Today In Princeton Athletics

Welcome to Day 1 of the 2018-19 athletic year at Princeton University.

The first of more than 600 athletic events stretching over the next nine-plus months is today, as the women's soccer team is at New Hampshire. The second event will be Sunday, when those same Tigers take on Boston University.

Between now and the NCAA track and field championships in early June, Princeton will be represented by 37 varsity teams and 1,000 varsity athletes who will compete in all four time zones and even outside the country. By the time it ends, there will have been championships won, signature moments that will stand out, individual honors awarded - and even some tough defeats.

No two academic years, like fingerprints, are ever the same. Some teams, and some athletes, will come out of seemingly nowhere to have a great season. It happens every year.

A year ago, for instance, the women's soccer team was coming off a good, but not great, season. What happened?

The Tigers went on an epic run, winning an outright Ivy League championship and then three NCAA tournament games to get to the national quarterfinals. Included in that postseason success was a win over 21-time NCAA champion North Carolina.

TigerBlog decided to check out how New Hampshire has done so far, and it turns out the Wildcats are 2-0-0 on the very young season.


TB went to the UNH website to see what he could learn. He saw a headline that said that the Wildcats had defeated "the Rams" in overtime, and he immediately thought "Fordham."


Turns out these Rams are the ones from the University of Rhode Island. This was followed by another OT win over the Crusaders, which TB correctly guessed meant Holy Cross.


Anyway, there are two pretty fascinating notes already about New Hampshire. First, the same player - Ally Reynolds - scored the overtime goal in both games.


And second, Reynolds is a transfer from, of all places, Rhode Island. She started 15 games last year for the Rams as a sophomore, and then in her first game at her new school, she scores the game-winner in overtime.


How often does that happen?


The women's soccer team starts playing one week ahead of the field hockey, women's volleyball and men's soccer teams. They're all practicing now, as is the football team and men's water polo. The cross country teams will be here soon.

It won't be long until the winter teams are starting to practice.

The men's basketball schedule was announced this week. The Tigers open on Nov. 9, and the non-league schedule includes games at Madison Square Garden (St. John's, Dec. 9), Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall (Iona, Dec. 15), Duke (Dec. 18) and Arizona State (Dec. 29).

There will also be 12 total home games, including games against George Washington (Dec. 1) and St. Joe's (Dec. 5).

Also, on Nov. 28, Princeton travels to Maine for something that should be really interesting. The Black Bears are coached by former Princeton women's basketball coach Richard Barron, who is now in his first year with the men's program there.

Has a former women's head coach ever then gone on to coach a men's team and coached against Princeton? TigerBlog can think only of Dan Roock, who coached the women's rowing team at Princeton and then coached the men at Cornell and Dartmouth.


Anyway, that's still a few months away.

For today, it's opening day. And with that, the people at goprincetontigers.com are going to try something a little different, at least to start the new year.

Instead of having a flood of preview stories and then recaps that fly across the front page, this time the plan is to have one story on the front page entitled "Today In Princeton Athletics."

Within in that story will be a chronological listing of the days events, with links to the live video, live stats, Twitter feed and preview story. When the event is over, the recap can be linked to there as well.

All of those previews and recaps will still be available on the individual team pages.

In this way, it stops the front page from being overwhelmed by previews and recaps and allows other stories to stay out there longer. It also provides readers a place to get information easily on every event on a given day.

Hey, it's new. There are still some things to work out. Maybe you'll like it. Maybe you won't.

If it doesn't work, then it doesn't need to continue. But it'll be worth a try.

And it's up there today for the first time. After all, it's opening day 2018-19.

Good luck to every Tiger this year.