The Legendary Chris Sailer

Chris Sailer was barely out of Harvard when she became the head women's lacrosse coach at Princeton before the 1987 season.

Actually, she became the head women's lacrosse coach and an assistant field hockey coach. And she taught phys ed classes. 

Her first teams played with uniforms that were shared between the field hockey and lacrosse teams. They had a design on them with crossed sticks, one field hockey and one lacrosse. Many of the players, actually most of them, played both sports as well.

She was Princeton's third women's lacrosse coach. Beginning with the 2022-23 season, there will be a fourth. 

Sailer announced last night that the 2022 season will be her final one as the Tiger head coach. Prior to her arrival, Princeton women's lacrosse had a cumulative record of 62-79-7, a winning percentage of slightly better than .440. 

From that starting point, she has built one of the greatest programs the sport has known. Her resume includes three national championships, 11 NCAA Final Fours, 26 NCAA appearances and 15 Ivy League titles, including six straight heading into this coming season.

Her record stands at 418-164, which is a winning percentage of .718. She became the first coach, male or female, to reach 400 career wins at the same Division I school, and she ranks second all-time in wins by Division I coaches (and fourth for all divisions). She's a member of the US Lacrosse National Hall of Fame. There's a pathway there named after her.

You can, if you like, make a very, very strong case that she is the greatest women's coach in Princeton Athletics history. 

It took Chris Sailer three years to turn her team into an NCAA Final Four team. Her first NCAA title came in 1994, when in the semifinals the Tigers took down a Virginia team that had broken Princeton's heart the year before in overtime in the championship game and then knocked off a Maryland team to whom Princeton had lost two weeks earlier in the regular season finale.

Her 2002 team crushed everyone en route to the NCAA title. The 2003 team did not but got it done anyway, beating Virginia in overtime in the championship.

One of TigerBlog's favorite Chris Sailer stories is the Chuckie Cheese story from the 2002 season. Princeton lost to Georgetown early in the season, and Sailer sent every player on the team a voicemail saying that they'd be practicing the next day under the lights and that they didn't need any equipment. She also mentioned that nobody's spot was secure. 

Did she make her team run? Nope. She piled them into cars and took them all to Chuckie Cheese for some relaxation. Her team did not lose another game that year.

It's what great coaching is about. It's about knowing what your team needs at any given moment. It's about putting people in position to be successful. 

Chris Sailer has done it for 36 years at Princeton. No woman has ever coached there longer. 

She's been about more than just longevity though. She has seen Princeton evolve from a place where women's athletics were just getting a foothold to one of the model athletic programs for women anywhere in the country. She hasn't been a bystander to that progress either. She's been a driver of it, at times the main driver of it.

She's also been a mentor to the younger coaches who have come along, across all of Princeton's women's sports. And men's sports too. Head men's lacrosse coach Matt Madalon has spoken often about the benefit of having Chris Sailer to learn from as he has established his program.

For all of her successes, TigerBlog doesn't really think of her first in terms of her numbers, or her long tenure. He thinks of Chris Sailer more as a person who gets a resounding "yes" to the most important question you could ever ask about a coach – would you want your own child to play for him or her?

In this case, TigerBlog's child has played for Chris Sailer. She's now in her fourth year of doing so. TB and Sailer have never spoken about it, even as they've done their podcasts through the years and while TB has written stories, kept stats and done everything else he's done with the women's lacrosse team. It's a conversation that TB has been saving until after his daughter is no longer with the program.

What he will say here, though, is that Chris Sailer has had an incredibly positive impact on Miss TigerBlog's maturity and development, as an athlete, a student and a person. Sailer has taught her lessons that will stay with her forever. It's something that TB and MTB talked about last week, in fact. It's that "nothing is impossible" attitude that comes from being a part of a program like Princeton women's lacrosse, and it's something that Chris Sailer has given to MTB.

And, for that matter to hundreds of others. That's her best legacy. So many women have come into her program since 1987 and left it for the better, regardless of championships won.

So yes, that is the best thing you can say about a coach, that you'd love for your own child to be coached by them. 

There are a lot of Princeton women's lacrosse alums today who have a hard time imagining the team without Sailer on the bench. This day was coming of course. And now that it's here, it's a good time to reflect on what a Princeton treasure she has been.

Not that she'd do it. No chance. Knowing Chris Sailer the way he does, TB would say that she's a bit emotional today, but that will soon give way to the reality of the approach of another season. 

Only when it's done will she take a step back and consider the enormity of what she's accomplished here.