Three Sporters

TigerBlog starts today with the following list of alums:

Constance Turner Haydock ’75
Emily Goodfellow ’76
Patricia Harnisch Zajac ’76
Amie Knox ’77
Deborah Hodes ’78
Stacey Shreiner Kley’78
Kris Brower Schulte ’83
Angelina M. Dennis ’84
Eliot Ammidon Jacobs ’85
Cynthia Griffin Ferris ’86
Karen Konigsberg ’86
Sonja S. Bauer ’86
Jane Dietze ’87
Katherine B. Schulze ’88
Suzanne Morrison ’89
Demer Holleran ’89
Kathryn Barrows ’00

So what do these 17 women have in common?

As far as TB can tell, these 17 women are the only women who ever lettered in three sports at Princeton. This excludes cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field, with all due respect to the mental and physical toll it takes to run distance in three seasons.

More than half of the 17 played field hockey, lacrosse and something else in the winter. That group featured four who played hockey, four who played squash and one each who played basketball and swam. A total of 15 played field hockey in the fall.

As you can see, of the 17 women listed, there were 16 who competed in the 1970s and 1980s. The only one since 1989 to do so was Kathryn Barrows, who lettered twice in soccer, twice in hockey and once in lacrosse. 

Today Kathryn Barrows makes nature documentaries, including one that will soon be out about an all-female excursion to the North Pole. 

For today's purposes, is anyone missing from that list?  

TB would like to see if anyone is missing, so he figured he'd put it out to his readers for feedback. If you know anyone you think should be on the list but isn't, please let him know.

What you can't see just by looking on the list is that only three of those athletes earned varsity letters in three sports as seniors. That would be Amie Knox, Emily Goodfellow and Suzanne Morrison (and Morrison's story has an interesting twist, though TB doesn't want to give away too much from his upcoming book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton).

The fact that apparently only one athlete has lettered in three sports in the last 30 years and the fact that only three lettered in three sports as seniors shows you how difficult it is to be a three-sport athlete. In the early days, some of this was done to fill out rosters of the new teams.

For instance, neither Goodfellow nor Knox had played squash before they came to Princeton. For her part, Knox was a tennis player at least, so she had preexisting racket skills. Goodfellow was a field hockey/lacrosse player, so she came to squash without any serious racket sport experience, which in some ways she says helped her.

Since 14 of the 17 did not play three sports as seniors, it's clear that the demands of going through Princeton as a student who plays on three different teams are quite challenging. The fact that only one athlete was able to letter in three sports in the last 31 years shows how much more intense the commitment is to each individual team, and that's something that starts long before college.

TB has been asked many times why there are so many fewer multisport athletes in college, and the answer is because there are so many fewer in eighth grade, let alone high school. These days kids are regularly forced to choose a specialization at a much earlier age, either due to year-round travel teams or training programs.

There is a chapter on three-sport athletes in the upcoming book, for which TB has already written about 50,000 words. Hey, there were 47,094 words in the entire novel "The Great Gatsby."

Another part of the celebration of the anniversary is the First50 podcast, which TB has been doing with Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan, herself a two-sport Princeton athlete (soccer, hockey). 

The third episode of the podcast was released yesterday, and it features two contemporary athletes, Kat Holmes (fencing) and Kat Sharkey (field hockey). They share more than just a nickname - both were NCAA champions at Princeton who went on to compete in the Olympics.

They both did a great job on the podcast, which you can listen to HERE.

One of the best parts was when they talked about how much of the world they're seen through the years with their athletic careers. It was also great to hear them talk about how they came to play their sports, what is unique about those sports and what they feel  has been the value of sport.

Again, they were both great.

And once again, if you know someone who lettered in three sports who is not on TB's list, please let him know.