On The Record

TigerBlog spent much of his Thanksgiving weekend at the beach.

Beaches, actually. In four different states. He went to Virginia Beach. Then to North Carolina's Outer Banks, where he'd never been before. On the way back, he stopped off in Ocean City (the one in Maryland) and then Bethany Beach in Delaware.

The weather could hardly have cooperated more, considering it was the last weekend in November.

TigerBlog loves the beach. He especially loves it in the spring and fall - even late fall - when it's not crowded, when he can smell the salt water and can just walk. There are few things he'd rather do than that.

He imagines that Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks might get a tad bit more beach traffic in the summer than they did this past weekend. In fact, he can't imagine what a Saturday in July in Virginia Beach must look like, what with how the town is built up on basically every available spot.

Oh, and if you're driving to Virginia Beach from this area, you head through/over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel, a fascinating piece of Route 13 that covers 17 miles of water, mostly above it but for two separate one-mile stretches below it. 

The Outer Banks? They have to be much quieter in the summer. There's just not as much to do there. There's the beach of course. Houses all around. Not as many hotels. Not as many restaurants and bars.

TigerBlog went to Kitty Hawk, which is famous obviously for being the site of the Wright Brothers and their first airplane flight. Actually, the flight was not in Kitty Hawk, though. It was in Kill Devils Hills, which is next to Kitty Hawk and, on Dec. 17, 1903, was not yet its own municipality.

If TB lived in Kill Devil Hills, he'd be bummed that Kitty Hawk got all the glory for that one.

The strip that the Wright Brothers flew their plane on nearly 111 years ago was chosen because of the sand (soft landing area in case something went wrong), the isolation and the presence of reliable wind.

There is a big boulder that marks the starting point for their four flights and then other stones marked with the number of each flight that are placed where they touched down. The longest was the fourth, which went early 200 feet. Altitude? It was 10 feet.

Kill Devil Hills sits just south of Nags Head, which is as far south as TB went. He went the other way as well, to Duck and as far north as Corolla, which is one of the places where horses can be found running wild on the beach.

TB's car isn't 4-wheel drive, so he couldn't take it out on the beach to see the horses. Instead, he walked over to the rope fence that separates the part where people can walk and cars can drive. He saw horses in the distance, but that was about it. He thinks they were horses, but they could have been people. Or dogs. Who knows. They were too far away.

You know what there are a lot of in the Outer Bank? License plates that have "OBX" followed by a number.

Along his travels, TigerBlog also met up with Dave Heubeck and his wife Leslie, who have a house on the sound in Corolla.

Dave Heubeck, a member of the Class of 1980, was a lacrosse player at Princeton. When he graduated, he was the program's all-time leading scorer with 182 points (83G, 99A).

TigerBlog assumes he got cheated out of an assist somewhere and should actually have 100 but hey, 99 is the actual number. It's like the record for rushing yards in a game at Princeton, which is 299 by Keith Elias. TigerBlog was at that game and told the people keeping stats to give him an extra yard, but they didn't.

Hey, more than getting cheated out of an assist, how about the number of times he must have made a perfect pass to someone, only to have him shoot it wide or have the goalie make a great save. Anyway, TB digresses.

Heubeck held the school scoring record from 1980 until early in the 1994 season, when Kevin Lowe surpassed him. Now Heubeck sits in seventh place. In fact, he's second among Gilman School grads who have played at Princeton, as Ryan Boyle has 233 (second-best at Princeton).

Lowe still holds the record with 247 and figures to do so for a long time. No current player in the program will challenge him unless it's a freshman who has yet to play a game.

There are some pretty old career scoring records at Princeton. TigerBlog wonders if any of them will ever be broken.

Will Lowe's record stand forever? It's already beaten back the most likely challenges - three all-time greats who played together on attack (Jon Hess, Jesse Hubbard, Chris Massey) who rank 3-4-6 and an individual assist machine who made everyone around him a better finisher (Boyle) who ranks second. Tom Schreiber, who ranks fifth, might have made more of a run if he'd played attack instead of midfield, but he still finished 47 points behind Lowe.

There are others.

How about Crista Samaras in women's lacrosse? She has 270 career points and has held the record since 1999. Erin McMunn enters her senior season 96 points away; McMunn had 69 points a year ago.

In men's basketball, Bill Bradley scored 2,503 points - in three seasons, without a three-point shot. TB will go out on a limb and say that record will never be broken.

The record when Bradley got to Princeton was 1,451, set by Pete Campbell, who graduated in 1962, Bradley's freshman year. It took Bradley less than two seasons to break that record, and then his senior season obliterated it.

Campbell had broken Bud Haabestad's record of 1,292, set in 1955. Haabestad was Princeton's first career 1,000-point scorer.

On the women's side, Sandi Bittler scored 1,683 points and still has the record. Meghan Cowher came within 12 points; Niveen Rasheed would have made a run at 2,000 if she hadn't torn her ACL and missed half of her sophomore year.

Bittler graduated in 1990, meaning her record is now nearly 25 years old. No current player figures to 1,683, meaning the record is safe for a few more years - although three (Blake Dietrick, Michelle Miller, Alex Wheatley) have really good chances of getting to 1,000.

Men's hockey? John Messuri, who graduated in 1989, has 178. No other player has more than 150 (Andre Faust). 

Women's hockey? Kathy Issel is the all-time leading scorer with 218 points. She has held the record since 1995. The old record was 216 points. Whose record was it? TigerBlog will answer at the bottom.

The field hockey record was broken recently, by Kat Sharkey, who put up 245 career points (that's a ridiculous number, by the way). Kirsty Hale, Class of 1998, had the old record of 198. Sharkey, who graduated in 2013, may hold the record for awhile.

In men's soccer, Steven Davidson holds the records for points and goals in a career. He graduated in 1969, meaning nobody has touched his records in 45 years.

The women's record is in serious danger. Esmeralda Negron holds the records for points (112) and goals (47), but Tyler Lussi is more than halfway to each with 63 and 28 after two seasons.

Lussi's pursuit of the record will be an interesting subplot of the next two seasons. Hey, it's rare that someone around here sets a career scoring record.

Oh, and women's hockey? The old record belonged to none other than Mollie Marcoux.

Maybe she got cheated out of three assists?