last year. 

The women won nine individual events in becoming the first women's program to win back-to-back Triple Crowns. The men? They won eight individual titles and have now won three straight triple crowns and 13 all time. 

If you'd like to see all the winners, the final results are HERE.

 

Not For The Meeks

The game was over; the trip to Charlottesville and a date at noon Saturday with Duke in the Final Four secured. 

The Princeton men's lacrosse team was in its locker room. The celebration of the 14-10 win over Penn State in the quarterfinals was in full swing. 

TigerBlog had to interrupt the festivities for three players who were needed in the postgame interview room. One was Jackson Green, who had three caused turnovers, two of which directly set up Princeton goals, and who yet again could not have his impact on the game measured in statistics.

Another was Tucker Wade, who had already been interviewed on TV and now was headed to answer more questions from the assembled print media. Here are two important things to know about Wade: 1) he scores a lot of goals (four in the game, 35 for the season now) and 2) he hates the spotlight. TB felt badly about having to ask him, except that he had been dominant. 

The third was Andrew McMeekin. On a day when Princeton's "we not me" attitude was on full display, nobody had the impact on the game that McMeekin did. McMeekin had no shirt on when TB told him he was needed, which led TB to two thoughts: 1) what must it be like to walk down the beach with his arms and 2) how in the world is this guy so underrated? 

McMeekin, Princeton's record setting face-off specialist, had just gone up against Penn State's Colby Baldwin and Reid Gills, who between them had the Nittany Lions fifth in Division I in winning percentage at the X, with better than .600. On a brutally hot day on the Delaware turf, the challenge for McMeekin was to take almost every face-off for the Tigers and not get worn down by the two-headed monster he was up against. 

This brings TB back to McMeekin's arms, and the rest of him. If you've never seen him in anything other than a lacrosse uniform, he comes across a bit like Jaws, either the one from from the old James Bond movies or possibly the great white shark. If anyone could match up physically, it would be McMeekin.

This was from an Inside Lacrosse story of anonymous coaches' scouting reports, under "Penn State keys to win:"

"Keep Andrew McMeekin on his toes with your 1-2 punch at the stripe."

There was also this: 

"Baldwin is a veteran, good off the ground, different than Gills in that he makes everything a scrap. The combination of them both makes it really hard on the opposing specialist." 

So what happened? McMeekin went 19 for 26 with 12 groundballs and a goal. And it wasn't just any goal. It came in the fourth quarter, six seconds after John Dunphey had given the Tigers an 11-10 lead. McMeekin's goal made it a two-goal Tiger advantage and was the kind of backbreaking goal that can only come from a face-off guy. 

Here are some of McMeekin's records:

* most face-off wins in Princeton history
* most groundballs in Princeton history
* ranks 1-2 on Princeton's single-season groundballs list
* has three seasons of 100 GBs; no other Tiger has more than one
* this season's team has won more face-offs than any other in Princeton history

And yet, where are his individual honors? 

Other than being the Most Outstanding Player of the Ivy League tournament as a sophomore and a second team All-Ivy selection this year, there's not really much else. When USA Lacrosse Magazine released its All-American team, he was nowhere to be found. He didn't earn any honors a year ago, Ivy or national. 

How is that possible? 

Meanwhile, as far as the game yesterday, this was an all-around team effort. Every player who stepped on the field contributed. Take Caden Southworth, a freshman shortstick defensive midfielder who hasn't played much. Princeton threw him out for a huge third-quarter shift because of the heat, and he responded with big one-on-one defense and a big clear. 

Wade had his four. Chad Palumbo had three more goals and two more assists. Behind those two, Princeton had eight different players with one goal each. 

From the opening face-off until the end of the third quarter, neither team led by more than two. It was 6-6 at the half. It was 9-9 after three. It was 10-9 Penn State a minute into the fourth. 

The game came exactly one year to the day when Princeton lost 19-18 to Syracuse in this round, falling short of the goal of Championship Weekend. There was zero chance this team was going to let this one get away. 

And they didn't. They responded with 14 great minutes, scoring the final five goals of the day. Was McMeekin worn down by the heat? 

Well, he won the FO after the Penn State goal and then the next two after that. He didn't take the one after his goal but won the next two. By the time he lost one, there was less than a minute to go in the game and Princeton was headed to Charlottesville. 

Worn down by the heat?

Hah. Have you ever tried to face-off against a great white shark, or a giant guy with steel teeth?  

Quarter Horses

The forecast for Sunday in Newark, Del., is for sunny skies and a high of 85 degrees. 

It'll be there that top-seeded Princeton will play Penn State in the NCAA men's lacrosse quarterfinals. It'll be the second meeting of the year between the teams, after Penn State defeated Princeton 13-7 in the Tigers' season opener back on Valentines' Day. 

The high temperature for that game was 34. 

As is always the case, another season has flown by. Just when the weather is getting better, it's time to determine a champion.  

There are exactly 10 days left between now and Memorial Day, which means that 10 days from today will be the championship game, at Scott Stadium at the University of Virginia. 

There are, obviously, eight teams left heading into this weekend's quarterfinals. The math is easy: one of those eight teams will be in a dog pile 10 days from now and seven others will be left to think of how close they came and regroup for next year. 

The first two games will be played tomorrow at Hofstra, where second-seeded Notre Dame will face Johns Hopkins at noon and then No. 3 North Carolina will take on No. 6 Syracuse. Those winners will play in one semifinal. 

The Princeton-Penn State game is the first one at Delaware, also at noon, followed by a game between two unseeded teams, Georgetown and Duke. The winners of those games play in the other semifinal. 

Princeton is 11-7 all-time in NCAA quarterfinal games, not that a stat like that matters at all right now. Both Princeton and Penn State are loaded with NCAA tournament appearance, as the Tigers are in their fifth straight tournament and Penn State went to the Final Four a year ago. 

You remember last year's quarterfinals, right? It was there (at Hofstra) that Princeton and Syracuse played the best game of the 2025 season. As they say, it's a shame either team had to lose. Unfortunately, one did, and it was Princeton, 19-18.

The season opener this year between Princeton and Penn State was not the best game of this season. It was an awful one for the Tigers, who fell behind 7-1 after one quarter and were never in it. 

Since then? Princeton is 14-1, the lone loss during the regular season to Cornell. That was nine games ago. One of those nine wins was over the Big Red in the Ivy tournament final. 

This Princeton team has scored more goals than any in program history (238) and has allowed 28 fewer goals this season that last (in one fewer game). Princeton has won 247 face-offs, which obliterates the existing single-season program record. 

Face-off wins, though, will not be easy to come by Sunday for either team. Penn State has won just over 60 percent of its face-offs this year, with Reid Gills sixth in Division I and Colby Baldwin 25th. Both have more than 100 face-offs wins this year. 

Of course, if the face-off X is going to be a heavyweight bout, TigerBlog refers you to the Princeton corner, where 6-2, 235-pound Andrew McMeekin sits with his program records for face-off wins and groundballs in a career and his overwhelming postseason success (191 for 336 with 118 GBs in 13 games).

Nate Kabiri comes into the game with 99 career goals and Chad Palumbo comes in 98. Palumbo's last two NCAA games have seen him score 12 goals on 15 shots with three assists. 

Did you read TB's feature story on John Dunphey yet? You can HERE.

If you don't want to read the whole thing, well, TB doesn't know what to tell you. There is a part of it, though, where Dunphey talked about last year's loss to Syracuse:

The takeaway is that one little play here or there and it can get away from you and suddenly you lose 19-18 instead of win 19-18. It shows you how important every little thing is. Maybe you missed a groundball or took a bad shot in the second quarter and didn’t think about it in the moment. You can’t take anything for granted. This time is so sacred and so special. It’s fleeting. How can you make the most of every day? Like I said, maybe you don’t think about it in the moment you didn’t get that groundball. This year, we can’t let that happen.”

Maybe Princeton needed to go through that to get to this point. Lesson learned? Will Princeton be able to reverse what happened three months and 50 degrees ago? 

The prize for the winner is a big one.  

 

Double Feature

Are you too young to remember double features? 

When TigerBlog was a kid, you could often go to the movies and see two different pictures for one ticket. Also, the tickets weren't really all that expensive. Ah, those were the days. 

Anyway, this is a different kind of double-feature week for TigerBlog. It's a double feature story week. 

He posted the first one yesterday, about Princeton senior lacrosse midfielder John Dunphey. You'll have to read it for yourself, which you can do HERE.

Dunphey has gone from being a very solid complementary player for his first three seasons and six games to one of the best middies in the country in a blink. Here is some info from the story: 

Though Princeton lost that game to Cornell 13-11, Dunphey scored twice, on two shots. The following week he scored five more, on five shots, with three assists in a 20-14 win at Brown, earning a spot on the USILA Team of the Week. That win started Princeton’s current winning streak, which has now stretched to nine straight with the win over Marist. Dunphey’s totals in that run? He has 15 goals and 14 assists, for 29 points. That’s an average of 3.2 per game, or triple his career average prior to that. Incredibly, he has scored those 15 goals on just 24 shots, which is a .625 shooting percentage. That’s an insane number. 

Oh, and here's the first line: 

Thuh-Wump. Pfft. Thuh-Wump. Pfft. Thuh-Wump. Pfft. Thuh-Wump. Pfft. 

If that doesn't make you want to read the story, nothing will. 

Princeton, by the way, plays in the NCAA quarterfinals this Sunday at noon against Penn State at the University of Delaware. The Tigers are the top seed in the tournament — and not surprisingly, TB will have more on this matchup tomorrow. 

His other feature story will run tomorrow, in advance of the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships, which will be held at Weaver Track and Field Stadium Saturday and Sunday. The subject of this one? Pia Beaulieu, an All-Ivy League women's soccer player who will be running the 3,000 meter steeplechase at Heps. 

TigerBlog had never met her until he spoke to her last week. She's, uh, memorable. And her story is a really good one. 

TB told women's soccer head coach Sean Driscoll and women's distance coach Brad Hunt that when they suggested the story, they had him at "steeplechase."

There are five remaining Ivy League championships to be crowned for the academic year, and all five will be awarded this weekend. The men's and women's outdoor track and field titles will go the Heps winners, while the women's open rowing and men's heavyweight and lightweight Ivy titles will also be decided this weekend. 

Of those five, three will be won in New Jersey, with the women's Ivy rowing championships on the Cooper River in Pennsauken. The men's Eastern Sprints will be on Lake Quigsigamond, in Worcester, Mass. It's possible that TigerBlog spelled "Quigsigamond" wrong; it's been a challenge for several decades now. 

The men's and women's track teams will be looking to complete another Triple Crown sweep, something that you may take for granted but not something that just happens. All three first varsity 8 races should be crazy competitive after the way the results this season have gone. 

And lastly for today, TigerBlog gives a shoutout to Thanana Kotchasanmanee, a freshman from Thailand who competed at the NCAA golf regionals for the last three days. And how did she do? 

She tied for the individual title, which earns her a spot in the NCAA championships. This is from the story on goprincetontigers.com:

She entered the day six shots off the lead which was held by Cindy Hsu of Texas at -8, and by the end of the day Kotchasanmanee had shot her second 66 (-4) of the week to vault into a tie for first at 204 (-6) alongside Marta Silchenko of Oklahoma State who had also shot 66 in the final round. With the Cowgirls in third place as a team and in possession of one of five team AQs through to the NCAA Championship, Kotchasanmanee was the recipient of the lone individual qualification that goes to the highest-finishing individual not on the five teams to advance.

Kotchasanmanee is the fourth Ivy Leaguer to secure a trip to the NCAA Championship since it was first held in 1982. The other three are all Princetonians as Kotchasanmanee joins Mary Moan (1997), Kelly Shon, (2013) and Maya Walton (2017) as Tigers to reach the final site.

The 2026 NCAA Division I Women's Golf Championship begins May 22 at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif.

And the second feature will be out tomorrow. Make sure you look for it.  

Stacie Too

 

TigerBlog was at the final Department of Athletics staff meeting of 2025-26 yesterday.

One of the staples of each meeting is an update in competitive success — and Princeton has certainly had its share of it this academic year.

In fact, there are 12 Ivy League tournaments each year. How many has Princeton won this academic year?

How about more than half of them? 

Here's the list: men's soccer, field hockey, women's volleyball, women's squash, women's basketball, men's lacrosse, women's lacrosse. That's seven out of 12. 

That makes the final scoreboard for 2025-26 Princeton 7, Everyone Else 5 (that's what it will be when the baseball tournament ends this weekend). 

And that doesn't count men's and women's Heps cross country and indoor track and field and men's and women's swimming and diving, all of which Princeton won, though they aren't technically in the team tournament format. Also, men's and women's Outdoor Heps hasn't happened yet either; they will be held this weekend at Princeton's Weaver Track and Field Stadium. 

Or, for that matter, women's soccer, which was the Ivy League champion by winning the regular season title. Or women's tennis, who won the Ivy title in a sport where there is no tournament. Or women's hockey, who won the ECAC regular season championship. Or men's water polo, who won the NWPC championship. Or women's lightweight rowing, who won Eastern Sprints. Or the other three rowing teams, who compete this weekend for Ivy title. 

So that's a fair amount of winning.

TigerBlog has been here a long time, and he's said the same thing time after time after time: None of this winning is guaranteed. He's even linked to the last scene of the movie "Patton" to hammer home the point: 

TigerBlog isn't sure how many athletic department meetings he's attended. One possible answer would be: "Not as many as Stacie Traube."

Stacie Traube has also been at Princeton longer than TigerBlog. If TB has the numbers correct, she is finishing her 41st year at Princeton, the last 37 of which have been spent in the football office, after four years in the Politics department. 

For all the years TB has know her, he never knew this, which he learned from her bio: 

She began her career at Princeton in the politics department, working closely with the late Prof. Walter F. Murphy. Her name (nee Scofield) can be found within in Murphy's acknowledgements in the preface of the Con-Interp textbook.

That's impressive. 

What's really impressive would be the number of athletes with whom she has worked, beginning before their recruiting visits and continuing long after their graduations. Given the size of the roster and the number of years, that's probably somewhere around 1,000 football players, maybe more, given that she started at a time when there was still freshman football. 

Stacie in many ways is Princeton Football. TB isn't sure how many home games she's missed in all those years, but it's not a lot. There's more to it than that, though.

She's always been super-protective of the program from a standpoint of the people who have played and coached here and any public messaging that has gone out. She has always been dialed in 100 percent on making sure every aspect of the program is properly represented. 

And there's no aspect of the program that hasn't had her fingerprints on it. In a sport where there are offensive coordinators and defensive coordinators and special teams coordinators and running game coordinators and so on, Stacie was just a coordinator. Recruits. Current players. Alums. Coaches. 

Ask any of them what Stacie Traube has meant to Princeton Football. They'll all smile and gush over here, and why wouldn't they? She's made every one of their experiences better. 

You can consider this the third in TB's series of "She's retiring." First it was Karen Malec, from the events staff. Then it was Nancy Donigan, from compliance. 

In this case, it's Stacie Traube who will be stepping away at the end  of the academic year. Those three? That's a combined 116 years of service to Princeton Athletics — loyal, hard-working, high-quality, high-quantity service at that. 

And that's something that deserves to be saluted. 

Again, as TB has said before — twice now — their retirements will leave a huge void around here.  

To The Quarters

 TigerBlog will be back shortly. 

He needs to update Nate Kabiri's and Chad Palumbo's NCAA tournament numbers in the Princeton men's lacrosse record book after the top-seeded Tigers defeated Marist 17-8 in the opening round Sunday on Sherrerd Field. 

This might take a few minutes. In the meantime, you can pencil in this coming Sunday, when Princeton will play Penn State at Delaware in the quarterfinals. Princeton is in the quarterfinals for the second straight year and third time in five years. 

At stake is a trip to the Final Four Memorial Day Weekend in Charlottesville, Va. As a subplot, Penn State defeated Princeton 13-7 back on Valentines' Day in the Tiger season opener; Princeton has won 14 of 15 since and avenged its only other loss, to Cornell, with a 19-9 win two Sundays ago in the Ivy League tournament final. 

Also, while TB is busy, you can check out this groundball from Johns Hopkins' Luke Martin in overtime to set up the possession that gave the Blue Jays the winning goal in a 9-8 win over Cornell. 

THE PLAY OF THE SEASON 🤯🤯 pic.twitter.com/ZXoEwG7vJ3

— Johns Hopkins Men's Lacrosse (@jhumenslacrosse) May 10, 2026

That is without question the greatest single groundball pickup that TigerBlog can ever remember seeing anywhere, let alone at a moment like that, in OT in an NCAA game.  

Okay, TB is back. 

He starts with Palumbo. 

So in the game Sunday, Palumbo put up six goals, tying the program record for goals in an NCAA game. Whose record did he tie? His own. Well, technically, this was the sixth time that a Princeton player has had six goals in an NCAA game: Palumbo twice, Chris Massey twice and Jesse Hubbard and  Coulter Mackesy once each. That's elite company. 

Palumbo's six goals against Marist gave him 12 in his last two NCAA games, including the six he scored against Syracuse in last year's quarterfinal loss. Those 12 goals have come on 15 shots.  

As for Kabiri, the Tewaaraton Award finalist, he had three goals and five assists in the game against Marist. Only Hubbard has ever had more points in an NCAA game, when the Hall-of-Famer had six goals and four assists in the 1996 quarterfinal against Towson. 

Kabiri's eight points are actually tied for second, along with ... Palumbo, who had eight points against Syracuse in that game last year, and Jon Hess, who had a three-goal, five-assist game in the 1997 NCAA final against Maryland as he earned Most Outstanding Player honors. 

Beyond just the NCAA record book, Kabiri now has 99 goals in his career, while Palumbo has 98. Should they get to 100, they would be the 16th and 17th to do so at Princeton.

Kabiri, only a junior, is also on the verge of getting to 100 assists and 200 points (something only eight Tigers have ever done). He brings 95 assists along with those 99 goals into the quarterfinal game, making him already one of only two players in program history with at least 90 goals and 90 assists, along with Michael Sowers (121G, 181A). 

And that's the individual stuff. At this point in May, it's all about the team. Actually, with this group, it's always about the team. 

It was mid-February on Sherrerd Field when Princeton and Penn State met. The high temperature that day was 38, but after the cold spell and snow that dominated the month before, it felt downright warm. 

Hot? That was Penn State's start. The Nittany Lions led 7-1 after the first quarter and won by six. Penn State defeated Army-West point 10-6 Saturday to reach the quarterfinals in its own right. 

There will be all kinds of NCAA tournament experience on the field at Delaware. How much? How about every class on both teams has been to the NCAA tournament every season. 

Penn State reached the Final Four a year ago. Princeton is still smarting from that 19-18 loss to Syracuse last year.

Face-off in Delaware is at noon, followed by Georgetown-Duke. The two winners will meet in one semifinal at UVa. 

The other side of the bracket has Notre Dame-Johns Hopkins and UNC-Syracuse Saturday at Hofstra.  

Softball Celebration

There are times when TigerBlog wishes he could go back to his high school self and tell that guy where technology would be in the future. 

This past Saturday at 7 was one of those times. 

This is how the conversation would have gone:

Current TB: "So there was an NCAA men's lacrosse tournament Zoom, overtime of the Cornell-Hopkins game on ESPNU on YouTube.TV and the Ivy League softball tournament streaming on ESPN+. Had the meeting and the softball game on the laptop and Cornell-Hop on the smart TV. Was also getting texts on the smartphone. Had to pay attention to the meeting for the game while Cornell-Hop went into OT. Wanted to blog about softball for Monday, so wanted to focus on that too."
HS TB: "What in the world are you talking about?" 

That pretty much sums it all up. 

You'll be happy to know that TB was able to follow all three. Meeting went smoothly. Hopkins won in overtime. 

And softball? It was a dominant performance by the Tigers all weekend, finishing it off Saturday night with an 8-0 win over Columbia to take the championship. Princeton went 3-0 at Cynthia Paul Field in the event. 

Had any team other than Princeton come out of the softball tournament with the win and gotten the league's automatic NCAA tournament bid, then that would have been a big shame, after the way Princeton dominated the 21-game regular season. The Tigers tied the Ivy record for league softball wins with 18 and won the league by six games. 

In fact, TB didn't even notice this until he went back to see the standings, but there was a bigger gap between Princeton and second place than there was between second place and last place. He wishes he could go back — easily — and look up how many times that's ever happened in the league in any sport. 

Princeton started the tournament by falling behind 4-0 to Brown after two innings of the first game. From that point forward, Princeton outscored its opponents by a combined 21-2. 

The Tigers came back to take down Brown 7-5 and followed that with a 6-0 win over Columbia. Brown eliminated Harvard, who lost to Columbia in the first round, and then was itself eliminated by Columbia.

That set up the final day of the tournament. Princeton needed one win. Columbia needed a win to force a deciding game. 

It was scoreless into the fourth before Princeton put up five and then closed it out with three more in the fifth. It ended once the eighth run crossed the plate.  

Of course, Cassidy Shaw didn't need eight runs to win the game. The Tiger pitcher went five innings in all three days, striking out 17 and walking only one. Is that good? Seems it. Unsurprisingly, Shaw was the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. 

The win set up quite the Tiger celebration. Shelley Szwast came away with some great shots, including: 

 Those are happy Tigers. 

And why not? This has been one of the greatest seasons in program history, and now the five-time defending Ivy champs head to the NCAA tournament for the 13th time. 

All that was left after the celebration was the selection, which was announced last night at 7. Princeton will be heading to Stillwater and the campus of Oklahoma State, where the Tigers will open the regional with a game against Stanford Friday at 2 Eastern. The host Oklahoma State team will then play Eastern Illinois on the first day of the three-day, double elimination event. 

OK State is 15th in the Division I RPI, one spot ahead of Stanford. Eastern Illinois is 124. Princeton is 83rd. 

Not that any of that matters. Princeton has had a huge season and just had a huge weekend. 

The plane ride to Oklahoma is the reward — and an opportunity to keep it rolling.