90 Yards Of Championships

The women's lacrosse team announced its 2020 schedule yesterday.

As always, the team is going down a challenging path, with 15 games that include seven against NCAA tournament teams from a year ago and an eighth game against a team, Penn State, that had been in seven straight before last year.

Among the non-league highlights are home games against defending NCAA champion Maryland and 2019 quarterfinalist Virginia, as well as hosting Florida for the first time and making the trip to Stony Brook. There's also a spring break game at Jacksonville, another NCAA team last year.

One interesting note about the schedule - the team opens the season with six away games in the first seven and then ends it with five home games in the final six. If you're a fan who wants to come to the games, that's good news, since the weather will be better for the later home games.

Opening day is still four months away. Actually, it's exactly four months away, as the Tigers begin the season at Temple on February 15. Today's the 15th, right?

Princeton will be chasing a seventh straight Ivy League championship in 2020. Last year's season saw the team go 16-4, win the league regular-season and tournament titles and advance to the NCAA quarterfinals. 

The story about the schedule release (you can read it HERE) includes a picture of members of the women's lacrosse team at the football game Friday night against Lafayette. The annual "Parade of Champions" was held at halftime, and it made for a very good celebratory picture of the women's lacrosse players.

Princeton won 12 Ivy League championships and three others in sports that compete in leagues other than the Ivy League. TB has said this many times before, but it's worth repeating: Princeton has now been in double figures in Ivy League titles in 26 different academic years. Harvard has done so 10 times. No other Ivy school has ever done it.

As for the parade itself, it was extraordinary on two levels.

First, with all of the championships that Princeton won a year ago, the line of athletes on the field stretched from inside one five yard line to inside the other. That's at least 90 yards of championship winning athletes.

Second, that long line didn't even include three teams that won Ivy titles a year ago - the men's and women's soccer teams and, of course, the football team.

It was really an extraordinary sight.

The whole thing got TigerBlog wondering how many athletes were part of championship teams last year. He did a little research, and he came up with 452.

Princeton has just about 1,000 varsity athletes, so nearly half of them won a league championship last year. In the Department of Athletics, the conversation often is about providing the best possible experience for the athletes, and part of that has always been defined as a championship experience, the opportunity to win at least one championship in their four years.

And a year ago, nearly half of them had that. 

How's that? Amazing, right?

It certainly looked it from the football press box.

As TB said, there were the three teams who couldn't be part of it Friday night. The football team, obviously, was playing.

The men's and women's soccer teams were on the road, at Brown the next day, and they had already left on the trip.

Those two will be part of a different doubleheader today on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium, as both teams host Lehigh. The women's game is first, at 5, followed by the men at 7:30.

There's another soccer doubleheader this weekend at Princeton, as the Tigers welcome Columbia. This time, the men's game will be first, at 4, followed by the women at 7.

Admission is free for both doubleheaders.