Another Trophy

The prologue of TigerBlog's book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton centered on the women's lightweight rowing team.

Specifically, TB wrote about how the team found out it was the No. 1 team in the rankings on the same day that Covid shut down the season and then how the team managed to stay focused and maintain a team culture and spirit through the pandemic. 

The women's lightweight rowing team was one of a handful of Princeton spring teams who were able to compete. Remember the Phases? The women's lightweights made it through all four of them, all the way to the IRA national championship.

The three members of that team that TB spoke with were universal in their sadness that the Class of 2020 missed out on the rest of that season and also how supportive that group had been for them as they moved forward. For TB, their ability to do what they did last year was a sign that Princeton Athletics was reawakening.

Now it's 12 months later. Princeton has played nearly a complete athletic year and tied its record by having 16 teams win conference championships (13 Ivy titles, plus three that don't compete in Ivy sports). 

The reawakening was real.

And so it was something of a different landscape for the women's lightweights as they lined up at the start line yesterday for these IRA championships. This time it was against a full field, as opposed to the handful of teams who competed last year.

The result, though, was the same. 

Princeton won another national championship Sunday on Mercer Lake, this time building a three-second lead and then winning by 1.5 seconds over Georgetown and Stanford. Princetons first varsity 8 boat featured Margaret Murphy, Sarah Fry, Sarah Polson, Daisy Devore, Lily Feinerman, Cecelia Sommerfield, Kalena Blake, Rebecca Mays and Nathalie Verlinde.

 The Tigers added a win in the 2x from Amelia Boehle and Kasey Shashaty to win the overall points championship for the first time ever. 

A day that we and @tigerwlights will never forget … 🧡🖤🏆@Princeton | @IRARowingChamps pic.twitter.com/uPlry6kIwE

— Princeton Tigers (@PUTIGERS) June 5, 2022

The Princeton heavyweight men's four won its national championship as well, joining the open women varsity 4, who did so a week ago at the NCAA women's regatta. The men's heavyweight 4 boat of Greg Le Meur, Matthew Wagner, Emmett Infante, Sam Kleiner and Eleanor Bauer held off Washington, who made a late charge but fell short.

This was a quote from Bauer, the coxswain:

"Coming into the last 750 meters of the race, I could hear the Washington coxswain call their final push before the sprint," said Bauer, the coxswain. "I told my guys, 'They're trying to move, we need to go now.'" 

That's a great quote from a coxswain. Or a quarterback.

As for the lightweight women, Princeton was the heavy favorite and finished the year unbeaten. It was by no means something to be taken for granted, of course.

 TB thought this quote from head coach Paul Rassam summed things up perfectly:

"I think from the outside it can look really easy when you're winning. What this team has pushed through these couple of years, it's not been easy. We have a super resilient, determined group of athletes that kept pushing forward no matter what was going on."

He's right about what his team has pushed through the last few years. And, as TB said, there is an important - and easy to overlook - relevance to the momentum that was created by the competitions that happened to end the 2021 spring.

Its easy to forgot now how the 2020-21 women's lightweights began their season on erg machines set up outdoors on driveways. They had no idea if they were going to get out on the water at all, let alone against another school.

When they finally did, they picked up where the left off before the shutdown in 2020. And they haven't let up at all since. 

Yesterday at Mercer Lake, they were back again, as national champion, a no-doubt-about-it best-in-country team that had a perfect season end the way every teams hopes it will.