Ivy Openers

What is the record for most Ivy League championships won by one class?

The answer is 51, by the Princeton Classes of 2001 and 2002.

Does that make those two classes the best in Ivy League history? Presumably if you asked a member of those classes what they thought, they'd give you a quick "duh, obviously."

Is that the best metric? Well, the Classes of 2012 and 2013 won 49 each. They should at least be in the conversation.

Again, though, is total Ivy titles won the best definition? It might be, the more TigerBlog thinks about it. The downside is that you have to figure out an objective way to measure the contributions of the athletes only from those particular classes and see how directly they impacted those championships, something that might not be measurable.

TigerBlog has always said that the measure of an extraordinary year is one where you reach double figures in Ivy titles. Princeton has done that five years in a row.

If you go back before that, there was one year under 10 and then five more in a row in double figures, which means 10 of the last 11 academic years have seen Princeton win at least 10 Ivy titles.

That's fairly amazing when you consider that Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn and Yale have never done it and that Harvard has done it 10 times in its history. All told Princeton has done so 26 times.

If you've been a loyal reader, you know exactly what movie clip all of this conjures up for TigerBlog. It's THIS one.

In other words, none of this is Princeton's right, and none of this should ever be taken for granted. Princeton's coaches and athletes, backed by the "Team Around The Team," work really hard to make that success a reality.

So far this year, all eight Ivy League schools are exactly even in every Ivy League race. That changes really soon.

In fact, the first Ivy League events of the 2019-20 academic year come up this weekend.

There are three Princeton teams who will be playing their Ivy League openers. All three were voted as the preseason favorite in the Ivy League, so maybe they should just be awarded the championship and leave it at that?

Just kidding.

The first Ivy opener will see the women's volleyball team host Penn tomorrow night at 7 at Dillon Gym.

There are four Ivy women's volleyball teams who are either 7-2 or 8-2 and then four others who are below .500. Penn, at 7-2, is in the first group. Princeton, at 4-5, is in the second.

What does that mean? Nothing. It's about how the schedule prepares you for the league season, not about the wins and losses.

There are two other Ivy openers Saturday, one in field hockey at Dartmouth (at noon) and the other in women's soccer at Princeton.

The field hockey team has played just a brutal schedule, which is how the Tigers like it.

Princeton is 3-4 on the season, with all seven games against ranked teams, including three of the top five teams. Princeton has also played seven one-goal games.

This is a team that has been tested and is used to having to play at a level where it can compete with the best.

The women's soccer team is home against Yale Saturday at 4. Princeton is 3-3-2, with its most recent outing a 1-0 win over William & Mary. Yale is 6-2, and the teams have not played any common opponents.

There are other events this weekend as well. The whole schedule is HERE.

The current Princeton senior class, by the way, has won 34 Ivy titles in three years - 11 and 11 as freshmen and sophomores and then 12 last year. That leaves them 17 off tying the record, and the record for one year is 15, back in 2010-11.

That's always a good goal to shoot for - as long as you keep in mind what Patton was saying on his walk.

Right now, everyone in every Ivy sport is 0-0.

TigerBlog has a chart each year of Ivy titles and where every team has placed. He needs to reset it for 2019-20 before this weekend.

It's the start of the race for Ivy championships in 33 different sports. It's always a fascinating run.