The Last Summer Weekend

Well, it's the last weekend of the summer.

Officially, anyway. Summer seems to end when a new school year begins, or at least after Labor Day. 

Little by little, the days are getting shorter. Sunset today is at 7:06 this evening.

Autumn is a great season. It'll cool but not yet cold. The next few weeks will bring what is annually the best weather of the year in the Princeton area. The leaves will be changing into brilliant colors. Spring is a season of rebirth; fall is a season of beauty. 

But hey, you have one more weekend of summer to go. You can still go to the beach if you like. Or you can follow the Tigers this weekend, but to do so, you'll need to take to the road.

There is one word that pretty much sums up the weekend in Princeton Athletics. That word? It's "At." 

Between today and Sunday, there are eight Princeton teams who will be competing, and all eight of them will be playing on the road. One of them, the field hockey team, will follow a road game today (at Delaware) with a home game Sunday (against Boston University).

For some of these teams, there are airplanes required. The men's tennis team is at an event at Alabama, and the men's water polo team is playing in California. 

For others, it's a short bus ride, including two to Delaware. The women's soccer team is also heading on the road to play the Blue Hens, Sunday at 1. 

The women's soccer team has made a big statement in the start of the new season. The Tigers moved into the Top 25 nationally this week at No. 22, and the reward was a game last night against No. 23 Hofstra at home. Even though the Tigers fell 2-0, this is sill shaping up to be yet another special season for Sean Driscoll's team.

It's a big weekend for the field hockey team. The Tigers have dropped their first three games, to North Carolina, Louisville and Duke, all of whom are highly ranked ACC teams. Princeton is 0-3 on the year; with a different bounce here or there the Tigers could be 2-1, after falling to Louisville in overtime and then Duke in a game in which Princeton outshot the Blue Devils by nearly a two to one margin.

The final weekend of the summer is also the first weekend for Ivy League football. As TigerBlog mentioned yesterday, Princeton opens the season at Lehigh tomorrow (kickoff at noon).

The 2021 Princeton football team will play four home games and six road games. It's an interesting schedule, with three of the road games essentially an hour drive from campus - the one tomorrow in Bethlehem, the one Oct. 9 at Monmouth and the season finale at Penn (Nov. 20). The Hawks, by the way, are ranked 20th this week in the FCS poll.

Princeton is also at Cornell and Dartmouth on consecutive Friday nights (Oct. 29, Nov. 5) in games that you can watch on ESPNU.

There are all kinds of storylines for the season opener. There is the fact that two of the classes on the team have yet to play in a game. It'll be interesting to see what a gameday is like after missing out on last season.

If you like to read about Princeton football, you have a lot of options this fall. There's goprincetontigers.com, which will have all of the usual content (including game notes for Week 1 by TB's colleague Warren Croxton). There's TigerBlog, who likes to write about the football team. And there's also princetontigersfootball.com, where twice a week you can read pieces from TB's former colleague Craig Sachson. In fact, Craig wrote THIS PIECE prior to the opener.

It's almost time for the opening kickoff. TB definitely won't mind the drive.