Opening Kickoffs

Dana Serea made her press box debut last Friday when she came into the booth at Bedford Field to cover Princeton-Penn field hockey.

Serea is a Princeton freshman. She was there to cover the game for the Daily Princetonian. 

As the game went along, TigerBlog started to think back about his own first time covering a game. It was a long, long time before Serea was born, of course.

TB can remember a lot of the details from that day all those years ago.

It was a high school football game between Pennington School and Academy of the New Church. It was on a perfect September day at ANC, which is in Bryn Athyn, Pa., which is in Bucks County. Pennington won 22-0 to set the school record for consecutive wins with 18. 

The first player he ever interviewed was named Billy Thompson, who went on to play at Boston College. He was a defensive end for Pennington who, TB believes, ultimately came back to coach there (he might  be wrong about that).

If you know TB, you're probably not shocked that he can remember the details of a high school football game from so many decades ago. Still, he'd love to go back to that moment, just to see if he even remotely considered that this might be the start of what it would ultimately become for him.

As he spoke to Serea during the game, he realized they had some commonalities. She's also a public school kid from New Jersey. She's also thinking about law school.

Will her gig with the Daily Princetonian sidetrack her the way it did TB? When TB first went to cover that game — with no experience of his own by the way — he was told by the person who got him the job (longtime Philadelphia sportswriter Jack McCaffery) that "once you get the ink in your blood, you never get it out." In TB's case that's certainly been true.

As the game against Penn ended, TB told her he'd take her down onto the field to interview the players she wanted. Then he realized that she'd never interviewed anyone, so he gave her some basic pointers. And then she was on her own, and she did just fine. 

If you want to read her story, you can see it HERE. TB is guessing it's not much different than his from the Pennington-ANC game. He sends his congrats to Dana Serea on the byline.

The field hockey game against Penn was the second of two Class of 1952 Stadium doubleheaders last week that featured a field hockey game on Bedford Field at 4 and then a soccer game on Sherrerd Field at 7. Those were fun — and now they're a thing of the past.

This weekend marks the opening kickoffs for the Princeton men and women on the brand-new Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. The first games will be Saturday, when the women host Dartmouth at 1 and the men host Dartmouth at 4:30.

The old Roberts Stadium opened in 2008 with a 2-1 Princeton win over Boston University in women's soccer. The first goal in that stadium was scored by BU's Farrell McClernon, and the first two Princeton goals came courtesy of Sarah Peteraf and Lisa Chinn.

TB's colleague Andrew Borders, who was the women's soccer contact then and is still the contact now, remembered the game was against BU and got Peteraf's name relatively quickly. Chinn and Peteraf, by the way, were both 2008 first-team All-Ivy League selections. 

Who will score the first goal on the new field? 

TB thought the old Roberts Stadium was beautiful, and it was. This one has a very similar feel to it and looks just amazing from the outside, especially if you look at it from the parking deck.

As far as other events at home this weekend, you'll have women's tennis in the ITA Northeast Regionals here on campus, as well as men's water polo.

Also, as a reminder, the celebration of the life of Pete Carril will be held tomorrow at 11 in Jadwin Gym. The event is free and open to the public.