It's A Wonderful Road

Great news.

The road is open again. That little quarter-mile nightmare is over.

As TigerBlog has said a few times this summer, Faculty Road has been closed since June between Washington Road and the Jadwin Gym parking lot. It's about a quarter of a mile, and yet the effect of closing that little piece of road could be maddening.

The problem is that if you can't turn right out of lot 21 to get to Washington Road, then there is no good way. And if you're trying to get to Route 1, it's been even more torturous.

Seriously, you never consider how much of an impact one little piece of one street can have on a lot of different people. It's like a roadway version of "It's A Wonderful Life."

It was a whole summer of trying to find the best route, with about 10 different possibilities.

And now it's over. Whatever the project was, it is finished. The gateway to Route 1 is back.

TigerBlog will never take Faculty Road for granted again. Clearly it's a wonderful road.

In other news, the 2018-19 athletic year at Princeton began this weekend with a pair of wins by the women's soccer team. The Tigers, an NCAA quarterfinalist a year ago and the No. 14 team in the country heading into their opening trip to New England, shut out New Hampshire 2-0 Friday and Boston University 1-0 Sunday.

Of Princeton's three goals, Mimi Asom scored two of them. Asom, now a senior, has been a reliable scorer since Day 1 of her career, and her place on the Princeton records list certainly backs that up.

Her two goals this weekend leave her with 33 for her career. That's currently sixth best all-time at Princeton, and she has a great chance at joining Tyler Lussi, Esmeralda Negron and Linda DeBoer as women's soccer players who have reached 40 career goals.

In fact, there have been two men's players - Steve Davidson and Yuri Fishman - who have reached 40 goals in their careers, so the total number of Princeton soccer players who have reached that number is currently five. Asom is moving up into elite company.

Her goal yesterday was classic Asom. She took a throw-in with her back to the goal, controlled it and then ripped it past the goalkeeper on the near side.

You can see it for yourself:

Here’s Mimi Asom’s goal to help the 14th-ranked Tigers to a 1-0 win today at Boston U! pic.twitter.com/ZsUvSLKqsY

— Princeton WSoccer (@PrincetonWSoc) August 26, 2018

Next up for the women's soccer team is the home opener against St. Joe's Friday at 7. It'll be a big weekend for the Tigers, as they also host North Carolina State Sunday at 7.

N.C. State was the team that Princeton beat in the second round of the NCAA tournament last yeaer, one round before the Tigers took out North Carolina.

In addition to the start of the athletic year, this past weekend was also the debut of the "Today In Princeton Athletics" game-day story on goprincetontigers.com. So far feedback has been positive.

If you haven't seen it, basically the premise is to have one story that provides the entire day's schedule, complete with links to live video, live stats, preview story and eventually postgame story.

The problem is what to do the next day. If the story is called "Today In Princeton Athletics," with the date after it, then what do you do when it's no longer that day.

It seemed okay in theory to leave it up there with the word "Today" in the headline, until TB actually saw it Saturday. Then it looked a little odd.

In the short run, TB changed it just to "Princeton Athletics" with the date after it. Maybe it would be better to make it "The" day in Princeton athletics, not "Today" in Princeton athletics, with the date after it.

Maybe that'll be what is used this coming weekend.

There won't be any events until Friday, when three more teams - field hockey, men's soccer, women's volleyball - open their seasons. Men's water polo opens Saturday.

Also Saturday it'll be September.

Where does the summer go?