TigerBlog begins today by wishing William Anderson a happy birthday.
Make that a Happy 21st birthday. How in the world can he be 21?
William was five or so when TB first met him. His older brother Matthew was one of TigerBlog Jr.'s best friends growing up, and William was always tagging along no matter what they did.
And a lot of what they did back then involved Princeton Athletics. TBJ and Matthew were ball boys at Princeton men's basketball for several years. They came to football games together. They came to just hang out in Jadwin. They loved watching lacrosse.
Through it all, William would be there too. He was also there in Matthew's backyard, where the three would play their own knockout version of lacrosse that more often than not ended up with William almost knocked out, literally, but persist he did.
TigerBlog WROTE THIS back in 2011, when William spent a fall Saturday at Princeton back when he was a ballboy for Princeton men's basketball, something TBJ and Matthew had done too. It's hard to believe that it's been 11 years since, and that William is now 21, a college junior and a future physical therapist.
It's also hard to believe that the little kid from the Keystone State Games all those years ago grew up to be taller than TBJ or Matthew.
Speaking of being close to Christmas, the Princeton Athletics schedule is fairly quiet this week. In fact, between this past weekend and then Dec. 28, there is exactly one event, the men's basketball home game Friday at 2 against Kean.
TigerBlog spent much of the 1990s traveling to in-season men's basketball tournaments the week before Christmas and the week after. Most of the events he attended no longer exist, but he's really glad he got the chance to experience then when he did. They took him to locations he might otherwise never have seen, and they really opened up this country to him.
They were all pretty much the same. Fly out to the site the day before (sometimes on game day, with then radio play-by-play man Tom McCarthy. There'd be four teams who would be there, and there might be an event the day before. Then there would be two semifinals and then a consolation and final the next night. Then it was back on the plane.
Way more often than not, the team would come home with trophies.
TB spent time in places like East Lansing, Mich., and El Paso, Texas. He made two trips to the state of Wisconsin, for a total of eight days, four each in Milwaukee and Green Bay. He's pretty sure the sun didn't come out once.
He went to a pair of these events at Iowa State. For the first, it was the highest recorded temperature in the state of Iowa in the month of December. For the second, he couldn't walk from the arena to the parking lot without getting frostbite.
He also got to go to Hawaii, where the sun most definitely did come out. That trip, between Christmas and New Year's in 1998, remains one of his favorite times since he's worked at Princeton.
Why is that? The Tigers defeated Florida State, Texas and Charlotte to win the Rainbow Classic. The team stayed right on Waikiki Beach. Because the team kept winning, it kept playing at night, which opened up the afternoons for beach time.
McCarthy was TB's roommate on that trip. They'd eat at Duke's, right on the beach, having the catch of the day with two scoops of macaroni salad. Then it would be off to the game.
Where else did these tournaments take him?
Fresno. Champagne, Illinois. New Orleans. Charlotte. And that's to name a few.
Each year when the schedule was being put together, one of TB's first questions was always about which tournaments the team would be attending. It was always fun to go someplace new.
Anyway, TB has shared those days with you before, so excuse him for repeating himself. It's a quiet week, after all, so he can be forgiven for a bit of nostalgia for your Wednesday.
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