On that day, they'll be opponents. Rivals.
TigerBlog isn't sure what exactly the word is to describe what the teams were yesterday, but it definitely isn't opponents or rivals.
They were travel partners, and not in the traditional Ivy sense of playing the same opponents on opposite sites in a weekend. They were actual travel partners, as in traveling together.
They were practice partners. They were dinner companions.
It was quite an interesting day for the two, uh, rivals.
Princeton and Penn both open their seasons today at the University of North Carolina, where Penn will play Louisville at 2:30 and then Princeton will play the host team at 5. Come Sunday, it'll be Princeton-Louisville at 11 and Penn-UNC at 2. If you're keeping track, UNC is ranked second, Louisville is ranked ninth and Princeton is ranked 13th.
Princeton's original plan to get to Chapel Hill was to take a flight that left Newark at 9:30 yesterday morning. The original itinerary for the teams' practices was for Penn to have UNC's game field at noon and Princeton at 3.
It all started to go a little pear-shaped when Princeton's flight was cancelled Wednesday night. The Tigers scrambled to get on a different flight, which left Philadelphia at 8:49 yesterday morning.
Or at least was supposed to.
Princeton left Jadwin Gym at 5:30 to go to the Philly airport. There was no line at security, so everyone was through by 6:45, leaving two hours until departure.
That's where Princeton and Penn first crossed paths. The Quakers were on the same flight.
The plane was to leave from Gate B4. It came from Indianapolis to Philly very early yesterday, and it was sitting at the gate looking good to go by 7:30 or so. The board said "On Time" in big letters.
When it came time to board, though, there was an announcement that no traveler wants to hear: The flight is delayed due to "mechanical problems with the aircraft."
The very nice people at the gate said they'd update everyone every 15 minutes. In the meantime, the Princeton team and the Penn team were on opposite sides of the waiting area, both teams sprawled out, Princeton in orange "Princeton field hockey" sweatshirts and Penn in gray "Penn field hockey" sweatshirts.
Eventually, they started to do what you would expect, which is to start to mingle. It's the kind of sport where most people know someone on the other team.
Every 15 minutes came the update: "No update." Eventually, the two coaching staffs talked about the best way to get to North Carolina in case the flight never left. Charter a flight? Rent a bus? Rebook?
Pretty much every food stand in the gate area had either an orange or gray sweatshirt stop by. There was laughing, singing, social media posting (Gracie McGowan deserves the credit for that).
The time the flight was supposed to leave came and went. So did 10:30. And 11:00. For the entire time, a man around 35 or so stood in front of the desk, as if the call to board was going to come any second. TB told him he admired his optimism. The man responded that he had been on the flight from Indianapolis to Philly and that he "knew first hand the plane was working before."
Finally the announcement came: This plane is being replaced by a different one that is at Gate A11.
It's about a seven-minute walk from Gate B4 to Gate A11, so all the orange and gray sweatshirts made their way along. There was another shorter wait there, and then it was wheels up at noon, just after the captain said that the issue with the other plane was "a problem with the fuel, and well, we need the fuel to fly the plane." She made a good point.
So now it was take-off, five and half hours after everyone got through security. The flight itself took 50 minutes, 50 very smooth minutes. As the plane landed, the captain wished "both teams good luck."
Of course, Penn had already missed its practice time. Princeton's coaches offered Penn one half of the field for the Tigers' slot, and so there they were back together again, on opposite sides of the field.
If that wasn't enough, it turned out that the teams had made reservations in the same restaurant, and so there they were again, eating together.
In all of TB's time at Princeton, he's never seen anything like it. The two teams became an extended Ivy family, three weeks before they meet each other again.
When TB was doing his interviews for his book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton, one of the common themes was that through the decades, the details of the games blurred considerably, but the moments together away from the games were never forgotten.
TB thought of that while he watched the scene play out. Maybe Princeton and Penn will win this weekend. Maybe they won't. Those details will fade.
They will always remember the time together at Gate B4, and for the rest of the day.
It was certainly an adventure.
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