Lobbying In Jadwin

Cindy Cohen stopped by last week.

Cindy, as you may or may not know, won more games as a Princeton head coach than Pete Carril did. Pete won 514 games in men's basketball. Cindy won 560 in softball.

Her record in 18 years as the head softball coach was 560-277-3, a winning percentage of .669. She took Princeton to 12 Ivy League championships and two Women's College World Series appearances.

When you make the list of the greatest women coaches in the history of Princeton Athletics, Cindy Cohen's name is way up near the top.

TigerBlog was still in the newspaper business when he first met her, and she's been an all-time TigerBlog favorite ever since.

Cindy left here and had a long second career, as an athletic administrator, first at the University of Rochester and then at William Paterson University.

She hasn't been back to Princeton too often in the interim. When she was here the other day, TigerBlog took her on a walk around Jadwin Gym, where her office had been for all the years she worked here.

At every turn, obviously, they ran into people who work here now. Almost none of them knew Cindy. The ones who did gave her big hugs.

TigerBlog actually has a list of people who work here in the athletic department, ranked in terms of seniority. It's the top 18. TigerBlog ranks 16th.

He actually wonders how many total people have worked in this department with him in all of the years he's been here. Five hundred? More?

If he sat down and tried to write out the names of everyone who's worked here with him, how many would he come up with? Maybe he'll try that and see how many he comes up with. It'd be an interesting summer project.

Anyway, as he and Cindy walked around Jadwin, he was struck by her comments about the physical appearance of the building. In some ways, she would say, things looked very much the same as the day she left. In other ways, there were major differences.

It's like when TigerBlog goes back to Penn. There are parts of the campus that are identical to the way they were when he was there 35 years ago. There are parts that have been completely overhauled.

Jadwin is a complex building, with so much of it underground, its hallways and stairways that link it to DeNunzio Pool and Caldwell Fieldhouse and its design to fulfill its main purpose of being a multipurpose facility. The basketball arena is a small part of the entire building.

Jadwin is approaching 50 years old. The first basketball game ever played here was on Jan. 25, 1969. Princeton beat Penn 72-64 that night. Serious extra credit if you know who Princeton's leading scorer in the game was, with 20 points.

If you're not going to be in Jadwin Gym until the start of this coming basketball season, then the place will look way different than you remember it.

The Jadwin lobby is currently undergoing a major renovation project, one that will give the main entry point of the building a completely new look. It'll be modern, and it will celebrate the great history of Princeton athletics at the same time.

TigerBlog has seen the mockups, and he's excited for what the final product will look like.

The renovation project began yesterday. Basically everything has been cleared out of the old lobby, and it had something of an eerie feel to it when TB was there yesterday morning.

For starters, he wasn't supposed to be in the lobby in the first place, since it's closed off. He accidentally took the elevator from E level all the way to the top.

By the afternoon yesterday it was clear that a construction project was about to begin. The lobby, as TB said, is locked off, and the entrance to the building is now on the side closest to the pool.

TB figures it'll get pretty busy, pretty quickly there. By the way, HERE is the original release on the announcement of the lobby renovation.

The construction is supposed to be completed by Nov. 1. When it is, you won't recognize it. That's definitely for sure. The end result will be well worth it.

What else can TigerBlog tell you today?

Oh year. It's August 1. That means that the first athletic event of the coming year is this month, though that's for later.

August always seems to zoom by. TB assumes this one will as well. Enjoy it. If you have a list of things you want to get done by the end of summer, now's the time to start working on it.

September will be here soon enough.