The Decade In Review

Well, it's the last day of 2019, which makes it the last day of the decade.

This means that tomorrow starts TigerBlog's fifth decade of covering Princeton sports.

The first four have all been really good ones. Princeton teams have won a lot of championships. There have been epic wins. There have been great players. There have been Princeton athletes with great stories to tell.

It's been more than anyone who works in college athletics can ever hope to experience. TB says this a lot, that he's been fortunate to have been at Princeton all these years, seeing first-hand all of these amazing young people compete, understanding that the core values of the athletic department go beyond just that success, that he's really always been in the business of education and not just athletics.

He's always loved the fact that Princeton's athletes have the other sides to them, the sides of service and academic pursuits. He equally loves the fact that Princeton doesn't use that as way of lowering its athletic standards or as an excuse. That is a major part of what makes this place so special.

Princeton won 117 Ivy titles in the first 10 years of this century. It won 116 in the next 10. What's in store for the 10 about to begin? There's no way to be sure, but the facts are 1) no other league school has come close to the number of championships that Princeton has won and 2) the next Ivy title will be the 500th all-time.

TB received an email yesterday from a member of the Class of 1991 who asked about the 1991 NCAA men's basketball game between Princeton and Villanova, which was as crushing a loss as TB has been around in his time here. That email got TB thinking about how the athletes back then weren't that much younger than he was and how today they're younger than his son and peers of his daughter.

In between, he used to marvel at the idea of how the athletes were born shortly after he was, and then born when he was in high school and then college and then already working at Princeton and so on.

To recap the last decade, goprincetontigers.com did a countdown of the top 10 athletes from 2000-2009. Any guesses as to who the top male and female athletes were in that list?

TB will give you a few paragraphs on that one.

For the decade that ends today, the good people at GPT decided to do something a little different. This time, there are two stories, one from yesterday and one that will be up today.

The first listed the top event for each of Princeton's teams, with 35 events listed (indoor and outdoor track and field counted as one each). Today's list will feature the top athlete for each of the 35 programs.

Here is the link to the first one.

The choices were made by the Office of Athletic Communications staff, which means that they're subjective. Any Princeton fan is entitled to a different opinion, and in fact, the OAC encourages you to share your opinions by emailing them to jprice@princeton.edu.

There are some teams whose top event was fairly obvious (the 2012 NCAA field hockey championship game win is one), but most of them had several that could have been considered. Also, it was impossible not to take into account historical significance.

For instance, which was a better men's hockey game, the 2017 ECAC opening round playoff series Game 2 against Colgate, when Princeton tied it with one second left in regulation and then won it in overtime, or the 2018 ECAC championship game, when Princeton allowed a goal with six seconds left in regulation and then won in overtime?

It's hard to have a better game than that Colgate game, but the championship game was 1) close, 2) accompanied by a league title and NCAA tournament trip and 3) the pick in the story.

There are some easy picks for the top athlete (Ashleigh Johnson in women's water polo should be no surprise) and then others that are brutal. The toughest ones were in sports like men's hockey (Max Veronneau or Ryan Kuffner (or even Eric Robinson), women's basketball (Niveen Rasheed or Bella Alarie, with Blake Dietrick not that far behind), men's lacrosse (Michael Sowers, Tom Schreiber or Zach Currier) and some others.

You'll have to go to GPT today and see for yourself.

As for the last decade, the two No. 1s were Alicia Aemisegger of the women's swim team and Yasser El Halaby of the men's squash team.  The top 10 from that decade is listed HERE.

There was no picking of the top event or the two top athletes of this decade. Maybe TB will give you his thoughts on that after the new year.

In the meantime, email your opinions.

And have a great, happy - and very, very safe - New Year's Eve.