The Athlete Of Any Week

The Office of Athletic Communications meeting had barely begun when TigerBlog threw this out at his colleagues: If the OAC still chose an athlete of the week, who would this week's winner be? 

Consider some of the worthy candidates:

* Rachel McQuigge made 103 saves on 109 shots faced as the women's hockey team became the first eighth seed in ECAC women's history to knock off the top seed in the quarterfinals

* Raunak Khosla was the High Point Swimmer at the Ivy League championships after winning the 200 IM, 400 IM and 200 butterfly. You need ridiculous strength to do that triple.

* Kyla Sears scored six goals and added two assists as the women's lacrosse team knocked off its second-straight ranked opponent to start the season with its 14-10 win over Temple.

* Kaitlyn Chen had her monster game Wednesday against Columbia with a career-high 27 points as the Tigers clinched another Ivy League championship with a 73-53 win. Chen swept the Ivy League weekly awards, winning Player of the Week and Rookie of the Week.

* Tosan Evbuomwan or Jaelin Llewellyn (take your pick) from men's basketball would also have to be in the conversation after their performances this weekend as the men also picked up another Ivy League championship. 

* The following members of the men's track and field team won individual titles as the Tigers romped to the Heps indoor title for the seventh straight time: Christian Brown (yes, the same one from the football team) in the 60m hurdles, Ibrahim Ayorinde in the 200m (in an Ivy record 21.02 no less), Michael Phillippy in the 400m, Sam Ellis in the 800 and mile, Harrison Witt in the 1000m and C.J. Licata in the shot put.

* Erik Peters had a spectacular week in goal for the men's lacrosse team, with a career-best 19 saves against No. 1 Maryland in a 15-10 loss and 12 saves with six goals against in the midweek game against Binghamton.

When you look at all of those performances, they'd all be worthy recipients in most weeks. For TB's money, though, there is one that rises above a bit. 

That would the incredible Andrei Iosivas.

Like Brown, Iosivas was a key member of the 2021 Ivy League champion football team. Iosivas, a wide receiver, was a second-team All-Ivy League selection (though if you ask TigerBlog to name an Ivy League wide receiver who could play in the NFL, he'd take Iosivas without hesitation), when he was third in the league in yards (703), fourth in touchdowns (five) and yards per catch (17.1) and ninth in receptions (41).

Even after a bruising football season, Iosivas segued right into track and field, doing so in what is 1) the toughest of events and 2) the favorite event of Tiger head coach Fred Samara: the decathlon.

For indoor track and field, it's the heptathlon, which makes it the Hep at Heps. Iosivas won the event with an Ivy League record 6,036 points, which is the third-best in the country this season. 

The runner-up in the event was Karl-Oskar Pujas of Dartmouth, who had 5,143. That's not even remotely close.

There are seven events in the Heptathlon: the 60m dash, the long jump, the shot put, the high jump, the 60m hurdles, the pole vault and the 1000m run. Usually, an athlete has some strengths that are enough to overcome his weaknesses over the course of the two days.

Iosivas? He won six of the seven events. That's ridiculous. The only one he didn't win was the last one, the 1,000 meters, but that didn't stop him from obliterating the old Heps record of 5,756 points and a nearly 500-point improvement over Iosivas' 2020 total, which also happened to be the winning score then.

To do what Iosivas did no matter what is amazing. To do it after a football season, which takes a physical toll and prevents training specifically for track? That's just wild.

There haven't been many better all-around athletes who have ever come through Princeton than the 6-3, 200-pound Andrei Iosivas. As in ever. 

Next up for him is the NCAA championships and then outdoor season. He's only a junior, so he has next year to improve on his NFL stock or to point himself to the Olympics.

Who knows, maybe he'll get there in the bobsled, just like Charlie Volker just did. If you'd tell TigerBlog that Andrei Iosivas was trying a sport - any sport - TB would say "yeah, he can do that."