Dominant

Just when TigerBlog thought he had finished writing his women's history book, along came the women's lightweight rowers.

Princeton destroyed Wisconsin by 26 seconds to win the IRA national title last weekend on Mercer Lake. It was the 56th national championship for Princeton's women, with 34 team and 22 individual titles.

One of those other 33 team titles was won by the 2006 women's open rowing team. That boat featured four Olympians, three of whom won medals, including two-time gold medalist Caroline Lind. Even now, 15 years later, that boat has still produced an Olympian as Gevvie Stone is headed to Tokyo. Stone, who is also a doctor, won a silver medal in single sculls in 2016 in Rio.

You can read a very good account of the 2006 women's rowing team HERE, courtesy of TB's colleague Warren Croxton. 

TB's book also features Lind, Stone and Andreanne Morin, a silver medalist for Canada, along with 2011 Princeton rower Lauren Wilkinson, who is also Canadian and who also won silver. Lind is in a piece with Ashleigh Johnson, the two female gold medalists Princeton has produced. Stone, Morin and Wilkinson tell their stories together.

The 2011 team on which Wilkinson rowed also won the NCAA championship. The 2006 boat, though, was, as Warren's story suggests, "dominant."

TB has been asked many questions over the past few months as he's worked on this project, including what the single best team Princeton women's athletics has ever fielded was. He is very diplomatic when it comes to answering, but you can make a real case for the 2006 women's first varsity 8. 

There are others on the list. Without slighting anyone, there's the 2012 field hockey team, the 2002 women's lacrosse team and the 2013 fencing team, all of whom won NCAA championships. 

Of course, not all of the greatest teams in Princeton women's history won national championships. There are women's basketball teams in the conversation, for instance.

The list of the greatest teams will not include the 2021 women's lightweight rowers. It will be on the list of teams who had to endure the most to get the starting line, let alone the finish line.

Clearly, this championship for the Tigers was unlike any of the 55 that preceded it.

On the day that it was announced that Princeton would be suspending spring sports in 2020 and the University would be sending students home, the IRA rankings came out and had the Tigers ranked No. 1. Since then, the team went through a long, arduous, challenging road to get back out onto the water at all this spring.

TB spoke to three members of the women's lightweight rowing team yesterday: Annie Anezakis, Isabelle Chandler and Lauren Sanchez. Anezakis, by the way, spoke to TB before getting on a plane to return to her home in Australia.

They told him their stories of how they dealt with the shutdown in 2020, what they did to stay connected with each other from literally every corner of the world, what it meant to them to come back this spring, what they felt for the 2020 teammates who didn't get to pursue their national championship and what it was like when they won the race last weekend.

Lastly, he asked them what they think they'll take away from the entire experience and how COVID disrupted their college experience. What will they ultimately remember the most about it.

They spoke about it all. There were common themes throughout the conversations, especially about how they learned a great deal about themselves from the entire thing. The word "resilience" came up more than once.

Their national championship was a fitting end to the 50th year of women's athletics at Princeton. It won't be the end of the book, though. It'll be the prologue. 

For this team, getting to the start was as big as getting to the finish.