The All-Ivy League teams for field hockey were announced yesterday, and Princeton, not surprisingly, was well-represented.
The Tigers had both the Offensive Player of the Year (Beth Yeager), Defensive Player of the Year (Hannah Davey), the Coach of the Year (Carla Tagliente), three first-teamers, two second-teamers, three honorable mention picks and an Academic All-Ivy pick. Added all together, that's 10 Tigers who earned at least one honor.
You can read all about them HERE.
If there was an All-Ivy selection for the combination of playing and doing a team's social media, then Gracie McGowan would have been a unanimous selection. The junior is a key member of the team's defense, and she also has crushed it all year on social media.
If you looked at the team Instagram page yesterday, you know what TigerBlog is talking about when it comes to McGowan, who did all the posting.
It's worth checking out all of her work, especially how she mixed in video with the graphics. TB, by the way, did all the graphics, in case you're thinking he pawned everything off on her. Of course, he'd do a graphic and send it to her, and then she'd either approve or make him change the look or the photo, but hey, TB yields to her in these situations.
As for the honorees, TB was hoping Gabby Andretta would have been first-team instead of second-team, and he's glad that Ophelie Bemelmans got at least honorable mention for her first career All-Ivy selection. He was really happy for Davey, who is now a three-time first-team All-Ivy pick. Yeager, who was a unanimous choice, is the second player in league history to be an Ivy Player of the Year as a freshman and sophomore, joining former Tiger great Katie Reinprecht.
He'd also like to talk about a player who didn't get any recognition, and that's senior midfielder Zoe Shephard. She's one of TB's favorite kinds of players, the ones who make such a huge impact on a team's success but who do so without putting up any gaudy statistics.
In Shephard's case, she had two goals during the 17-game regular season. Her value, though, is huge. She plays an unforgiving position, on the left side in a sport where all shots must be righthanded. That means she spends her whole life trying to move the ball up the field while always playing across her body. Worse, she has a steady diet of opposing midfielders coming at her to their strong side, and she has to keep them from reaching the circle.
It's a thankless position, certainly one that isn't going to lend itself to all-league honors. It's also a position that could become an exploitable weak link if you don't have someone of her caliber there. Her impact on this season has been huge.
The honors announced yesterday close the door a bit on the regular season. The Tigers are now busy readying for the postseason, which for them begins Friday at 2:30 against Syracuse in a game that will be played at the University of Maryland. The opening game at noon will match Maryland and Liberty, last year's NCAA runner-up.
The two winners will meet Sunday at 1 for a trip to the Final Four, which is next weekend at UConn.
Princeton and Syracuse met on Sept. 9, in Princeton's third game of the year. The Tigers, who were 0-2 at the time, won that game 5-1. It started a 13-2 run to finish the season, one that included a 7-0 Ivy League record. It also included a 4-3 win over Maryland, which for much of the year was the Terps' only loss.
The paring in College Park is the only one of the four where every team is ranked in the top 13 of this week's NFCHA poll. Princeton, by the way, is No. 7, one spot above Syracuse.
Princeton will be gunning for its fourth Final Four appearance since Carla Tagliente and Dina Rizzo took over the coaching staff in 2016. The Tigers missed the tournament last year but reached the NCAA championship game in 2019.
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