Kelsey And Sabrina

It's too bad you weren't on the Office of Athletic Communications Zoom meeting yesterday morning.

TigerBlog's colleague Elliott Carr was in the middle of speaking when a dog appeared and then settled in on the couch next to Elliott. The entire time, Elliott never gave any indication that he was aware that a dog was next to him.

It was only after he (Elliott, not the dog) finished making his point that he put his arm around the dog. 

Then, a few minutes later, Elliott began to speak again. This time, the dog picked his head up and turned around, putting his face a few inches away from Elliott's. He seemed to be hanging on every word. When Elliott finished, the dog put his head back down.

It was a very cute scene.

Would you rather have a dog or a cat? Dogs are tougher to take care of, whereas cats are very low maintenance. On the other hand, you're not going to find too many cats who had the same reaction as Elliott's dog did.

Speaking of dogs, Kelsey Koelzer's dog almost made an appearance on the latest edition of "The First 50" podcast, the series in which TigerBlog and Mollie Marcoux Samaan have been interviewing women from all different eras at Princeton to talk about their experiences and the ways that being an athlete at Princeton impacted them first as college students and then as they went down the paths of their lives and careers.

Koelzer, of course, is one of the greatest women's hockey players Princeton has ever known. She was the first Princeton woman to be named a first-team All-American, and he list of individual achievements is enormously long, including being the 2016 ECAC Defenseman of the Year, the Ivy League Player of the Year and a three-time All-ECAC and three-time All-Ivy League selection.

Her accomplishments in the hockey world have not ended with her graduation from Princeton in 2017. 

She has been a professional player, and it was just announced that she will become the National Women's Hockey League's advisor to the commissioner on Diversity and Inclusion.

The National Women’s Hockey League today announced that Kelsey Koelzer (@khockeyk11) has been appointed Advisor to the Commissioner on Diversity and Inclusion.

Details: https://t.co/8RzYrz7vaq pic.twitter.com/lG5J6cguEX

— NWHL (@NWHL) March 25, 2021

Koelzer is also in the process of starting the women's program at Arcadia University, located outside of Philadelphia. Extra credit given if you knew that Arcadia is the Knights.

The program wasn't set to begin until next year even before the COVID pandemic, so Koelzer has had a chance to ease into putting a team on the ice. When she does coach her first game, she will become the first black head coach in NCAA hockey history.

Koelzer was joined on the podcast by Sabrina King, the head women's volleyball coach. King is the only Princeton female athlete who has ever been the Ivy League Player of the Year and Coach of the Year as a Tiger.

For the record, King has been a part of nine Ivy League championship teams - three as a player, two as an assistant coach and four more as the head coach.

One of the best parts of the podcast series has to see the way it pairs two women who may or may not have ever met and then to see what the common themes are when it comes to their experiences. Koelzer and King have amazingly different perspectives, as Koelzer is from a non-hockey hotbed (Horsham, Pa.) and King is from the hotbed of all volleyball hotbeds, Southern Califorinia.

They both learned a great deal from their Princeton coaches, Glenn Nelson in the case of King (who also coached under Nelson) and Jeff Kampersal and Cara Morey for Koelzer. Now that both of them are head coaches themselves, it was interesting to hear them talk about those topics. 

Another crazy thing about all of these podcasts is that it's TB's job to keep Marcoux Samaan updated on the time, which he does through the chat. He doesn't really pay that much attention to the clock in the beginning, and then when he does check, he's shocked to see that it's been 15 or 20 minutes or even more. 

When he and Marcoux Samaan were taping the podcast with King and Koelzer, TB even wrote in the chat that time was just flying by. That's been another common theme of the podcast series. 

Anyway, Koelzer and King were excellent on the podcast. It's well worth the time to listen.

You can listen to the podcast HERE.