For the first time in the 2019-20 academic year, a Princeton team will compete in an athletic event. The opening kickoff will come from the women's soccer team, the two-time defending Ivy League champion and preseason pick to win again, as the Tigers head to Philadelphia to take on St. Joe's at 5.
The women's soccer game is the start of more than nine months of games and events as 37 teams and 1,000 athletes will compete more than 700 times. Some will win championships and make postseason runs, and, as is one of TigerBlog's favorite parts of Princeton Athletics each year, it won't always be the same teams doing so year after year.
In a remarkable run of success, Princeton has averaged 11.8 Ivy League championships the last five years, 11.4 the last 10 and 11.1 the last 20. Of course, as TB has often said, none of this is Princeton's birthright, and so none of this can ever be taken for granted.
To put it visually, there's THIS, the last scene from the movie "Patton," which speaks directly to what TB just said.
TB can assure you that nobody at Princeton ever expects to achieve this kind of success. It's a constant reinvention of what works, what needs to improve and what can be abandoned, all under the unwavering commitment to a set of core ethics called "Education Through Athletics" that values the entire undergraduate experience for the athletes who wear the Princeton uniforms.
It'll be hard for Princeton to match the success from last fall, which was just incredible. Princeton had four Ivy League championship teams in the fall of 2018, including its first unbeaten football team in 54 years.
The field hockey team didn't win the league title, but it still made a run to the NCAA Final Four, for the second time in three years.
The field hockey, men's soccer and women's soccer teams and women's volleyball team are all preseason favorites to win the Ivy championship this year. Will they? Remains to be seen, of course, but it's a nice thing for a team in the month of August.
As for cross country, Princeton is in the national top 25 for both men (21) and women (23) in the preseason.
Recapping, that's four preseason Ivy favorites and two top 25 teams.
The football team will be trying to do something it's only done once before - put together back-to-back perfect seasons. The only time it happened was in 1950 and 1951, when Dick Kazmaier was leading the team.
This is the 150th season of Princeton football. If you take off the 1800s and the World War I seasons of 1917 and 1918 (when the Tigers were a combined 3-0), Princeton has had perfect seasons in 1903, 1922, 1933, 1935, 1950, 1951, 1964 and 2018.
Here are the records for the following seasons:
1904: 8-2
1923: 3-3-1
1934: 7-1
1936: 4-2-2
1951: 9-0
1952: 8-1
1965: 8-1
2019 ???
In other words, in the other seven "year after" seasons, Princeton averaged 1.43 losses.
What will 2019 hold? You'll have to wait three more weeks for the opener, as it starts when Butler comes to Powers Field at Princeton Stadium on Sept. 21.
Ah, but for Princeton sports in general?
When last we saw competing Tigers, it was back in early June at the NCAA track and field championships. The last game between a Princeton team and another team was on May 18, when the women's lacrosse team fell in the NCAA quarterfinals to Boston College.
In many ways, today is the most exciting day on the Princeton calendar.
There's
so much that goes into fielding 37 varsity teams, for coaches and
athletic staff as well, not to mention the athletes themselves. There
are so many details that go into the entire process that it's important
to always keep in mind what the actual goal is - using athletics to
provide an extension of the overall educational experience.
Mollie
Marcoux Samaan, the Ford Family Director of Athletics, always stresses
that in addition to all of the work that goes into this, it should also
be fun. And the most fun that TB has in his job is watching the athletes
he's gotten to know - and the ones he hasn't - compete.
The first person TigerBlog saw in the Jadwin Gym parking lot yesterday morning was Anthony Archbald, the amiable Executive Associate Director of Athletics.
And what was the first thing Anthony said? Something along the lines of "are you ready for the end of summer?"
With apologies to the calendar, which says that summer still has more than three weeks to go, and to the Beach Boys, who proclaimed life is an "Endless Summer," it's pretty much time for fall around here these days. The first athletic event of the 2019-20 academic year comes up tomorrow, when Princeton heads to St. Joe's for a women's soccer game.
The women play again Sunday for the first home event of the year, as they take on Boston College at 7.
The third athletic event of the year is also a women's soccer game, also at home, also against a team with "Boston" in the name, as BU comes to Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium Thursday at 6. The following day sees the women's volleyball, men's soccer and field hockey teams all get in on the fun, followed one more day by the men's and women's cross country teams and the men's water polo team.
Since today is the last day before the first athletic event of the 2019-20 season, TigerBlog thought it would be a good time to look back on who had the best summer for a Princeton athlete?
A good place to start would be the Pan Am Games, right?
Princeton sent 10 athletes - current ones and alums - to the games in Lima, Peru, and all 10 came back with medals. That's wildly impressive, no?
In fact, those 10 athletes combined to win 13 medals, of which 10 were gold. That's even more wildly impressive.
The NCAA put out a graphic that had the most medal winners by school, but only counted NCAA sports and U.S. athletes, which left out the two golds Todd Harrity won in squash and the silver that Elise Wong won with Canada in field hockey. Even with that criteria Princeton ranked tied for fourth in most medals, behind Stanford, USC and UCLA and tied with Cal.
Interestingly, that's four Pac 12 schools, which put Princeton ahead of every school in every other Power Five conference.
So did one of those athletes have the best summer? Maybe. Hey, Harrity and fencers Kat Holmes and Eliza Stone were double gold medalists.
Who else had a great summer?
How about Tom Schreiber? The Princeton alum is widely considered the best player in the world right now, and he has been one of the driving forces behind the new Premier Lacrosse League, which is finishing its first season.
Schreiber, along with fellow Tigers Ryan Ambler and Austin Sims, play for the Archers in the PLL, and the team got into the playoffs by pulling out its final game of the regular season. Schreiber finished second in the league in points with 37 and assists with 18, which is, again, extraordinary for a midfielder.
By the way, the PLL has come up with an interesting way of doing its playoffs. The top four are playing for the championship, but the first round will have the top two seeds play while the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds also play. Then the winner of the game between the top two advances to the final, while the loser of that game plays the winner of 3 vs. 4 for a spot in the championship game.
Meanwhile, No. 5 plays No. 6, and the winner of that game advances in a different bracket to play the winner of the game between whoever loses that 5 vs 6 game and whoever loses the 3 vs. 4 game. And what do you get if you win that bracket? You get the No. 1 pick in the draft. And who could that be? Well, it'll be one of four players, three of whom are in the Ivy League now: Princeton's Michael Sowers, Yale's TD Ierlan, Cornell's Jeff Teat or Penn State's Grant Ament.
Any other contenders on TB's list?
There's George Huhmann, who competed for the U.S. at the FIVB Nation's League Finals, where he won a silver.
There's Mike Ford of the Yankees, who has had an extraordinary run as the team runs away with the American League East. Ford has his first multi-home run game this week, and he now has eight in 102 at-bats. If you gave him 500 at-bats at that pace, he'd have just short of 40.
In a sport that values only your ability to hit home runs, he might be carving out a place for himself - long-term, and, in the short run, possibly on the postseason roster.
There are others too.
TigerBlog will go with Sam Gravitte, of course. He's the former men's lacrosse player who made his Broadway debut in "Wicked."
Of course it's not that he usually brings bad news or anything. So maybe he shouldn't say good news, as much as special news.
TigerBlog's first text message yesterday came from men's lacrosse coach Matt Madalon. It said that his wife Ashley had given birth to their second child, Whitney Drew Madalon, who joins her older sister Waverly.
So TB starts the day by saying mazel tov to the Madalons.
When you have a first child, by the way, you overthink everything. It says not to put the baby formula into the microwave, so you agonize over that. When you have a second it's "yeah, whatever." Throw the bottle in the microwave and get on with it.
The other thing about having a second child is that you've pretty much completely forgotten how to deal with most things that involve an infant. Like the infant car seat for instance.
TB knows someone who had a second baby and had a two year old at the same time. When they brought the baby home from the hospital, the two year old walked around it and then kicked it. Now that they're both in their 20s, they seem to get along just fine, with no lingering resentment from that intro.
TigerBlog once had a three year old and a newborn. His comment on
that is that while those were very special times, it's way easier to
have a 22 year old and a 19 year old.
Of course, he's very happy for the Madalons.
What other news was there from yesterday?
Well, there was the release of the men's basketball schedule. At one point, when TB first started here, the schedule was announced through a press release and on the back cover of the media guide. Then it was a story on goprincetontigers.com.
Yesterday it was released through an Instagram story. What will the announcement of the 2029-30 schedule look like?
Princeton will play two games in NBA arenas, including a Nov. 9 game against San Francisco in the brand-new Chase Center, which will be the home for the Golden State Warriors.
The other NBA arena is the Barclay's Center in Brooklyn, where Princeton will play Iona Dec. 17 as part of the Air Force Reserve Basketball Hall of Fame Invitational.
Arizona State will be at Jadwin Gym on Nov 26 after Princeton defeated the Sun Devils in Tempe 67-66 last December. Princeton has played 27 games against current Pac 12 teams, but only one in the past has been at home. And that game, on Dec 30, 1968 against Stanford, predated Jadwin Gym and instead was played in Dillon.
Another season highlight will definitely be the trip to Indiana on Nov. 20.
This won't be Mitch Henderson's first time in Assembly Hall in Bloomington on a Nov. 20. He was there on Nov. 20, 1996, when he scored six points, had three rebounds and had three assists in a 59-49 loss to the Hoosiers.
TigerBlog was at that game as well. It was Bill Carmody's first game as Princeton head coach.
TB missed his flight to Indianapolis out of Newark because of a truck fire on the New Jersey Turnpike. He was with Tom McCarthy and Mark Eckel (then of the Trenton Times) and they arrived at the gate just in time to see the plane push back.
The only other flight that would get them to Indiana on time was actually out of Philadelphia, so they had to drive back down the turnpike to Philly, fly to Indianapolis and then rent a car and get to Bloomington. It all worked out.
Princeton opens this coming season on Nov. 5 at Duquesne. Yeah, that's a little more than two months away.
There are also non-league home games against Lafayette, Monmouth, Hofstra and Lehigh, and trips to Bucknell, Drexel and FDU.
There are also obviously the 14 regular season Ivy League games, beginning with games Jan. 4 and 11 against Penn (the first one is in Philadelphia).
Though the first athletic event of the year is still two days away, it'll be basketball season soon enough.
The schedules that both Princeton teams have together should make for a pretty good November and December, in Jadwin Gym and around the country.
It certainly felt like autumn in the Princeton area yesterday morning.
TigerBlog looked at his phone and saw it was 55 degrees when he woke up. Hey, this is still August. It's not supposed to be 54 degrees.
It was also really windy. TB wondered if the wind chill could actually kick in if it's still August.
If you're looking at records, it's supposed to be a high of 82, or at least that's the average temperature. The low is supposed to be 63.
The all-time low for Princeton on Aug. 26 was 54 degrees, back in 1944. The average high was 99, four years later, in 1948.
So yeah, it wasn't quite a record low. It was though, very close, and it seemed to be very chilly.
The best weather of the year in this area is typically in September. That's when it's warm but not hot, the humidity is low, it's not particularly rainy and the nights are cool enough that you can turn off the AC and sleep with the windows open.
The worst weather, you'd think, would be January or so, but it's really April, or at least has been the last few years. That's when it's supposed to be warming up and classically springtime, but it seems like it's 45 degrees and raining every day.
As TB walked into the building yesterday, he saw the football team as it practiced on Finney and Campbell Fields. If you're a football player, you have to appreciate an August day like yesterday.
The forecast for the rest of the week takes the temps back into the 80s, but it'll be the low 80s. Are the really hot days in the past for 2019?
Also, would you rather play a fall sport, where the weather for preseason is better but it gets chillier as it goes along, or a spring sport, where it's freezing for the preseason but warms up (presumably) as the season moves along?
This is game week for Princeton Athletics for 2019-20, as the women's soccer season begins Friday at St. Joe's at 5. The first home game is two days later, when the women's soccer team hosts Boston College.
Princeton has won the last two Ivy League women's soccer championships, doing so in decisive fashion two years ago and dramatic fashion last year. If you remember two years ago, Princeton went 7-0-0 in the Ivy League and then reached the NCAA quarterfinals, knocking off North Carolina, the most successful program in women's college soccer history, along the way.
Last year Princeton used a four-game Ivy winning streak - all by shutout - to end the regular season to earn a share of the league championship with Penn. Because the last of those four wins was a 1-0 win over Penn, the Tigers earned the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Had Princeton lost any of those four, there would have been no postseason.
This time around, Princeton is the preseason favorite in the league, having earned 10 of the 16 first-place votes in the preseason poll. What matters more than that is the fact that Princeton returns six of the seven players who scored goals a year ago, minus only Mimi Asom, a von Kienbusch Award finalist a year ago and one of the top scorers in program history. Princeton also has goalkeeper Natalie Grossi back for her senior year; Grossi is already the program record holder for career shutouts.
Princeton opens the Ivy League season on Sept. 28 at home against Yale. Before then, there will be eight non-league games, including four in eight days to start the season.
Of those eight non-league games between Aug. 30 and Sept. 22, there will be five on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. The last of those is the most intriguing, as former Princeton head coach Julie Shackford will be back on the field she coached on for so long when she comes in with her new team, William & Mary.
That game is Sunday, Sept. 22, at 1 p.m.
All of this kicks off this weekend, as amazing as that is. This weekend, also amazingly, is Labor Day weekend.
In other words, fall is almost here.
The weather yesterday was a small preview of that.
There was big news out of the NFL preseason game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears.
To most, it had to do with Andrew Luck, the Colts' quarterback, who at age 29 announced his retirement. Luck, who has battled bad shoulder problems through much of his career, stepped away after the game against the Bears, leaving $64 million on the table (though after making around $100 million).
TigerBlog saw that he was actually booed by the Colts' fans as he left the field and news of his retirement had begun to swirl. Booed? That's pretty harsh.
Anyway, that's not the news TB was talking about anyway.
If you're a Princeton football fan, you've seen this before. Twenty-eight times, to be exact.
Horsted is Princeton's career leader in career receptions and touchdown receptions. He caught 28 touchdown passes in his Tiger career (with two more rushing TDs as well).
A year ago he earned All-America honors and was one of two finalists for the Bushnell Cup as the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year, finishing as runner-up to his teammate, quarterback John Lovett. Princeton went 10-0 in 2018, winning its third Ivy title in six years.
These days, Horsted is an undrafted free agent hoping to make the Bears roster. He certainly didn't hurt his chances in the third preseason game, leading the team with 39 receiving yards on three catches, including his first pro touchdown.
Horsted's touchdown catch was very familiar. It's the kind of play he routinely made at Princeton, using his 6-4 size and the athletic ability that made him first-team All-Ivy and a pro prospect in both football and baseball - not to mention simply his desire - to come up with receptions on what could be termed 50-50 balls.
By the way, when TB was looking at the box score from the game, he saw that Horsted's three catches led his team but that one player on the Colts had four catches, a player named "D Cain." TB checked to make sure it wasn't "Dean Cain," the former Princeton All-America and long-time actor, whose credits include playing Superman.
It wasn't. It was Deon Cain, who played at Clemson.
Speaking of Princeton's in the NFL, Stephen Carlson, Horsted's fellow Princeton alum/undrafted free agent receiver, is in the Cleveland Browns' camp. Carlson had one reception in Cleveland's 13-12 loss to Tampa Bay.
For Carlson it was his second reception of the preseason. Carlson is listed as a tight end for the Browns, who also have another Princeton alum, Seth DeValve, who is in his fourth NFL season.
Carlson, like Horsted, is great near the goal line. He seems to have been having a really good summer with the Browns, and like Horsted, the practice squad would seem to be a good destination to start the season, if it comes to that.
Lovett, by the way, is with the Kansas City Chiefs, who 1) is out for a few weeks with a shoulder injury and 2) had by all reports been carving out a nice place for himself with the Chiefs before he got hurt.
The KC depth chart lists Lovett as a fullback, not a quarterback. TB wrote last year that Lovett reminds him of Taysom Hill of the New Orleans Saints, who was a quarterback at BYU but who can throw, run or catch and who became a huge part of the team's offense a year ago.
Hill's success could make teams look at a versatile player like Lovett in a different way.
Princeton is also represented in the NFL by alums Chad Kanoff (quarterback in his second year with the Cardinals) and Caraun Reid (sixth year defensive lineman, now with the Colts and owner of two career NFL touchdowns).
That's six alums in NFL camps. That's pretty good.
Of course, that's what happens when you have the level of success Princeton football has had in recent years.
TigerBlog spent a little time going through Google analytics yesterday and learned some interesting things, as always.
In the last 12 months, there have been 111 pages on goprincetontigers.com that have been viewed at least 10,000 times. That's pages, so it includes things like clicking on, say, the composite schedule or the main football page.
There were 202 pages that were viewed at least 5,000 times. There were 927 that were viewed at least 1,000 times, which would have been 928 if one more person had looked at the football roster.
For pages that were viewed at least 100 times, the number is 2,336. That's a lot, no?
The most viewed actual story of the last 12 months? And the most viewed game story? Any guesses?
TB played this game with bios a few months ago. When he went back to look, he saw that there were two Princeton athletes whose bios were viewed at least 10,000 times. Those two are wrestler Patrick Glory (10,237) and men's lacrosse player Michael Sowers (10,190).
The top five athlete bios were those two, followed by John Lovett (not surprising), Bella Alarie (also not surprising) and Patrick Brucki (also not surprising). Matthew Kolodzik was sixth, leaving three wrestlers in the top six.
By the way, there were 341 athletes whose bios were viewed at least 1,000 times.
Oh, and the answers to the questions TB asked are the story when Carla Berube was hired as head women's basketball coach (9,453) and the Princeton's win over Penn to finish its first perfect football season in 54 years (4,517).
Anyway, that's some fun with analytics.
What else do you want for today? It's the end of the quiet times.
Welcome to the last weekend without a Princeton athletic event for quite awhile. In fact, you're going to have to go all the way until January and the break for first semester exams to find another weekend that will have an empty schedule.
TigerBlog has spent his entire career, dating back in fact to when he was still in college, working on weekends. He has never, ever had a job where he had to be there at 9 and worked until 5, with an hour for lunch, Monday through Friday.
He doesn't know any different. There have been time where he's wondered what that would actually be like. He's even asked his friends who work what would be considered more traditional hours how that works, and he can't really imagine it.
There are games to cover, and they are played on the weekends for the most part. It's just how it is.
Princeton averages around 700 athletic events per year. That's a lot of events, with a lot of moving parts.
More than half of those are played away from Princeton, requiring buses or planes, hotels, meals and everything like that. The ones that are played at Princeton require all kinds of other things, like refs, facilities, fans, stats and everything like that.
Wherever they're played, they require uniforms, stories, athletic trainers, and, well, everything like that.
TB has told this story before, but when he first started out in the newspaper business (that was nearly 40 years ago already), he always said he'd do it for one more year and then get a "real" job. Then one year folded into another and another, and each time one began, he said the same thing. One more year, and then a real job.
Anyway, he's still doing it.
When any new year rolls around, there's always a sense of the excitement that comes with working in athletics. If that ever goes, you know you're in the wrong profession.
Event No. 1 for 2019-20 will be a women's soccer game a week from today at St. Joe's, followed two days later by the first home event of the year, against Boston College. That game a week from Sunday will be played on Sept. 1.
September?
Speaking of September, there will be 50 Princeton athletic events in the month. Yeah, there's no real easing into anything.
So enjoy the last weekend for awhile without any Princeton games. Do summer things.
After all, the next time there's one of these, it figures to be a lot colder.
TigerBlog received a request from a media outlet yesterday for any pictures he has of the first football game.
This is not the first time this fall this request has been made, and it certainly won't be the last. Not with Princeton's role as one of the two "founding fathers" of the sport of football, along with Rutgers, who played the first game back on Nov. 6, 1869.
The 2019 season is the 150th anniversary season of college football, and since college football predates professional football by more than five decades, it's really the 150th anniversary of the formalization of what is America's most popular sport.
And it started with Princeton and Rutgers.
Princeton didn't have a coach back then. In fact, it would be nearly 30 years before an official coach would be listed.
For those first few years, Princeton was listed as having captains. The captain of the first team was named William Gummere.
If you don't know the name, here's a little bio information on him. First, how old was he when he captained that first Princeton team?
How about 17?
He graduated a year later at the age of 18 and then studied law - in his father's law office. From there he ended up spending nearly 40 years on the New Jersey Supreme Court, the last 32 of which he spent as Chief Justice.
At least that's what it says on Wikipedia, so it must be true, right?
One of the pictures that TB has in a folder entitled "First Football Game" is of Gummere at Princeton. Here is it:
When TB first saw that picture, it made him think of a recently graduated Princeton athlete:
They could be twins, right? Well, maybe not twins, since Gummere died in 1933, or 63 years before his doppelganger was born.
The Princeton athlete, by the way, is former men's lacrosse player Emmet Cordrey, who graduated this past June. Cordrey had a huge senior year, with 30 goals and 19 assists for 49 points, after having 13 points for his career prior to the 2019 season.
Meanwhile, back at Princeton football, today is reporting day for the 2019 team. Included will be individual pictures and filming for the videoboard.
The first practice for the team will be Saturday. Opening day is Sept. 21 against Butler, with kickoff at Princeton Stadium at 5.
This season is noteworthy because of the 150th piece, which
is another example of the obsession with round numbers that Fort Wayne
sportscaster John Nolan spoke about when he did some work for Princeton. The 2019 Tigers will play a game at Yankee Stadium on Nov. 9 against
Dartmouth as part of that 150th celebration. Dartmouth went 9-1 a year
ago, with only a 14-9 loss to Princeton in an epic game.
By the way, you can go to goprincetontigers.com/150 (or click HERE) for much more on that game and the whole 150th celebration.
It's always good to be a major part of something this historic, and
it's a great opportunity to celebrate the long history of a program that
has won 28 national championships and 12 Ivy League titles.
At the same time, there's the matter of the season about to be played. It's still the same 10-game schedule, with the same goal as last year.
The 2018 Tigers went 10-0, as you might recall, giving Princeton its first perfect season in 54 years and its third Ivy League championship in six years. There are big questions for Princeton heading into 2019, such as who will take over for John Lovett, the two-time Bushnell Cup-winning quarterback, and Stephen Carlson and Jesper Horsted, the touchdown machines at wide receiver. All three of them are currently fighting for NFL roster spots.
Princeton was picked third in the Ivy League preseason poll, behind Yale and Dartmouth. There are some early dates to circle on the schedule, most notably the Oct. 5 home game against Columbia.
Despite probably having the most injuries of any team in the league, the Lions went 6-4 a year ago, tying with Penn and Yale for fourth place, behind Princeton, Dartmouth and Harvard. The Ivy opener between Princeton and Columbia is huge for both.
Of course, that all seemed pretty far away Tuesday night, when Princeton head football coach Bob Surace hosted his annual a-few-days-before-it-all-starts picnic. As with every other year, it was warm, welcoming, fun and laid back, with a ton of food.
That picnic is definitely the calm before the storm.
TigerBlog did a summer podcast with Princeton head women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer yesterday.
Among the topics they discussed were how summer recruiting has changed, what it's like these days, how camps went, how emotional graduation was for her, what the incoming freshman class looks like, the 2019 fall schedule and the 2020 regular-season schedule. You know. The usual stuff you'd talk about on such a podcast.
They even talked about her recent vacation. Like TB, Chris does love the beach.
Princeton graduated seven seniors from a team that went 16-4 and won the Ivy League championship for the sixth straight year. There was also an Ivy tournament title and two more NCAA wins before the season ended in the quarterfinals at Boston College.
The 2020 season is six months away. The start of school is not far off, which means the fall season will be beginning soon enough.
It was a good time to catch up on what's going on in the program.
TigerBlog will be back sometime in the fall with another podcast with Sailer, and then they'll be doing them weekly again during the season.
And were this any other podcast TB has ever done, that would be the end of the story and he'd be left trying to come up another 500 or so words. Ah, but this podcast was much different than any of the ones that have preceded it.
All of the other podcasts that TigerBlog has ever done were recorded in his office, at a little round table, with walls that weren't exactly built with sound quality in mind.
The one yesterday was the first one done in the brand-new H.G. Levine Broadcast Center. The only word to describe the facility is this: "cool."
It's an extraordinarily impressive place, made possible by a gift from Steven Mayer of the Class of 1981 and his wife Laura. Construction began in the spring, as an old storage closet was converted into something that looks something like a cross between a TV truck and a flight simulator.
The heaviest lifting of the Levine Broadcast Center has been done by TB's colleagues Cody Chrusciel and John Bullis, who have set up all of the the equipment and made it operational.
The center will become the home for all of Princeton's video production efforts. It'll also be tested really soon, since the month of September alone will see more than 20 productions come out of there, including the first made-for-TV effort for the Princeton-Boston University women's soccer game on Sept. 5, which will be produced here and then shown live on NBC Sports Philadelphia.
TigerBlog won't even pretend for a minute that he knows how any of the fancy set-up actually works. He does know that it's obviously impressive.
The planning is already underway as to how to maximize the usage of the facility. The studio, for instance, will be used for the "Princeton Football Friday" shows that feature head coach Bob Surace.
TigerBlog remembers the earliest days of Princeton's video efforts, with a small budget for outsourcing some original productions and with the streaming of football and basketball games that were being produced for a local cable TV outlet called C-Tec. He's not sure if he ever envisioned what would be coming with streaming and video content and how much it has revolutionized what college athletic communications is about.
Through the years, Princeton Athletics has grown considerably in what it has produced - in quantity and quality - but it's never really had the facility that makes all of that much more efficient and streamlined. Now it has that.
And, for TB, yesterday's podcast was the first time he got to use the facility for himself.
He couldn't help but be impressed. It's light-years from the little round podcasting table in his office, even if in reality it's only a few feet away.
TigerBlog remembers a dinner he went to when the men's lacrosse team traveled to Costa Rica back in 2012.
It was just for the coaching staff and other non-players in the travel party, and it was at a restaurant that was either really close or really far from the hotel, depending on whether or not you were walking through an alley to get to it.
On the way there, in the daylight, cutting through the alley seemed easy enough. On the way back? It was night by then, and as the group took two steps or so down the path of the completely darkened alley, they heard a most disconcerting sound of growling dogs.
You could almost picture them just from the growling. They had to be big and vicious, right? Bravely the group started down the path, only to hear the growling get louder and louder.
Yeah. So instead of continuing, the group paused, looked at each other and basically turned and ran back to the main road. From there, instead of about 100 yards to the hotel, it was more than a mile to walk all the way around.
As TB thought about the most scared his ever been, the anticipation of being mauled by Costa Rican dogs was pretty far up there. Until he drove a car in England.
This is his last story about his recent trip. He promises.
As you know, cars in England have the steering wheel on the right side and drive on the left side. Everything becomes the opposite of what it is in the United States. If you've never driven a car like that, it takes awhile to acclimate to everything, including, for instance, which way you have to look before you merge, especially on right turns.
The other tough part is the fact that your eye's perspective needs to change. You're no longer keeping yourself on the left side of the lane when you drive; you need to be on the right side. TB smacked into the curb a few times before he got that down.
And that's it about England.
TigerBlog did something yesterday that he hasn't done all year prior. He looked at the Major League Baseball standings.
He had no idea that the Mets were making a postseason run, but there they were, just two games out of the last wild card spot. He knew the Yankees were having a big year, and it got him hoping that it would end up with a Mets-Yankees World Series, just because of Princeton men's soccer coach Jim Barlow (huge Mets fan) and Princeton head football coach Bob Surace (huge Yankees fan).
The best races by far are in the National League, where 10 teams have a legitimate shot at the postseason. In the American League, it's really only a six-team race - maybe seven, but that's only because the Red Sox are hard to count out - even before September rolls around.
Another reason to root for the Yankees besides Bob Surace is that two Princeton alums are part of the team.
David Hale, who is coming off a back injury this week, has pitched in 19 games so far this season, wall in relief, with a 3-0 record and two saves, along with a 2.89 ERA, a 1.15 WHIP and 22 strikeouts and six walks in 37 innings.
Those are pretty solid numbers.
The other is Mike Ford, who at one point was the Ivy League Pitcher of the Year and Player of the Year. Perhaps that came up in the discussion the other night when the Yankees were on the wrong end of a massive blowout against Cleveland, because into the game came Ford. To pitch.
It's always fun when a position player gets a chance to pitch. Yes, Ford gave up five runs in two innings, but he served the main function, which was allowing the pitching staff not to have to throw those two innings.
He also recorded a strikeout, which is something he'll always be able to say. He struck out someone in a Major League game.
That gave Princeton 23 strikeouts for the Yankees this year.
As for his normal spot, Ford has four home runs in 81 at-bats, which translates to 30 in 500 at-bats. Yes, Ford has struck out 17 times in those 81 at-bats, but in Major League Baseball today, it's more about hitting the ball over the fence than anything else.
Anyway, it got TB to wondering how many position players this year - or in the last 10 - have hit at least one home run and gotten at least one strikeout.
TigerBlog's plane was in line for about 35 minutes waiting to take-off out of Heathrow last week.
As his flight got close to the front, TB could see another plane to the left that was also waiting, this one at a 90-degree angle. Then that plane went in front of TB's and took off.
Since that plane was an Air New Zealand plane, TB thought the pilot of his flight might have just waved the other pilot in front, figuring that he was only going eight hours and the Air New Zealand flight was going nearly twice that. Well, not really.
TB would love to go to Australia or New Zealand, but he's not sure he would be able to sit on a plane for 15 or so hours. The flight across the Atlantic was long enough.
During his flight, TB watched four episodes of "Sons of Anarchy," the movie "Creed II," the map that shows where the plane is and the scenery out the window for the last two hours or so.
TB loved "Creed." He thought "Creed II" was pretty good, certainly a good way to pass two hours on a plane, but it was also one of the most predictable movies ever made. And you have to give credit to the "Rocky" franchise people for building on "Rocky IV," which wasn't exactly the best one in the series.
As for "Sons of Anarchy," he can never watch that enough. As for looking out the window, it always fascinates him to see the world from a plane. He always wants the window seat.
And then he was back.
Speaking of long flights and movies, TB read the story on goprincetontigers.com about how women's basketball player Lexi Weger is spending her summer.
Weger was part of a group that traveled to Kenya to work and study at the Mpala Research Centre. As part of the program, she produced a documentary. She and her group did everything for the movie, including writing the script, filming and editing.
From the story: Weger and her group produced "Chasing Queens," a story about Pollinators
and why they are necessary in our ecosystem and their contribution to
food security.
According to Wikipedia, these are what Pollinators are: A pollinator is the biotic agent (vector) that moves pollen from the
male anthers of a flower to the female stigma of a flower to accomplish
fertilization or 'syngamy' of the female gametes in the ovule of the
flower by the male gametes from the pollen grain. A pollinator is
different from a pollenizer, which is a plant that is a source of pollen
for the pollination process
Weger is a 6-3 rising sophomore from Fairfax, Va. Her best game last year was at Cornell, when she scored 13 points.
She's a graduate of Episcopal in Virginia, where she is the school's all-time leading scorer, with 1,458 points. She also holds school records for rebounds (744) and blocks (341).
TB has said this before, but one of the best parts of being a student at Princeton is the opportunity to see the world. There are so many chances to travel, and there are so many Princeton students - and athletes - who take advantage of them.
TB would love to be able to total up the number of miles that Princeton's athletes have traveled this summer. The answer is "a lot," he's guessing.
And the ones who flew around the globe to compete internationally are just a small sample. Princeton's athletes also did things like Weger, or went to Vietnam with Coach for College, or studied in countries throughout Europe or simply traveled for the sake of traveling.
The new school year is just around the corner. The first athletic event of the year is a week from Friday, if you can believe that, when the women's soccer team is at St. Joe's. The first home event is two days later, women's soccer against Boston College.
All of Princeton's fall athletes will be returning to campus very shortly. The rest will be back shortly after that.
The travels of summer will give way to another academic year and everything that comes with it.
In the end, though, those travels will be remembered as a big part of the overall Princeton experience that these athletes have in their four years.
TB is guessing Lexi Weger would agree with that statement.
TigerBlog got an email from Sam Shweisky, the men's volleyball coach, raving about a blog entry written by one his recently graduated seniors, Corry Short. As soon as he read it, TB wanted to share it here, and so he is, with Corry's permission. Corry Short, by the way, is from Lighthouse Point, Fla. He and his Princeton teammates won the EIVB regular-season and tournament championships and then won their opening match in the NCAA tournament before falling in five sets to No. 3 Pepperdine.
Looking back on my four years at this amazing university, I have
gained knowledge in and outside the classroom, created friendships that
will last a lifetime, and made memories that I will absolutely never
forget. Princeton’s campus offers a wide range of opportunities for
students to connect with each other. Whether it’s at an eating club, a
dorm common room or a restaurant on Nassau, all Princeton students have
ample opportunity to create experiences and memories on campus.
Consequently, graduates from Princeton will reminisce upon their time
spent here and have fond memories of one or two places in particular.
The first place I’ll think about is Dillon Gym.
Herbert Lowell Dillon Gymnasium, Princeton University
Dillon Gym lies at the heart of Princeton’s campus; from IM sports,
to Stephens Fitness Center, to career fairs, hundreds flow in and out of
its doors every day. It functions as a welcoming escape from the
day-to-day rigors that Princeton students face. However, as a varsity
athlete, my sentiment towards the building is slightly different. Dillon
is the home of the men’s and women’s volleyball teams at Princeton,
which has led me to spend countless hours in its facilities. I’ve
endured 7:00am practices, film sessions, team meetings, and enough
physical therapy for two lifetimes within its walls. But before I had
the opportunity to do any of these things, I was just an undersized
outside hitter from South Florida.
The first time I visited campus as a recruit was in October of 2014.
Women’s season was in full swing, and the first time I saw a match
played in Dillon was Princeton vs. Cornell. The Tigers crushed the Big
Red 3-0. It was awesome seeing them compete on the court, and that night
taught me a lot about the special connection between the men’s and
women’s teams. For those who don’t know, the men’s team works all of the
women’s home matches and vice versa. From ball rolling to scoreboard
operation to social media, the out-of-season team is right there
cheering on the in-season team consistently. This is one of the many
bonds that keeps the two teams so close and makes this program so
unique.
I visited a second time in April of 2015, much to the dismay of the
the team who was required to take care of one extra recruit that
weekend, and saw the men’s team in action for the first time. It was
Penn State weekend – if you’ve followed the Princeton Men’s Volleyball
team at all in the past decade, you know that this is always the biggest
home game of the year. The bleachers are rearranged to manage the
1,500+ that are consistently in attendance, and the atmosphere is
electric. Semi-drunken students show up by the hundreds to cheer on the
Tigers and heckle the Nittany Lions on an annual basis – and they never
disappoint.
The Tigers came out in full force, but unfortunately fell to Penn
State 3-1. Although it wasn’t the outcome that I and everyone else in
the stands hoped for, it made me realize a couple of things. The first
is how fervently the student body and community of this university
supports its athletic teams. It also gave me a glimpse of how this team
fights; the energy and spirit that the players on the court and bench
had throughout the entirety of the match was something I had never
witnessed before. I came to understand that these traits are
PrincetonVolley staples, and I was incredibly excited for it to finally
be my turn.
2014 team celebrating after beating Penn State 3-2 in Dillon Gym. Photo: Beverly Schaefer Photography.
The summer before I arrived on campus was a hectic one for me to say
the least. It was one of the most volleyball-intensive summers of my
life, epitomized by leaving Florida hours after my high school
graduation for a volleyball tournament. After most of my volleyball for
the summer was done, my family moved from my home of 7 years, Fort
Lauderdale, up to the New Jersey where my Dad had already been working
for a year and a half. I’m still extremely grateful for the sacrifice
that they made by allowing me to finish out my high school career in
Florida (thanks again, Mom and Dad!). Our home base is the Jersey Shore
now, and being so close to home has definitely had its benefits.
The first opportunity my family’s close proximity to campus provided
me was the chance to attend my first of many Princeton Volleyball summer
camps. It was the first time that I learned how unrelenting Dillon’s
lack of air conditioning was; playing for hours in that hotbox gave me a
lot more respect for the women’s team who has preseason two-a-days
during the hottest months of the year. Camp is brutal – both as a player
and coach – but is always a ton of fun. I’ve made so many great friends
at PrincetonVolley summer camps and will always look fondly upon those
memories.
September rolled around, and I was thrown into a whirlwind when I
arrived on campus in the fall. From academics to making friends to
navigating campus, I felt like I couldn’t find stability in a single
aspect of my new life – until volleyball season started. We had early
morning practices and lifts everyday in the fall, and I tried to be the
first one there everyday. I wanted to do pay my freshman dues by setting
up the nets, getting the ball carts out and mopping the floor, hoping
that I could earn the respect of my upperclassmen and coaches and
establish a reputation of being a hard worker. Grinding with my
teammates in Dillon Gym every morning, though taxing both mentally and
physically, provided me with that stability I was seeking.
Our season my freshman year ultimately did not turn out so great. We
had a poor record, largely due to the loss of the 2015 class, which
included PrincetonVolley legends such as Cody Kessel, Will Siroky and
Tony Ensbury, and failed to make the playoffs. Although the season was
unsuccessful, it sparked a fire that was much needed and strongly
desired by the group that would be returning in 2016. At the start of my
sophomore year, we saw the potential that the new group had. With a
nationally ranked recruiting class now onboard, we had the physicality
and talent to disrupt the EIVA.
Sophomore year was a series of ups and downs for the team.
Acclimating the new group of freshmen to Princeton Volleyball and
creating a new core of leadership was challenging, but the team took
steps in the right direction. We pushed Ball State to 5 in the Hawaii
Outrigger Invitational, split matches with Grand Canyon on the road, and
ended up sealing our spot in the playoffs with some big wins towards
the end of the season over George Mason and Harvard. The season ended at
Penn State where we were swept in three close sets. However, I think
this was an inflection point for our team. We knew that we had what we
needed to be contenders in the conference and on the national stage, but
it was going to take some work. We knew that if we wanted to do great
things, we would have to work hard over the summer and revisit the
drawing board at the start of my junior year.
2017-2018 team outside the Galen Center before match against USC.
Junior year turned out to be an absolutely chaotic season. We took
down #8 Stanford in the first tournament of the season in Santa Barbara,
giving us a hopeful outlook for the remainder of the year. Little did
we know that we were going to have one of the worst starts a Princeton
team has had to a season – 1-11 to be exact. We couldn’t figure out what
we were doing wrong. And on top of it all, I had torn my meniscus in
mid-January upon return from our California trip and was out for about
five weeks in recovery post-surgery.
When I returned to play, the team had improved and we were finally
trending upwards. We turned things around at our Sacred Heart road game,
and went 8-1 in our next nine games. During this winning streak, we
took down #10 ranked Penn State at home in a five set thriller in front
of the 1998 EIVA Championship team who was being honored that evening.
It was one of my favorite games that I had as a Tiger (click here to
relive that epic match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLjQPMbU5hNAVqPXs2qlWt7yjy3KYcPLmL&v=Iw0-1-CA9So).
2017-2018 team celebrating after a big point in victory over Penn State. Photo: Beverly Schaefer Photography.
Unfortunately, the following weekend I sustained another serious
injury in the “Battle of the Garden State” at NJIT. I dislocated my left
shoulder three times in the match and ended up tearing my labrum, which
is still torn to this day. I was out for another month and change
following the injury, but I was able to return in time for our road
match against Penn State. The Princeton Band took a four hour road trip
to follow us to this match; I don’t think the Band has ever traveled for
a regular season PrincetonVolley match in program history – thank you
guys for always being our biggest fans! For some reason, we came out
that night with a vendetta and played some of the best ball we’d played
all year. For the first time in program history, we beat Penn State on
the road, and to top it off, we SWEPT them 25-23, 25-17, 25-17. It was
an absolutely dominant performance, and I personally had some of the
best serve receive and defense that I’d played my whole career. The
Creamery was packed with Princeton Tigers that night…
We had some momentum moving into the playoffs and were scheduled to
face George Mason, the top ranked team in the EIVA. We came out in
dominant fashion and had one of the best blocking performances as a team
that I’d ever seen. We upset them 3-1 and faced Harvard in the EIVA
finals – the first ever all-Ivy finals. Unfortunately, the Crimson had a
hell of a night, and we lost 1-3 in sets that all could’ve gone either
way. It was a heartbreaker to say the least. We came into the 2019
season with this chip on our shoulder as the driving force towards my
final season as a Tiger.
Senior year’s conference play started out with a bang. We went 13-1, winning huge matches on the road against NJIT, Penn State, George Mason and Harvard. It was like we couldn’t lose.
So many sets and matches were decided by one or two points, and the
ball just seemed to bounce in our favor all season long. Since we were
the #1 seed in conference, we had the opportunity to host the EIVA
Playoffs for the first time ever in Dillon Gym. We took
down St. Francis in the opening round in a 3-0 sweep, giving us the
last bit of momentum we needed before the EIVA Finals against – you
guessed it – Penn State.
My final match in Dillon. It was incredibly emotional and ended up
being the favorite game of volleyball I have played in my whole life.
The match’s momentum ebbed and flowed in an endless cycle. We would have
a two or three point service run, and they would respond with
aggressive serving and great plays in transition. We split sets 2-2, and
the EIVA Championship would be decided by a fifth set tiebreaker.
We went up 8-7 at the switch off of a stuff block from All-Americans
Parker Dixon and George Huhmann, and the roar from the crowd was
absolutely incredible when we changed sides. The entire gym was at the
edge of their seats, and we came out with everything we had. Kendall
Ratter gave us a transition kill, and Greg Luck brought the crowd to
their feet with a HUGE solo stuff block out of the middle to put us up
10-7. Some chaotic rallies ensued, and Ratter again gives us
another huge kill putting him at the service line…he then serves an ace
to put us up 14-11. We now have match point of the EIVA Championship in
Dillon Gym. At this point, rotated out and have tears in my eyes just
looking at the stands and seeing family, friends and alumni all on their
feet, filling the gym with the wholehearted love and support for this
team. Penn State sides out and gets an ace, making the score 14-13.
Pass from Greg Luck, set from Joe Kelly, and kill by George Huhmann
to win the match 15-13. The Princeton Tigers have won the EIVA
Championship at home in Dillon Gym. To this day, I get chills every time
I think of that night. It was the culmination of years of hard work and
could not have been accomplished without each and every member of this
special group.
Of all the time that I’ve spent within Dillon’s walls, the feeling I will miss the most is competing for
Princeton University and Princeton Volleyball. It is an incredibly
special feeling that only few will have the opportunity to experience.
When you step onto that court ready to battle against your opponent
across the net and hear Jenna Venturi belt out a beautiful national
anthem, the deep roots of the program’s tradition and legacy are
overwhelming – you can’t help but feel proud and grateful to wear
Princeton across your chest.
We go on to beat Barton in the first round of the the NCAA tournament
and push #3 in the nation Pepperdine to five sets in a nail-biter but
fall short of the Final Four. And just like that, it’s over. A historic
end to a volleyball career that I wouldn’t trade for the world.
During my four years playing in Dillon, I’ve gotten to know the
place. I know the spots where the hardwood floor creaks from a sneaker’s
step, I know where volleyballs like to hide when we’re doing our ball
count at the end of practice, I know how many stairs lead from the gym
floor to the Dillon Tower conference room (44) where we do our pre-match
scouting meetings…I know what makes it tick. But during my four years
here, I’ve come to learn who is responsible for its upkeep and operations.
The staff at Dillon Gym does an incredible job of making it feel like
a second home to all who enter. Dan Bennett oversees the facility’s
operations and has been a huge supporter of the Princeton Volleyball
program. Thank you, Dan, for consistently being one of this team’s
unsung heroes. Elysee Nicolas a.k.a Nicki a.k.a. the grandfather of
PrincetonVolley has been a confidant, mentor and friend to every
generation of athletes to go through this program. Every time you see
him, he puts a smile on your face, and he is someone that has impacted
my time in Dillon significantly. Thanks for everything, Nick. I’m gonna
miss you! To everyone else at Dillon that has helped me or the Princeton
Volleyball teams in one way or another – namely, Mike Mix, Jenna Mayer,
Mike Halbiger, and Matt Maul, among many others – thank you for all
that you have done and continue to do for the volleyball teams and the
greater Princeton community.
Nicki and I on a California team trip, and Dan Bennett and I at graduation.
I want to thank several people who have been integral to my success at Princeton and the success of Princeton Volleyball:
First and foremost, I’d like to thank Coach Sam Shweisky for
recruiting me to play at this incredible university. Years ago I
promised you I’d put a number up on that banner before I graduated…well,
we did it. You’ve done so much to develop me as a player and as a human
being. Thank you for everything.
To my teammates past and
present, thank you for the laughs and the memories. You made my
experience in this program what it was, and I am so grateful to have had
you all in my life.
Coach Pat Shawaryn, thank you for the
incredible amount of value you’ve added to this program and for the many
laughs on the bus and sidelines. I and the rest of the team truly hope
that you remain core member of this program in the years to come.
Looking forward to grabbing several more beers with you at reunions!
To
the WVB team, namely Alexa, Caroline, Claire, Nnenna, Smitty, and
everyone that overlapped with me during my four years, thank you for
making my PrincetonVolley experience so amazing. I will look back on our
volleyvolley events as some of my favorite memories at Princeton.
To
PrincetonVolley alumni: you are an absolutely incredible group of
people, and I am so happy to have met so many of you. Your support of
this program is invaluable and there is no way to express how much
gratitude we have for you. Thank you all for your constant love and
support. I’m looking forward to meeting many more of you in the years to
come as a fellow alum.
To Lou: I love you man!! Thank you SO
much for everything you do for this team. All the best to you and your
family in the future.
To the athletic medicine staff – namely,
Johnny Furtado, Deirdre Chatlos and Sophia Gonzalez – thank you for
dealing with my seemingly endless injuries, for getting me back on the
court faster than I would have otherwise, and for making my countless
time spent in the athletic training room so enjoyable.
To
assistant coaches of the program – Mike Vajo, Mike Adams, Pawel
Kadlubowski and Steve Carlat – thank you for your contributions to of
this team and unwavering support of this program.
To my many strength coaches over the years – Keith, Dan, Phil, Sam – thank you for helping me and this team achieve success.
To
Sabrina King (and Abel & Lyla!), Tyler Hagstrom and the legend
Glenn Nelson, thank you for welcoming me into the PrincetonVolley family
with such love.
To Allison Rich, Anthony Archbald, Mollie
Marcoux Samaan and President Eisgruber, thank you all for enabling our
team and Princeton Athletics to be so successful. Your support means the
world to us.
To the EIVA, its staff, and its coaches – namely,
Jay Hosack, Danny Goncalves, Mark Pavlik, Colin McMillan, Mike Rumbaugh,
and Brian Baise ’95 – it has been a pleasure competing against you and
your respective teams over the years. All the best in the future…but Go
Tigers!
To Craig Sachson, our team’s former Sports Information
Director, and the rest of the staff that helps make our matches run
smoothly, thank you for all of the work that you’ve done with this team
over the years, and best of luck in whatever your future holds in store.
To
Mike Thibault, thank you so much for all you do for our team. I can’t
wait to hear about all the whiteboard debates that you and the team have
throughout this upcoming year. All the best to you and your family.
#TheEarthIsFlat
To our many faculty fellows, especially Andrej
Košmrlj, Kelly Noonan, Corina Tarnita, Shawn Maxam, Rob Pringle and
Michael Mueller, that have helped Princeton MVB student-athletes over
the years, thank you for all that you do and for your support of this
team.
To Mike Zarate, Ocean Bay Volleyball and Cardinal Gibbons
High School, thank you for providing me with the knowledge and
opportunities to pursue my dreams on and off the court.
To the
many people that I haven’t thanked, but have in some way contributed to
the success of this team and program, we are so appreciative of your
support.
And last, but certainly not least, I’d like to thank my #1 fans for
all that they’ve done for me and this team. Mom, Dad, Michael, Mary Kate
and Grannie, the JC Short family and the Young family, I love you all
so much. I wouldn’t have made it to or through Princeton without you
all.
The Short Family post semifinal win against SFU before winning EIVA Championship.
My memories of Princeton will be great, but my memories of Dillon Gym
will be phenomenal. It’s been one hell of a ride – thanks for
everything, Princeton.
– Corry G. Short ’19
TigerBlog has been lucky in his life in that he's gotten to see a lot of the world.
Okay, maybe he hasn't seen as much as some others, like FatherBlog for instance, but he's still been very fortunate to have spent time in places like Europe, the Caribbean, Hawaii, South America.
For all of the places he's been, his favorite - his new favorite - is the southern coast of England.
It's just a beautiful area - quiet, with amazing beaches that offer incredible views of the coastline and the English Channel, great places to ride your bike, charming pubs with awesome menus and above all some of the friendliest people you'll ever meet anywhere.
Pretty much any time TigerBlog has known anyone to have gone to England, they always talk about staying in London. TigerBlog stayed in London for one day, enough time to get a feel for it, see a show ("Fiddler on the Roof") and check out Buckingham Palace.
That was plenty of city time for him.
He's spent the last six days along the southern coast, after his short trip to France and the Normandy beaches. If you ever go to England, make sure you head south.
TB has had great luck with the weather. The forecast every day has been for steady rain and cold, and except for some of yesterday, it's been partly cloudy and in the upper 60s or low 70s.
He wanted to get to see the Bournemouth-Sheffield Premiere League game last Saturday, but he's learned that tickets are impossible to get. As in completely impossible.
Bournemouth is the largest town (or small city) in the area in which he has been staying. Bournemouth's EPL team, the Cherries, wasn't that long ago in the Fourth Division, so its climb to the elite of professional soccer has been impressive.
At the same time, Bournemouth plays in a tiny stadium, Vitality Stadium, which has seating for 11,364, making it less than half the size of Princeton Stadium. It is by far the smallest venue in the EPL, and in fact, it is the smallest by far of any of the 59 stadiums that have ever been the home for an EPL team.
There is talk of building a new stadium. Then again, there's talk of pretty much anything to do with the EPL in these parts.
TigerBlog read a newspaper called "The I" the last few days. In Tuesday's paper alone, there were 20 bylined stories about English Premiere League soccer.
Of course there's no such thing as ever getting completely away from Princeton Athletics. The big news yesterday was the coming football game in 2020 between the Tigers and Army West Point.
When TB saw that the teams were playing again, the first thing he did was research the series history. He thought they must have played a lot in the early days, but there have only been 13 prior matchups between the two.
There were two in 1981 and 1982, both won by Army, which are the only games the teams have played in the last 77 years. There were also four in the 1800s and four more between 1900 and 1908.
TigerBlog doubts that the 2020 game will repeat some of the scores of the first few games in the series. Those were:
Princeton 36, Army 4 in 1893
Princeton 11, Army 0 in 1896
Princeton 5, Army 5 in 1898
It's possible that touchdowns counted for five points back then. Or that there were a lot of safeties.
Princeton and Army were a combined 21-2 a year ago, which is fairly impressive. Army lost its 2018 opener to Duke, and from that points, its only loss was 28-21 in overtime to Oklahoma. Yes, Oklahoma, the one that made the College Football Playoffs and had the Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft, Kyler Murray.
Army then dismantled Houston 70-14 in the Armed Forces Bowl. TB remembers Army won; he didn't remember it was 70-14.
Princeton, for its part, went 10-0 a year ago, winning its third Ivy League title in six years.
Of course, there's the whole 2019 season to worry about before that game comes up. This is the 150th anniversary season, complete with a Yankee Stadium game against Dartmouth on Nov. 9. Practice begins shortly.
So for now, just tuck Princeton-Army away, but remember to be there in October 2020. If you've never seen a service academy game, they're tremendous. If you've never seen a game of any kind at Michie Stadium, they're also incredible.
Anyway, that game is 14 months or so away. More immediately, TB flies home this evening.
He'll have to load up on fish and chips before he goes.
The scenes could have been straight from any beach anywhere, especially the Jersey Shore.
There were families who were finishing their day trips. There was a group playing soccer. There were signs of picnics, and little kids digging in the sand, and dogs running into the water.
As TigerBlog said, it could have been any beach on any summer day. It wasn't, though.
This beach is like no other beach anywhere in the world.
This was Omaha Beach.
TigerBlog hasn't been touched by any place he's ever been to the way he was when he visited Normandy last week. The enormity of it all smashes you in the face from the first time you see any part of the region, understanding what went on there 75 years ago and how incredibly brave the people who made it happen were.
And after seeing the town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, where American paratroopers landed to secure the N13, the vital road out of Normandy that runs to Cherbourg, and then the simply jaw-dropping American cemetery, TB was confused, or concerned, or displeased by the fact that today Omaha Beach is just an ordinary public beach.
This is, after all, a beach where on June 6, 1944, more than 2,000 American soldiers died in a 12-hour span. And now it was just a public beach? At first, he didn't get it.
TigerBlog took the ferry across the Channel to Cherbourg and then headed towards the Normandy beaches, which he didn't realize would take him straight through Sainte-Mere-Eglise. Instead, he found himself driving right through the heart of the town, which, if you've seen "The Longest Day," you would recognize immediately.
Sainte-Mere-Eglise is the town where American paratroopers landed, falling in some cases directly on top of the German soldiers in the town square, the same town square, where on the rainy morning that TB was there, was home to a market that had fruit, bread, breakfast dishes, sausage sandwiches and any number of other things for sale.
If you looked up to the church next to the square, you'd see what at first glance seemed like a construction project, with plastic tarp covering a scaffold. When you looked closer, you'd see that it was actually a parachute, with a statue of a soldier who hangs from the building. Again, if you saw "The Longest Day," then you remember that scene with Red Buttons.
TB spent two hours in the fascinating D-Day museum at Sainte-Mere-Eglise, and were it not for the places he'd be going later that day and then the next morning, those two hours by themselves would have been a completely chilling experience.
A few hours later, after the rain ended and the sun came out, he found himself walking on a beach, a quiet, peaceful beach, where he was one of maybe 10 people out there. He didn't realize it at the time, but that piece of beach was part of Juno Beach, where the Canadian soldiers landed, between Sword and Gold, where the British landed.
There are still, to this day, remains of German defense barriers visible in the water off the shore. Walking on that beach when it was so peaceful was downright eerie, considering what went on there.
After that it was off to Omaha Beach, but first to the American cemetery. This is the where, as he said, your jaw simply hits the ground.
To see row after row of crosses and Stars of David, stretching out as far as your eye can process, and to understand that these were all Americans who were killed in the earliest hours of the liberation of Europe, well, it simply takes your breath away. The people buried there were mostly 18-22 year olds, much like the people who compete at Princeton University these days.
TigerBlog tried to find some record of Princeton's participation on D-Day, to see if any Princetonians were among those who were buried in that cemetery. He found THIS STORY by Brett Tomlinson of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, in conjunction with the 75th anniversary of D-Day this past June.
If you don't want to read through the whole story, there is this: The Aug. 11, 1944, issue carried news of a casualty in the Normandy
invasion: “On D-Day, June 6, 1st Lt. Jerry Schaefer [’40] was killed in
action in France. Jerry was a member of an airborne artillery outfit and
had previously seen action in Sicily and in the Allied landings in
Italy. To his parents and to his widow, Mrs. Margaret Schaefer, we
extend our sincere sympathy.” Schaefer is one of 355 alumni who died in
the war. His place of death is listed as Sainte-Mère-Église, France,
which is now home to the Airborne Museum, dedicated to the memory the
U.S. Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions.
Three-hundred-fifty-five alums died in the war? TB wouldn't have guessed that.
He does know the story of Tyler Campbell, Class of 1943 and a member of the US Lacrosse Hall of Fame, who died in September of 1944 in Southern France. TB looked up the town where Campbell died and found that it was 200 miles away from where he was in Normandy.
The next day TB went to Ponte Du Hoc, a cliff halfway between Omaha and Utah Beaches. It was critically important that the Americans capture the cliff, since it offered access to both of those beaches and the troops off-shore. It's a cliff, 100 feet straight up, and 255 Army Rangers started out at the bottom. Only 90 of them made it to the top, the rest gunned down, or killed when the Germans cut their ropes as they advanced to the ridge.
When you spend time at these locations, you have to close your eyes and see it, hear it - and more than anything else, appreciate it. TigerBlog certainly did. The only other places he's ever been that can even remotely compare were the Dachau concentration camp in Germany and Gettysburg's battlefield.
And maybe that's why, at first, he was so taken aback at the thought of families who were enjoying Omaha Beach. It just didn't seem right to him.
Then, when he considered what it was that all those soldiers fought for and a lot of them died for, it came to him. It was all about giving back freedom to French families to enjoy that beach.
TigerBlog hopes you enjoyed last week's five-piece series, answering the questions he was asked about some of the emotions he's felt with Princeton Athletics through the decades.
He did something with those five entries that he hasn't done in the 11 years that he's been writing this every day. He wrote all five of them in advance, which meant he didn't have to write at all last week.
Then he asked Jim Barlow to write a guest blog yesterday, and as always Jim's piece was tremendous and got great feedback.
Why did he do this?
He's been away for the last week, in England and France to be specific. Actually he's still there, in England, along the southern coast.
It's been a long time since he's had such a vacation. In fact, the last five times prior to this that he has left the United States, it's been with a Princeton team.
Before this trip, he'd been to 16 different European countries, though never to England or France, unless you count a one-hour stopover in the Paris airport in 1974. He's seen a lot in the last week, starting in London, where he went to see, of all things, "Fiddler on the Roof" on the West End.
He's spent he last few days in the southern coast, near the towns of Poole and Bournemouth. He's seen some spectacular beaches on the English Channel, with views to the Isle of Wight to the East. He's stumbled on a seafood festival. He's seen Buckingham and Windsor Castles.
He's also ridden a bicycle that he's rented.
What people in the United States immediately think of when they think of England is that they drive on the other side - the wrong side? - of the road here, with a steering wheel on the other side - wrong side? - of the car. The impact of this goes way beyond mild curiosity.
If you're used to driving on the right side, then you're also used to looking certain ways when you get to intersections. Over here, everything is reversed.
It's even more pronounced when you're on a bike, as TB has learned. He's constantly found himself unsure of which way to look when he gets to intersections, of which there aren't that many, since the English seem to love roundabouts, which can also be confusing.
He's done well though, other than a minor incident with a double-decker bus, which was sort of his fault anyway.
England is a very charming, very welcoming country. The people here have been beyond friendly and very laid back, even in London. They joke about most things, and they speak in very flowery language that enhances the charm.
Even while he's been away, he's still kept in touch with what's been going on at Princeton. The biggest news has been the great success that Princeton has had at the Pan Am Games, which recently concluded in Brazil.
If you went to goprincetontigers.com yesterday, you noticed that four of the top six stories were about Pan Am medalists, and that doesn't include the gold that Kareen Maddox won in 3x3 basketball last week.
Bella Alarie helped the USA women's basketball team to a silver medal, falling 79-73 to Brazil in the final after being unbeaten to that point. Alarie, the rising senior, averaged 6.6 points, 5.6 rebounds and 1.6 steals in the tournament.
Princeton had two alums win field hockey medals: Elise Wong helped Canada to the silver, while Kathleen Sharkey helped the USA to the bronze. Argentina won the gold to automatically qualify for the 2020 Olympic Games, but the U.S. and Canada will still be able to compete in Olympic qualifying later in the year.
Sharkey, by the way, was the flag bearer for the U.S. team in the opening ceremonies, you might recall.
Then there were the gold medalists.
Ashleigh Johnson was the U.S. goalie in women's water polo, and not surprisingly, the U.S. cruised through the tournament unbeaten while outscoring its six opponents 142-24. The U.S. simply dominates women's water polo internationally, and Johnson's resume now includes an Olympic gold medal, a Pan Am Games gold medal, numerous world championships and numerous world player of the year awards.
In women's fencing, four Princetonians combined to win six gold medals, including two each for alums Kat Holmes (epee) and Eliza Stone (saber). The two then were part of team gold medals in their events, and those teams included current Princeton fencers Kasia Nixon (epee) and Chloe Fox-Gitomer (saber).
Todd Harrity also won gold, in doubles squash, which made its Pan Am Games debut.
So what is that, nine gold medals? And two more silver and one bronze?
TigerBlog has a standing offer to anyone who would like to share this space to say something about Princeton Athletics and what it means to him or her.
The person who has taken him up on this the most is Princeton's men's soccer coach Jim Barlow, who led his team to the Ivy League championship and NCAA tournament a year ago. TB asked Barlow if he would write something about what a coach is thinking in the days before preseason begins. What he got back is hardly what he expected. In typical Jim Barlow fashion, it is well worth reading:
It’s
hard to believe that the summer is almost over. The tell-tale signs are usually
when the English Premier League starts (it kicked off this weekend, Go
Liverpool!), my Mets have been all but officially eliminated from playoff
contention (not this year, thankfully), and my inbox becomes flooded with email
reminders about things to do to prepare for the upcoming season. One email that
came out of the blue this week was from from Tiger Blog, who asked me if I
would like to write a guest blog about what the last few days before preseason
are like.
Usually,
it’s the best time of the year. The excitement of finally getting to be with
the team again, the curiosity to see who improved over the summer, what the
incoming class looks like and how the pieces may fit together all contribute
to the positive energy and mood of the group. And, it’s the start of a two-week
period (yes, two weeks) where the entire focus of the job is
on building a team. It’s the real work that drew me into coaching in the first
place. This means creating a culture, establishing responsibilities, and
challenging and pushing some great student athletes to be better. It’s
incredibly fun.
This
year, however, the joy of the days leading up to preseason have been tempered a
bit.
Last Monday, Princeton lost one of its most gifted and creative artists of all time when Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison died. I haven’t read much Morrison,
but the news of her death quickly brought me back to a memorial service that
Princeton held just days after the September 11th attack in 2001. Toni Morrison
read her poem “The Dead of September 11th” (click HERE to read it; it’s
amazing) at a packed Cannon Green, and her words stayed with me as I kept them
taped to my desk in the soccer office for some time. I even quoted them when I
spoke at my former assistant coach and close friend Rob Myslik’s ’90 funeral in
2003 after Rob was killed in a car accident.
Today,
however, as Princeton and the world mourn Morrison’s death, I cannot help but
think how her powerful poem from 2001 could instead be titled, “The Dead of
August 2019” in memory of those killed in Dayton and El Paso last
weekend.
Word of those tragedies triggered memories of April 1999, when I was
setting up cones for a spring workout. Our
captain Chad Adams ’00 came out to the field and told me that a shooting in
Columbine High School had just occurred. I remember the shock and disbelief
among the players and coaches, and the overwhelming sadness that enveloped the
field and the country that day. It seemed no one knew what to say.
I must be
steady and I must be clear, knowing all the time that I have nothing to say
(Morrison, “The Dead of September 11th)
What
helped me, however, and many others, during those dark days in April 1999 following
the Columbine shooting, and after September 11th, 2001, and after January,
2003, when Rob died, and after many other national and personal tragedies over
the years (including April, 2008, when Princeton soccer assistant coach Arron
Lujan and his wife Heather lost their two-year-old son Vaughn to meningitis)
was the Princeton Soccer family.
And, as I think about the days leading up to
preseason and what they are like, I can’t help but feel incredibly grateful
that in just another week that family will be back together. In a world that
seems so depressing and hopeless lately, this group is inspiring and uplifting,
on and off the field, and gives me reason to be optimistic about the future. Our
team is made up of players from different races, religions, geographic
backgrounds, income levels, sexual orientations, political leanings, and
academic interests, and yet, somehow, they all get along, treat each other as
equals, work together to solve problems and succeed, comfort each other during
tough times, and have a ton of fun. And they’re a pretty good soccer team, too.
The glue that keeps it all together is how much they care about the team and
each other, in good times and bad. After observing how some of our media and
politicians have responded to our recent tragedies, I think our team has much
to teach our country.
It's
the Princeton Soccer family who rallied together to support Rob Myslik’s family
and wife Sue after Rob’s accident and who pays tribute to Rob every time they
step on the field named in his memory. It’s the Princeton Soccer family who
traveled with the Lujan family to a funeral for Vaughn in Richmond, Virginia,
and who decided to get team uniforms with Vaughn Lujan’s name on them to wear
to his memorial service in the Princeton Chapel. It’s that same family who
rallied around current Associate Head Coach Steve Totten and his wife Liz when
Liz was faced with a terrible diagnosis two years ago, and who continue to
support them as Liz works incredibly hard to recover. And, as national
tragedies are becoming more and more commonplace, it will be the Princeton
Soccer Family who pulls together and provides support and hope for each other
during these difficult days in our country.
I
can’t wait for the guys to arrive to start the work of defending an Ivy title
and begin anew the process of becoming a special team. It will be great to have
the family back on campus.
Have a question you want answered on TigerBlog? Let us know. Click here, or send an e-mail to oac@princeton.edu.
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When TB first saw that picture, it made him think of a recently graduated Princeton athlete:
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