More On The First 50

TigerBlog remembers the first time he ever saw the Princeton women's basketball team play.

Apparently, he remembers it well.

The way he's always remembered the game, from the 1983-84 season, was that the women's game was the opening game of a doubleheader with the men at the Palestra. TB was a Penn student then. 

As he recalled, the game went into overtime, and as such, it ran to the point where most of the full house that was coming to watch the men's game was already there when it ended. He remembered that Princeton won the game, and he had memories of a Princeton woman who made a huge foul shot with the Penn fans waving their arms and yelling "Choke, Choke, Choke."

For the record, TB was not one of the ones doing such a chant. Perhaps back then there was something already inside of him that recognized that there was much more Orange and Black in his future than Red and Blue.

As it turns out, the woman who made that foul shot was Ellen Devoe, whose steal and layup at the end of regulation tied the game and forced the overtime in the first place.

It was a conversation that TB had yesterday with Karen Konigsberg, Class of 1986, that sparked the memory of that game. Konigsberg was a member of that Princeton team, and she remembered it pretty much the same way.

TigerBlog was talking to Konigsberg as part of his work on the book he's currently writing on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton. 

As part of the 50th celebration, you can read excerpts from the book on the goprincetontigers.com/50years page. The first excerpt is already there, from Chapter 1, the story of Merrily Dean Baker.

You can read that HERE.

It's an excerpt, so it's not the entire chapter on Merrily. Her story is Chapter 1, and longtime Princeton women's track and field coach Peter Farrell was correct when he said that telling the story of women's sports at Princeton is impossible without starting with Merrily. 

TigerBlog spent a few days in Florida speaking with her back in January. She told him so many great stories about her time at Princeton and her own life and experiences that he was excited to get the book going.

From there, that excitement has only grown, as woman after woman TB speaks with is incredibly amazing.

Konigsberg, who scored two points in that game at the Palestra, is one of the very short list of women who lettered in three sports at Princeton, as she played field hockey and softball in addition to basketball. She also went on to Harvard Law School and, as a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York would help root organized crime out of the Teamsters' union.

Did you want to take on the mob? And what does she say helped prepare her for that? Her athletic experience at Princeton. 

That was yesterday. 

Earlier this week, TB spoke with Cathy Corcione, who at the age of 15 - before women were even allowed at Princeton - was a member of the U.S. Olympic swimming team at the 1968 Games in Mexico City. She told TB the story of how she went from being too young to swim on the local swim club team to the Olympics in nine years. She talked about how she was adopted, how she reconnected with her birth family, how she witnessed first-hand the way the country changed in 1968, how she became a national collegiate swimming champion and how she and only five teammates led Princeton to a third-place national team finish.

There was also Deborah Saint-Phard, another Olympian. 

Saint-Phard was born in Haiti and left when she was six months old, fleeing the terror of Papa Doc. It wouldn't be until she was almost a Princeton grad that she would be able to return.

In the meantime, she moved so many times that TB thinks he lost track, but she lived in New York City, outside of Washington, D.C., and in Kansas (twice), Alabama and Louisiana. 

She became a world class shot putter, and she represented her native country in the 1988 Olympics. She even carried the flag in the opening ceremonies.

Today? She's a sports medicine doctor in Colorado and a strong advocate for the health of women and girls in sports. 

There was Amie Knox, who also lettered in three sports, including one, squash, that she had never played before arriving at Princeton. Did that stop her from becoming the No. 2 player in the country at one point? Nope.

It's one story after another like these. Pretty much all of them could fill a book.

TB is about 40,000 words into the project. He has a long way to go, and a lot of stories to tell.

He's very happy about where the book is going. And he's positive of what the main takeaway will be.

There aren't too many more people anywhere more impressive than the women who have played or coached at Princeton.