Meeting Billy

The two words that do the most to mess up TigerBlog's workout schedule are these: squash camp.

Each summer, the courts in Jadwin that are usually wide open all day find themselves occupied during squash camp, which runs for something around six weeks or so.

The only chance to play during the day is when the campers go to lunch, which is usually around 12:30. On a normal non-camp day, TB will play sometime in the morning, rather than waiting until 12:30 or even later.

The other problem is that the courts get marked up with tape for the purposes of camp drills. Court 9, the court that TB prefers, also has a blue-taped face that has been put on the outside of the glass, so that the face is looking back into the court in a somewhat freaky manner.

Sometimes, TB will be walking down to the courts to play as the kids are leaving to go to lunch.

They're young kids, obviously, some in high school and some who appear to be younger than that. TB always has the same thought - how many of these kids could he beat.

Yesterday's match began after the kids went to lunch, and it turned into a marathon. TB lost, but he doesn't feel too badly about it, since he played fairly well, held off three match balls and sweated a lot.

The last point was a great one. TB had led 8-7 in the last game before he committed the fatal mistake of a service error, but he rallied from 10-8 down to make it 10-10 and then held off another chance at 11-10.

When it got to 12-11, the last point was an epic one in which TB four times chased down balls that he thought he had no chance at, including his last shot, which was a drive deep into the back corner that TB barely got.

Sadly, all that return earned him was the right to see an easy put away at the front wall to end it. Now that's a frustrating sight.

When the match was over, TB and Craig Sachson, his OAC contact and squash partner, sat down to talk to the man who had been playing on Court 10 against Emily Goodfellow, a 12-letterwinner during her Princeton athletic career.

As it turns out, the man was Billy Pate, Princeton's new men's tennis coach. TB had never met him before.

 Pate comes to Princeton from Alabama, where he coached the Crimson Tide for 10 years. If you didn't know he was from the Deep South, then you could figured it out with the first words that came out of his mouth.

Pate told TB and Sachson the story about how his home in Alabama was destroyed by tornadoes, and how a picture of him and his grandmother had been found 70 miles away after the storm - and then returned.

He talked about making the adjustment to living in Princeton, how much he's always liked the Northeast, his strong relationship with Glenn Michibata, his wildly popular predecessor.

Mostly, he showed himself to be a nice guy, one who seemed genuinely interested in meeting the rest of the people who work at Princeton and becoming part of the Princeton Athletics community.

Plus, he plays squash.