A Weekend Review

TigerBlog begins today with a congratulations to the women's fencing team on winning the Ivy League championship yesterday.

The Ivy League fencing championships are held in the form of a round-robin with each team in the league at the same site over two days (this year's host was Brown). The Princeton women came into the event as the No. 1 team in the country, and they did nothing to disappoint at the Ivy championships.

The Tigers were a perfect 6-0 over the two days, and none of the six matches was particularly close. Fencing matches consist of 27 bouts worth one point each, and Princeton won at least 18 of its bouts in every match, including three with at least 20.

Princeton also swept the three individual weapons titles, with Chloe Fox-Gitomer in the saber, Maia Weintraub in the foil and Jessica Lin in the epee. 

If you've never watched fencing, it takes an incredible amount of overall athleticism and stamina to excel at it. Princeton has a long history of winning Ivy titles (this one is the 11th in program history) and excelling on the international level, all the way to the Olympics.

Princeton's women have been part of one NCAA championship, back in 2013. The Princeton men went 1-3 in the Ivy round-robin, but the Tigers also lost 14-13 to Columbia, the No. 1 team in the country. 

The NCAA fencing championships are a coed event, with this year's regionals and finals next month. 

There is, by the way, a great deal of fencing in TB's women's history book, including the story of Maia Chamberlain, who earned first-team All-Ivy honors at the league meet this weekend. Chamberlain, who won an NCAA individual championship in 2018, is the last remaining active athlete to be profiled in the book. 

As TB said, congratulations to the women. Given how great Ivy League fencing is, it's not easy to run the table at all.

What else can TB tell you this morning? 

He spent his weekend at Class of 1952 Stadium, watching the men's lacrosse scrimmage Saturday and the women's lacrosse scrimmage Sunday. It's hard to believe those two games were 24 hours apart. 

Saturday? It was sunny and 60. Sunday? It snowed for the entire game. TB would like to thank the facilities crew who made the field playable and did so on a snowy Sunday morning.

This is game week for both teams, as the men open their season at home against Monmouth Saturday at 1 and the women are at Virginia Sunday. TB will have more here this week (probably) and a lot more on goprincetontigers.com this week (definitely), including season outlooks for both and the first podcasts of the week. 

Oh, happy Valentine's Day everyone. You know how you can start your Valentine's Day? You can watch Charlie Volker in the Olympics. 

It's almost that time ⏰ 🇺🇸@PrincetonFTBL sends best wishes to @CharlieVolker as he gets set for his first Olympic competition tomorrow!

Catch Charlie tomorrow in primetime at 9:35pm ET on NBC or live at 7am ET on USA Network. #JUICE23 🍊🥤 pic.twitter.com/RmodKZVw4d

— Princeton Football (@PrincetonFTBL) February 13, 2022

As the football team tweeted, Volker will be on live at 7 on USA Network, with the replay at 9:35 at night. Volker, an All-Ivy League selection in football and track and league champ in both, isn't even two years into his career as a bobsledder, but he's already made it to the biggest event in the world. 

Nathan Crumpton, another former Princeton track and field athlete, competed over the weekend in the Olympic skeleton, finishing 19th overall. Crumpton was making his second Olympic appearance, after running the 100 for American Samoa in Tokyo last summer. 

For everything you need to know about Princeton at the Olympics, including the Canadian women's hockey team, you can click HERE. 

Lastly, for today anyway, there were the Princeton hockey teams. The women played three games in three days, falling at Harvard and then sweeping Dartmouth. That was grueling. It also cemented Princeton in the ECAC playoff field, with a first-round matchup at Yale almost a certainty.

The men did what they do, which is to show considerable resilience. The Tigers were beaten 7-1 by Clarkson Friday night but then came back to defeat St. Lawrence 3-2 Saturday, getting a big save with two seconds left from Aidan Porter, who had to come in with 2:41 to go after Jeremie Forget was injured.

In less than a month, Princeton has lost games to Quinnipiac 9-0 and 6-0, to Union 7-3 and the 7-1 game to St. Lawrence. What did Princeton do after each of those games? Bounce back and win. That's really impressive.

Princeton is currently 5-0 in the Ivy League and in a chase with Harvard in all likelihood for that championship. The two will meet twice in the Tigers' final six games, beginning with a road trip to Harvard and Dartmouth this weekend.

In the ECAC, Princeton is in seventh place with 23 points, two ahead of Union and more importantly three ahead of Brown and St. Lawrence for home ice in the opening round of the playoffs. Those were a huge three points Princeton earned Saturday night. It's what resilient teams do.