She Roars

So Princeton is sitting on 483 Ivy League championships all time. That's a lot.

How many of those are from women's teams? The answer would be 206. That's also a lot. Consider that Princeton's 206 women's championships are more than the total number between men and women of four of the other seven Ivy schools.

The Ivy League first started crowning champions in the 1956-57 academic year. The first women's championship was awarded in the 1973-74 academic year, and that was only one championship, in rowing, won by Radcliffe.

The following year, 1974-75, saw Radcliffe repeat in rowing and Princeton win its first championship by taking the Ivy women's basketball tournament. Those would be the only two championships for women that year, with three the next, when women's hockey joined the list.

Keep in mind that in those years, the Ivy League awarded 18 championships for men. TigerBlog wonders what that must have been like.

There figures to be a lot of women on the Princeton campus this weekend who could tell TB what it was like to be a Princeton athlete in the earliest days of women's teams. Or what it was like to be a student in the first few years of women's students at Princeton.

The occasion is "She Roars," a three-day conference celebrating the women of Princeton and their contributions to all walks of campus life, including athletics. Here are some other Princeton women's athletics numbers:

* all 18 Princeton varsity teams have won at least one championship since 2010, and all have won multiple championships in their program's history
* there have been 22 individual women's national champions
* there have been 33 team women's national champions
* there have been 35 Olympians
* there have been four Rhodes Scholars

That's an amazing record. In honor of the "She Roars" event, TigerBlog has also put together this timeline, with some of the highlights of Princeton women's athletic history. He apologizes to all the incredible athletes and teams not listed, since the timeline could have been three or four times longer:

Princeton women’s athletics timeline

April 12, 1971 – Princeton plays its first intercollegiate women’s athletic event, a tennis match against Penn; Princeton wins its first 39 dual matches

1971-72 – Princeton adds five more women’s varsity teams: basketball, field hockey, swimming and diving, squash, rowing.

1972 – Wendy Zaharko wins the individual squash national championship, the first national title ever by a Princeton woman, team or individual

1973 - Cathy Corcione, who swam in the 1968 Olympics as a 16 year old, wins the 100 butterfly and 100 free at the national championships and then teams with Jane Fremon, Barb Franks and Carol Brown to win the 200 free relay

1973 – lacrosse becomes a varsity sport

1975 – the women’s basketball wins Princeton’s first Ivy League championship by a women’s team; Princeton wins the first four Ivy League women’s basketball titles

1976 – Emily Goodfellow becomes the first (and still only) 12-letterwinner in Princeton Athletics history, male or female; Goodfellow won four letters each in field hockey, squash and lacrosse

1976 – Carol Brown becomes the first Princeton female athlete to win an Olympic medal when she wins bronze in the women’s 8 rowing in Montreal

1977 – volleyball becomes a varsity sport

1978-79 – cross country, track and field and hockey become varsity sports

1980 – soccer becomes a varsity sport

1982 – Princeton places seven runners in the top 125 at the national cross country championships

1982 –Princeton defeats No. 6 Mississippi and No. 5 Southern Methodist to finish in eighth place at the national tennis championships

1982 – softball becomes a varsity sport

1984 – Princeton wins the Howe Cup national championship for women’s squash for the 10th time in 12 years

1988 – women’s fencing becomes a varsity sport

1992 – women’s golf becomes a varsity sport

1994 – Princeton wins the first of its three NCAA women’s lacrosse championships, with titles also in 2002 and 2003

1995 – the softball team reaches the Women’s College World Series and returns the following year

1997 – water polo becomes a varsity sport

1998 – women’s lightweight rowing becomes Princeton’s 18th varsity women’s sport

2002 – Lauren Simmons finishes second in the 800 meters at the NCAA outdoor track and field championships

2003 – Princeton wins its fifth straight national championship in women’s lightweight rowing

2004 – Princeton reaches the NCAA women’s soccer Final Four, becoming the only Ivy League school to do so

2004 – Avery Kiser becomes Princeton’s only three-time Ivy League individual champion in women’s golf

2006 – Princeton wins the national championship in women’s open rowing

2009 – Princeton goes 1-2-3-4-5 at Heps cross country – something that has never been done before or since – and then goes on to finish fifth at the NCAA championships; the women’s cross country team wins five straight Heps titles from 2006-10

2010 - Alicia Aemisegger finishes her swimming career by finishing second at the NCAA championships in the 1,650 free; Aemisegger would be a 13-time All-America with nine top five NCAA finishes and 12 Ivy League individual or relay titles

2012 – Caroline Lind wins her second gold medal in women’s rowing at the London Games, becoming Princeton’s only female two-time Olympic gold medalist

2012 – Princeton wins the NCAA field hockey championship, the only time an Ivy League school has done so

2013 – Princeton wins the combined NCAA team championship in fencing

2014 – Julia Ratcliffe wins the hammer throw at the NCAA outdoor track and field championships, becoming the only individual NCAA champion in program history

2014- Mollie Marcoux Samaan, an All-Ivy League selection in soccer and hockey, becomes Princeton’s first-ever female Director of Athletics

2015 – Princeton finishes the regular season 30-0 in women’s basketball and records the program’s first ever NCAA tournament win

2015 – the women’s volleyball team rallies from an 0-3 start to win the Ivy League championship; Princeton repeats each of the next two years and is the favorite in the league for the current season

2015-16 – Princeton wins 10 Ivy League championships in women’s sports alone, becoming the only school ever to reach double figures in a single gender in one academic year

2016 – the women’s hockey team wins the Ivy title and earns an at-large NCAA tournament bid; the Tigers also advanced to the NCAA tournament in 2006

2016 – Ashleigh Johnson of the women’s water polo team wins an Olympic gold medal with the United States at the Rio Games; she becomes the only female ever to return to Princeton and compete after winning Olympic gold

2016 – the field hockey team reaches the NCAA Final Four in Year 1 under head coach Carla Tagliente

2017 - the women's soccer team defeats 21-time national champion North Carolina to advance to the NCAA quarterfinals

2018 – Fencers Maia Chamberlain and Kasia Nixon win NCAA individual championships in saber and epee

2018 – the women’s lacrosse team wins its fifth straight Ivy League championship