Keeping Track

TigerBlog continued one of his favorite traditions earlier this week.

Each year, on a January Monday, TB heads down to Philadelphia to meet up with his college roommate Charlie Frohman for cheesesteaks. 

If you're a Phildelphia cheesesteak fan, then you have the one place, and only one place, that you'll go. In TB's case, that would be Geno's, on the corner of Ninth, Wharton and Passyunk (and if you pronounce the last one "PASS-ee-unk" then you've never lived in Philly).

Back when TB was in college, there were many, many late-night visits to Geno's, since it was always open. Those are some of TB's favorite memories of his time at Penn.

Charlie now lives in Jacksonville, where he runs several businesses, and he comes up to Atlantic City for a trade show each year during this week. The routine is that he flies into Philadelphia, rents a car and then meets up at Geno's on his way to AC.

Each year, he invites a handful of his college friends, most of whom live in New York City. Usually, though, TB is the only one who makes the trip (granted, for him it's easier). But hey, he'd drive from New York anyway, since it's Geno's.

As TB pulled up to Geno's Monday, he saw his other best friend from college, Ed Mikus Jr., who had driven down from Westchester County. Oh, and Ed Mikus Jr. likes to be known as Ed Mikus Jr., or for short EMJ. 

To mark the occasion, the three had a photo taken. Charlie said he was posting it to the class Facebook page, which made TB laugh, because he's wearing Princeton stuff, which is how it should be.

Geno's, of course, is an outdoor eatery. And every year, regardless of how cold, snowy, sleety, windy or whatever, the Geno's tradition in January requires sitting at one of the picnic tables. It may be chilly, but it is heaven.

There aren't too many Penn alums who have worked in the athletic department at Princeton through the years. TB can think of a handful, though one leaps out immediately.

That would be Fred Samara, the men's track and field coach and a member of the Penn Class of 1973. Samara became the Princeton head coach just four years later, one year after he competed in the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.

He has been the head coach of an incredible 49 Ivy Heps titles between his time as head coach of indoor and outdoor track and field and briefly cross country. When you make the list of the greatest coaches in the entire history of the Ivy League, you better have Fred's name somewhere near the top. 

Samara has shown no signs of letting up as his tenure rolls on. His men's track and field team is ranked eighth nationally in the first U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association poll of the season. 

Of course, as you recall, this is the same Princeton team that finished fifth at the 2022 NCAA Indoor Championships. The Tigers sent eight athletes there, and all eight became All-Americans.

This year's team has four individuals and two relays ranked in the top 10 in their events. The Guttormsen brothers, Sondre and Simen, are ranked fourth and sixth in the pole vault, an event in which Sondre was the NCAA champ indoors and outdoors last year and Simen was fourth in both.

In fact, Princeton's highest individual ranking belongs to Greg Foster, who is ranked third in the long jump. Foster is a freshman who competed at the Lawrenceville School. 

The Tigers are in Cambridge this weekend for the H-Y-P meet. Indoor Heps are four weeks away and will be held at Dartmouth, while the NCAA Indoor Championships will be in Albuquerque in March. In between it's a busy schedule for Princeton, which you can see HERE.

The women's team, by the way, is also in Harvard for H-Y-P. The complete schedule for both teams can be found HERE. Speaking of highly ranked freshmen, Princeton's Tessa Mudd set a Princeton and Ivy League record by going 14-2. Mudd, from South Carolina, is currently ranked sixth in the country.