End Of Summer

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."

And with that, hopefully you had a great summer.