An Actual Spring Weekend

Allie Reynolds threw 11 innings against Yale last weekend in the Princeton softball team's Ivy League opening series and didn't walk a batter.

Princeton would win two of three, including an 8-0 win in Game 1 in which Reynolds threw a shutout. 

For the year, she has pitched 11 times, and she has not walked anyone in six of those games, including each of the last three.

If you want to talk about Reynolds and walks, then you have to change sports, from softball to mountain climbing. You can, however, keep talking about Princeton.

Wait, Princeton doesn't have a varsity mountain climbing team, so what gives here? Reynolds, a sophomore from Littleton, Colo., is the subject of this week's "Beyond The Stripes" series, with the focus on her walking, or more accurately, hiking up 14,204-foot Mt. Princeton in the Rocky Mountains.

You can see it HERE. It's a very nice story, and it features some really impressive video and still pictures of the mountain. It's not quite "Free Solo," but it's impressive nonetheless.

TigerBlog loves stories like this one. It shows the varied interests of Princeton's athletes. It shows how they bring a piece of where they're from with them when they get here. And it shows the incredibly loyalty that Princeton breeds.

It's definitely worth it to check it out.

Princeton softball is home this weekend against Columbia, and the forecast of a rainy Sunday has moved the series up by a day. The Tigers host a single game today now, with first pitch at 3, and then a doubleheader tomorrow starting at 12:30.

On a weekend when the final winter team competes (men's swimming and diving at the NCAA championships), the weather today and tomorrow is certainly screaming springtime. Today's high in Princeton will be 65. It'll be 72 tomorrow.

There are all kinds of events this weekend, and many of them are at home, including racing tomorrow featuring all four rowing teams.

It's also opening weekend for Ivy League tennis, with the men at home against Penn and the women at Penn. The baseball team is at Harvard for three games, one today and two tomorrow.

The complete schedule is HERE.

Unfortunately for the women's lacrosse team, there's no game this weekend. The Tigers played Wednesday at Maryland and are home Tuesday against Villanova, but this is a Saturday off-day. TigerBlog is guessing that had Chris Sailer had an advanced look at the weather forecast, she would have scheduled someone for tomorrow.

There is a home men's lacrosse game, tomorrow at 1 against Brown. It's a huge game for the Tigers, who like last year are 0-2 heading into the game against the Bears.

Unlike last year, Princeton comes into the game off a huge win, a huge one emotionally and physically, over Denver Tuesday night. What effect will that have on this game?

It figures to be high scoring.

Princeton and Brown have played a lot of low-scoring games through the years, including a run of 13 straight years where the teams combined on average 16.38 goals between them. In the three meetings since, the teams have averaged 30.3 goals per game between them.

It's a big game. A year ago, Brown defeated Princeton 14-13 on a goal with 14.3 seconds left. Had Princeton won that game instead of Brown, it would have been the Tigers and not the Bears in the Ivy League tournament, after those two and Penn tied for third.

As a side note, Michael Sowers has 22 points (11 goals, 11 assists) in three games against Brown. He enters the game tied with Jesse Hubbard for fourth place all-time in scoring at Princeton with 211 points, and he is four away from Jon Hess for third, behind only Ryan Boyle (232) and Kevin Lowe (247).

TB has written this before, but it's insane the numbers Sowers has already put up in his career. 

Any opportunity to see him play is a big one. To see him play in a big game on a 72 degree day to end the month of March? Even better.

March didn't exactly come in like a lion. It is going out like a lamb.

A lamb with a very busy athletic weekend.