Miracle, Revisited

Yesterday was the 41st anniversary of the Miracle on Ice.

The actual one. 

If you are a little younger than TigerBlog, then it's a shame for you (other than the being young part), because you'll never see an event like that ever in your lifetime.

It's impossible. Sorry to have to break it to you.

It's not even possible to explain just what that two week run by the 1980 U.S. Olympic men's hockey team was like. Forget just the on-ice drama, which by itself was extraordinary.

It was more than a sporting event. It was an entire country that rallied around a hockey team of college kids, not a professional among them, that went out and toppled the mightiest of the mighty, the Soviet Union. 

Just seeing the "CCCP" on the front of the jersey was enough to spark fear in an opponent. To see the way a team with "USA" on the front of its jerseys took it to them was astonishing. It made every person in this country stop and take notice.

Here's something that will give you chills:

 

Great moments are born of great opportunity. Chills, right? 

Even now, thinking back on it, TigerBlog still can't believe the U.S. team won that game. It was extraordinary.

If you want more chills and have 12 minutes to invest, try this:

 

It was also a different world, with no social media, or no internet for that matter. Hey, the game wasn't even shown live on TV. 

TigerBlog has been to Lake Placid, the site of those Olympics. He went into the Olympic ice arena, albeit in the summer when it was empty, and it was still impossible not to be taken back. It was like no other experience TB has ever had in any venue.

Of course, Princeton men's hockey has had some of its biggest moments in that building, most recently the 2018 ECAC tournament championship, won in overtime 2-1 over Clarkson. The 1998 Tigers also won their ECAC title in Lake Placid, also in overtime, also against Clarkson. That time it was 5-4 in double overtime.

The game-winner in 1998 came from Syl Apps, less than a minute into the second OT. The game-winner in 2018 came from Max Becker 2:37 into the overtime, after Clarkson had tied the game with just 6.4 seconds left in regulation.

TB remembers watching the game and being stunned that the Knights, shut out for 59:53.6, actually tied the game. He thought that Clarkson had all the momentum heading into the overtime after that, but that's not how it played out.

As for the actual Miracle on Ice, it's one of those events where everyone remembers watching it or where they were. TB met a man in Lake Placid who, sadly, had given away his tickets for the game because he thought that the Soviets were going to dominate and he didn't want to be there to see it.

One Princeton alum who had an interesting view that day was Amie Knox, Class of 1977.

Knox was an associate producer for ABC Sports at the time, and she was working on the alpine skiing events. She was finished for the day when the hockey game began, and she ended up watching it in the production truck.

That's a pretty good story.  

Knox was one of the great early athletes in Princeton history, and she won the 1977 von Kienbusch Award as the top senior female athletes.

She's also one of just 17 women in Princeton history to letter in three different sports, in her case field hockey, squash and tennis. She and Emily Goodfellow are the only two women at Princeton to letter in three sports as an athlete their senior years.

Knox is one of the women featured in TB's upcoming book on the history of women's athletics at Princeton, which recently passed the 90,000-word mark. He's closing in on finishing it, which will start the editing and layout and printing process. 

TB has been able to share some of the stories he's done as part of the excerpts on the women's history page. The entire book is a big collection of those stories, and there have been some great ones to tell. 

If anything there are just too many, and he's just not going to be able to tell them all in one book, though he wishes he could.