Friday, February 20, 2015

Thoughts For The Weekend

TigerBlog may be way, way overreacting to this. Or maybe it's because he spends a considerable amount of his time driving a carload of 14 year old girls back and forth to field hockey and any number of other places.

As an aside, if TB has learned anything from his 14-year-old daughter, it's that a father's main functions when transporting her to and from social/athletic/educational activities are to 1) drive the car, 2) cede control of the musical selections and 3) most importantly never speak.

Anyway, watching as Miss TigerBlog and her friends go from little kids to high school age, TigerBlog definitely takes seriously issues related to teenage girls. For as much as the average 14 year old girl can be a nightmare on a daily basis, she is also dealing with huge hurdles in her path from freshman year to graduation.

Not to sound sexist, but it's a lot tougher for a girl than a boy to navigate those years, at least in general. Society is constantly bombarding high school girls with images of what they're supposed to look like, what their bodies are supposed to look like, how they're supposed to act, even what they're not supposed to be interested in studying (math and science, girls?).

For as tough as it can be engage MTB in conversation or to get her to actually respond to one of TB's texts, TigerBlog has it pretty good with his daughter. Her goal is to study engineering in college. She plays two sports. She has nice friends. And, best of all, she's her own person, with pretty good self-esteem and a history of marching to her own drum, in a good way.

This is not true of every teenage girl. And that's why TB is a bit wary of the movie "The Duff," which opens today.

TigerBlog saw the commercial for it and couldn't really believe this was real. "The Duff" stands for "Designated Ugly Fat Friend."

The movie appears to be a predictable high school coming-of-age movie. TB is sure it has its cute moments. 

What he's concerned about is the effect this is going to have on the girls out there who will be called "Duffs" at school, and not in a funny coming-of-age way. No, in a vindictive nightmarish way. And it won't help the situation that the title character in the movie is hardly "U" or "F."

TB just hopes nothing catastrophic happens because of this movie. Hopefully he's just being hyper-sensitive.

And that's today's social commentary.

And now, the weekend in Princeton Athletics.

Let's start with the three game time changes, including one that includes a change in day as well. If you were planning on going to watch Princeton-Hofstra men's lacrosse today at 3, don't. It's being played tomorrow at 3 as the second game of a doubleheader, after the women play Loyola at noon, instead of 1, as was originally scheduled.

The men's game has been moved off of ESPNU and will be on ESPN3 instead.

Also, the women's basketball game tonight against Dartmouth has been moved from 7 to 6.

There will be two Ivy League champions crowned this weekend, and they figure to both belong to either Princeton or Harvard.

The Ivy League women's swimming and diving championships are being held this weekend at Harvard, and after Day 1, Harvard holds a slight lead over Princeton, who in turn holds a slight lead over Yale. Nobody else is close.

The last time a team other than Princeton or Harvard won the Ivy League title was 1999, when Brown did so. Since then, Princeton has won 11 and Harvard has won four, including last year's.

Princeton set the pool record in the 200 free relay, with Elizabeth McDonald, Nikki Larson, Kathleen Mulligan and Maddy Veith in a time of 1:31.10. McDonald, who didn't reach any finals at last year's championships, then won the 50 free as well.

Caitlin Chambers was Princeton's third winner on the first day as she took the one-meter diving.

The other Ivy title that will be decided this weekend is the one in women's hockey. This one will definitely be Princeton or Harvard.

The Crimson are finished with their 10 Ivy games and have 16 points, having gone 8-2-0. Princeton, who is at Brown tonight and Yale tomorrow, has 13 points at 6-1-1. The Tigers need three points to tie Harvard and four to win outright.

This is the last weekend of ECAC women's hockey's regular season, and the Ivy League champion is crowned through the head-to-head games of the Ivy teams within the ECAC schedule.

Princeton currently sits in sixth in the ECAC, two points behind St. Lawrence and one behind Cornell. The top four teams get home ice in the ECAC quarterfinals next weekend, and so Princeton needs to catch both to be at Baker Rink.

Interestingly, Harvard is in first place in the league with 33 points, eight ahead of Princeton. Because the Tigers did so well against the Ivy teams, they can still skate away with a title this weekend.

Beyond the Ivy titles, there is also basketball (Princeton needs to sweep at Dartmouth and Harvard to stay in the men's race), the "Princeton Plays Pink" women's basketball game tomorrow at which anyone who wears pink will get in free and home men's hockey and wresting.

As far as teams on the road, they include the softball team, which is opening its season in Boca Raton. That's in Florida.

The forecast is for sun and temps in the high 70s to 80. That's about high 70s to 80 more than it was here this morning.

It could be worse. TB has a friend in Ohio who texted him this morning the iPhone weather app that said it was minus-15 there. Hey, it was only zero here.

Anyway have a nice weekend. 

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