Mourning Grant

TigerBlog will hate every word he's about to write.

He hates it so much that he is struggling to bring himself to get it out at all. Maybe if he doesn't, he keeps thinking, then maybe it didn't really happen.

Why can't this just be a regular Monday, one with a discussion of the weekend in basketball or hockey, or maybe some words about Liam Johnson and how today is the Bushnell Cup day? Why couldn't that be the case?

If the conversation today happened to turn to the World Cup, it would be about how Morocco has made it to the semifinals. The streets of Marrakesh are crazy on a normal day; what must they be like now? 

Sadly, tragically, horrifically, though, this is not a normal day.

Grant Wahl has passed away. He was only 48 years old.

Those words really sting. TB hates writing them.

To most of the world, Grant Wahl was the premiere soccer journalist ever from America and one of the greatest ever from any country. Grant's death has brought an outpouring of sympathy from athletes, politicians (including the Governor of New Jersey), fans and especially his fellow writers. 

Grant Wahl '96 was one of us.

A Princetonian. A lover of sport. A citizen servant.

He was the best of us and he will be missed.

A Message From Bob Bradley '80 pic.twitter.com/UIZpA4wbRY

— Princeton Men’s Soccer (@TigerMensSoccer) December 10, 2022

To TigerBlog, Grant Wahl, Class of 1996, was more than that. Grant was the guy he met back in the mid-1990s, back when Grant was a student worker in the Office of Athletic Communications and one of the sports editors of the Daily Princetonian. TB knew Grant to be exactly who he was: kind, friendly, funny, strong and pretty much any other positive quality you want to ascribe to someone. 

What stood out first about Grant all those years ago was his ability to write. There are not many who are good writers at a young age, and even fewer who are great writers by that point.

TB has never seen anyone who could write like Grant could as a college student. Certainly TB himself couldn't do it.

Grant was great at telling stories, legendarily so, even back then. His writing was superb, entertaining, well-crafted. More than anything else, though, it was, in a word, mature. If you read what he wrote, you would never have guessed that it came from someone so young.

He wrote this after Princeton's 10-10 tie with Dartmouth on the final day of the 1995 football season, a tie that earned the Tigers an outright Ivy League championship:

A glance at each of the sidelines after Sierk's kick revealed much more than than the hollow-gutted ambivalence that normally accompanies such results.

That's John McPhee-level stuff there. 

That writing skill stayed with him as he grew into that maturity. What he came to develop beyond that was the ability to write difficult truths, and even more difficult opinions. 

If Grant's writing was defined by its maturity as a college student, it was defined by his courage as an adult. That's not a common trait. Most writers want to be liked, especially by the subjects of their writing. It's tough to put that natural feeling aside and hold people accountable, and it's even tougher to do so and then go right into the lions' den of a lockerroom afterwards.

It may not get you liked. It will get you respected. Grant? He had everyone's respect. Perhaps the root of this began with his senior thesis at Princeton, entitled "Playing the Political Game: Soccer Clubs in Argentine Civil Society."

Grant died while literally writing a story at the World Cup about the game between the Netherlands and Argentina. It was the eighth World Cup that he covered. 

If you had been following Grant in Qatar, then you know that, as always, Grant was not afraid to write what he thought needed to be said.

Grant wrote for the Miami Herald before going to Sports Illustrated, where his piece on LeBron James when James was a high school junior really introduced the longtime NBA superstar to the American sporting public. Grant would write more amazing feature stories at the magazine, and he'd embrace the changing media landscape by sharing his voice on his website, on his podcasts and on his social media feeds in a way that really connected him to his followers and gave a real insight to who he was.

TB and Grant had stayed in touch through the years. TB often reached out to him to let him know that a particular story was very impressive, and Grant would reach out to tell TB the same. Every time TB heard from him, it took him back to when they met, and it always, without fail, reminded him of how much he really liked him.

TB was not alone in that.

When the news broke Friday night of Grant's passing, TB's phone began to blow up with text messages, mostly from the others who knew him at Princeton and who followed him through the years. They were all stunned and saddened by the news, and they all had memories of Grant that they wanted to share.

It was from the first of these messages that TB learned the news in the first place. When he looked at the words, he didn't believe them. When he woke up Saturday morning, he thought he'd imagined them or dreamed them. These words couldn't be true. No way.

Of course, they were real. Horrible. Tragic. Unfathomable. But real nonetheless.

Grant Wahl was a was a great journalist. His legacy and impact will be felt for a very long time in the world of soccer.  

At the same time, his loss will be felt by those who knew him. TB's sympathies go to those closest to him, especially his wife Dr. Celine Gounder ’97.

For TigerBlog, he'll remember Grant from their days together in Jadwin Gym and from the pride he took in watching his career move forward all these years. He'll remember him for the wonderful person he always was.

And he'll remember how much he hated writing about his death, the unfairness of it, the shock of it, the emptiness of it. 

Oh, for this to have been just another Monday.