It's Enough With The Snow Already

Hey, it's springtime.

You can tell by the 12-18 inches of snow in the forecast for today. Nothing says spring quite like that.

TigerBlog speaks for everyone when he says enough with the snow already. The average temperature around here now is supposed to be in the 50s. The record is 83. TigerBlog will settle for average for right now.

Hopefully this is it for this winter. And hopefully it warms up enough to melt a lot of it quickly. Snow on the ground into spring. Not good. 

The snowstorm is expected to mess around with the Princeton Athletic calendar this weekend. The baseball and softball teams are supposed to have their home openers, and Ivy League openers for that matter. TB isn't sure what the plan is yet.

The women's lacrosse team has a home game Saturday against Dartmouth. It's actually just the second home game of the year for the Tigers, by the way.

Sherrerd Field already has leftover snow on the sidelines from the last major Nor'easter, and the one before that. Getting more won't help, especially the wet, heavy kind that is expected.

TigerBlog isn't a huge fan of lacrosse pictures with snow in the background, but they're an unavoidable part of the "spring" sport.

The women's lacrosse team is 4-2 overall and 1-0 in the Ivy League. The Tigers had a great win Monday over Penn State, rallying from down 7-1 to win 13-12. It was Penn State, you might recall, who ended Princeton's season a year ago in the NCAA quarterfinals.

If you're looking for an important stat from the game Monday, look no further than the draws. Princeton won just one of 14 first-half draws and then won nine of 13 in the second half. That means that 22 of 27 were won by the team facing to the right on the TV screen.

Kyla Sears has been as-advertised this year, as the No. 1 high school player in the country from a year ago had another five points against the Nittany Lions, with three goals and two assists. Sears now has 21 goals and seven assists through her first six college games, and she is in the top 25 in Division I in both goals per game and points per game.

Sam Fish, another freshman, gave Princeton a big lift off the bench in goal, making 11 saves while allowing six goals. Will Sears and Fish be the next Olivia Hompe and Ellie DeGarmo, a pair of graduated first-team All-Americas at their positions?

That's for time to tell. In the meantime, it was a really good win for Princeton, something to build on as the schedule turns to league games and home games - and preferably better weather.

Of course, the calendar says spring and the weather says winter. Why not? It's been crossover season around here, and the last remnants of that, along with hopefully the snow, are here.

There are two remaining winter championship events for Princeton, the NCAA men's hockey tournament and the NCAA fencing championships.

The men's hockey team plays Ohio State Saturday at 3:30 in Allentown, Pa. If you want to buy tickets, you can do so right HERE.

The other NCAA championship event is the NCAA fencing finals. Princeton has qualified nine fencers as it tries to extend its run of top four finishes to eight; the Tigers current seven-year run is the longest in the country.

The fencing and the hockey NCAA events are both being hosted by Penn State, even if the hockey games are about three hours from Penn State.

For more information on the fencing championships, read THIS. TigerBlog's colleague Andrew Borders is all over it.

TigerBlog also wanted to mention sophomore Matthew Kolodzik, who finished third in the 149-pound weight class at the NCAA wrestling championships last weekend. On his way to third, Kolodzik beat the second, third, fourth and sixth seeds.

Kolodzik is already a two-time All-America, which, given the Princeton wrestling lore about the elevator, means he can ride up and down if he wants. More importantly, he has two years left to chase an NCAA title, and he is the only one in the top five in his weight class who returns next year.

He also joins John Orr ’85 and Greg Parker ’03 as Princeton wrestlers to finish in the top five at the NCAAs  in the last 40 years.

The next few years will be pretty exciting ones for Princeton wrestling, as the Tigers look to finally end Cornell's Ivy League run (someone will have to some day) and produce an NCAA champion.

The next few hours? They're probably going to be less exciting, unless you're into shoveling snow on your spring break.