Hockey In China

TigerBlog continues to rack up miles on his new bike.

One time last week, as he was pedaling along, he happened to notice the last three letters of the license plates of two consecutive cars that went past him. The first was "GPT." The second was "HYP."

That's very Princetonian stuff.

The "GPT?" That's for goprincetontigers.com. The "HYP?" You better know that one.

As with any academic year, there figures to be a lot of big games between P and H and Y.

TigerBlog has been watching "Billions," which he thinks is very good, though great. Okay, very, very good. Just not quite great.

Maybe that's because there's a lot of Yale connections, and scenes from the Yale Club, of all places. TigerBlog wonders how many Yale and Princeton alums from the 1950s and 1960s ever imagined a day when both schools would have female Directors of Athletics, as is now the case.

Of course there's also a Princeton mention, and a reference to an eating club in one episode. So there's that.

The 2018-19 athletic year is approaching quickly. Princeton's fall teams will be starting practices this week, and pretty soon a very quiet campus will be exploding with activity.

TigerBlog walked into Jadwin Gym Friday with women's soccer assistant coach Mike Poller. There was very little activity around the Caldwell Field House as they walked in, which, again, will be changing very, very quickly.

TB and Poller were talking about how most of Division I had already started practicing and scrimmaging. Princeton will join in soon, as practice begins tomorrow.

Princeton, of course, is the defending Ivy women's soccer champion. The Tigers reached the NCAA quarterfinals last year, with a gigantic win over North Carolina in the Sweet 16.

Did anyone see that coming 52 weeks ago? Yeah, Princeton figured to be pretty good, but again, the Tigers also had to replace Tyler Lussi, the all-time leading scorer in the sport - for men or women - at Princeton.

One of TB's favorite parts of Princeton Athletics is that you never know from one year to the next what the biggest story is going to be. Heading into this year, it could come from anywhere, any team.

Princeton has won 47 Ivy titles in the last four years. Of Princeton's 33 teams who compete for an Ivy title, there were 25 who won at least one in those four years.

And of course one of the eight who hasn't taken an Ivy title provided the other huge story for Princeton Athletics in 2017-18. That was the men's hockey team, two years removed from a last-place finish in the ECAC, who nevertheless won the ECAC tournament championship last year to advance to the NCAA tournament.

The architect of the turnaround is head coach Ron Fogarty, whose success in four years has been extraordinary. Princeton has gone from a team that knew it would be on the road in the first round of the ECAC playoffs each year to one that can play with anyone in the country.

Princeton men's hockey has become must-see stuff, with an exciting and high-scoring team that scores goals in bunches and is never out of any game. The intensity level at Baker Rink has gone up dramatically of late, and the result has been a championship and NCAA berth long before anyone might have anticipated either.

Fogarty recently returned from spending two weeks in Beijing, where he ran a hockey camp well in advance of the city's role as the host for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. You can read a story about the camp HERE.

In the story, Fogarty talks about what a great experience he had there, along with assistant coach Kevin Moore and former Princeton player Ian McNally, now the head coach at the Hun School of Princeton. There was a second camp later in Shenzhen, run by McNally and current Tiger Alex Riche, whose mother is Chinese. 

Beijing, by the way, will become the first city to host the Summer and Winter Games, after it already had the 2008 Summer Olympics. That's pretty impressive.

In fact, TigerBlog read that the building that hosts the ice hockey events for the 2022 Winter Games will be the same one that hosted the swimming events in 2008. Efficient.

 Closer to home, Princeton will host Forgaty's old team, Division III Adrian, in a scrimmage on Oct. 13. Opening day is at Penn State on Oct. 26.

Fogarty went 167-23-10 at Adrian, and when he came to Princeton, he had the highest winning percentage of any coach in NCAA history. He also knew that wouldn't last, taking over a program that was in need of rebuilding.

It's not easy to walk away from your standing as the best ever. You have to be comfortable and confident and willing to undertake the project, as opposed to simply continuing what you've already built.

The ECAC title shows you what kind of coach Fogarty is. So does his recent trip to China.

They don't ask you to do things like that if your team isn't winning.