The Princeton 500

Something really, really special happened in Jadwin Gym yesterday afternoon.

You know. Up there with anything TigerBlog has seen in all the time he's worked at Princeton.

It was the wrestling match against Cornell. The background is pretty much all you need:

* Cornell had won the Ivy title 17 straight times and had won 92 straight Ivy matches
* If Cornell won, it would make that 18 straight
* If Princeton won, it would earn at least a share of the title
* Chris Ayres and his staff have built Princeton wrestling up from basically the ground floor
* Princeton had won 499 all-time Ivy League championships prior to yesterday

That's a lot, right?

Add in a huge Jadwin crowd that essentially filled the entire lower bowl, and you get the picture.

Trailing 10-4, Princeton then won five straight matches, clinching it when Travis Stefanik went from down 4-3 with a minute to go to up 6-4 with a takedown with 10 seconds left and then finally 10-4 at the end with back points.

It was Stefanik's dramatic match that sealed it for the Tigers, and it set off a huge roar in Jadwin when the dream became reality. The final was 19-15 Princeton, and the wrestling team had itself some history.

Actually, a lot of it.

TigerBlog will have more on the wrestling team tomorrow. Today, though, belongs to every athlete in Princeton history who ever has won an Ivy League championship.

And how many of them would there be? How about more than 8,000.

And how many Ivy League championship rings does it all add up to now? How about 14,000.

Those are extraordinary numbers.

Princeton becomes the first Ivy League school to reach 500 league titles. Harvard is in second place, with 428.

No other school is even more than halfway to 500.

Princeton's women alone have won 214 championships. Half the league hasn't won more than that between their men and women combined.

It's obviously something worthy of a major celebration.

The first Ivy League championship was won in the 1956-57 academic year, the first of official Ivy League competition. That first title belonged to the men's squash team.

If you want to see much more about the 500th, click HERE.

Here's some basic information:

The first year of official Ivy League competition was 1956-57, a year in which Yale won seven league titles to Princeton's four. After 10 years, Princeton had 32 Ivy titles, behind both Harvard (46) and Yale (35).
Princeton finally caught Yale in the 1970-71 academic year. As for Harvard, that would take longer.
In fact, at one point, Harvard had a 43-title lead on Princeton. It actually wasn't until the 1990s that Princeton actually took the lead.
In the last 27 years, Princeton has a 292-196 lead over the Crimson. That's how Princeton has built this huge lead.

Princeton has been in double figures in Ivy League championships 26 times, including 10 of the last 11. Only Harvard, who has done so 10 times, has also done it.

Each of the 33 Princeton teams who compete for Ivy titles has won at least two. There are 24 teams who have won at least 10 and nine who have won at least 20.

The overall leader is men's swimming and diving at 30. The field hockey team leads the women with 26.

TB has been here for more than half of those 500 championships. He's said the same thing every year - winning is not something you can ever take for granted, and nobody at Princeton ever does.

Still, to have that level of consistency speaks to a lot of things. It talks about having a clear vision, something that both Directors of Athletics TB has worked for - Gary Walters and now Mollie Marcoux Samaan - have articulated and then made sure that the entire department embraced.

Princeton has been represented all of these years by incredible coaches, and those coaches have gone out and recruited some of the most amazing people TB has ever met in the athletes who have competed here.

The result of their own experience is that they have gone on to become extraordinarily loyal alums who are invested in making sure the current generation of athletes has the best possible experience they can have as well. And the people who work in the Department of Athletics? They are a highly committed group who takes great pride in how their contributions make an impact.

And so this achievement belongs to everyone at Princeton.

And, again, it's never something to take for granted. Getting to 500 has been remarkable, but nobody is satisfied.

Still, it's definitely something to celebrate.