Then he'll get to Howell.
So in the meantime, TB was looking through a list of Honda Award winners for the best women athletes in college sports, and he noticed the Division II overall winner for 2013-14 was Bentley's Lauren Battista, who of course is now an assistant coach with the Princeton women's basketball team.
Battista had quite the career at Bentley, especially her senior year, when the team finished 35-0 and won the NCAA championship. That season, the year she won the Honda Award as the top female athlete in Division II, she averaged 17.8 points per game while only playing 28.8 minutes per game, since the Falcons were usually up by a lot come the end of the game.
In fact, the team won all of its NCAA games that year by at least eight points. All but one game during the regular season was won by double figures.
Battista, who has continued her winning ways under Carla Berube at Princeton, has been busy this week getting ready for an old-fashioned travel-partner weekend at Jadwin Gym.
The Princeton women host Columbia tonight (7) and Cornell tomorrow night (5) in the second and third games of the league season. The Tigers fell in their Ivy opener at Harvard last weekend, ending a 42-game Ivy League winning streak.
Columbia is coached by former Princeton assistant Meg Griffiths (Harvard and Yale are also coached by former Tiger coaches). The Lions are sizzling, with a 12-2 record and nine straight wins (season losses are to Vanderbilt and Iowa State). Princeton, of course, defeated Columbia three times last year, twice in the regular season and then in the Ivy League tournament final.
Win or lose tonight, there is no time to dwell on that game. Cornell comes into its game tonight at Penn at 8-6 overall and 1-0 in the league after defeating Dartmouth last weekend.
There's also home men's and women's swimming and diving this weekend. In fact, the whole weekend schedule can be seen HERE.
The big story this weekend, though, is the hockey celebration as Hobey Baker Rink turns 100.
To be exact, the first game ever played at the rink was on Jan. 5, 1923, so 100 years ago yesterday. That game was against St. Nicholas, a club team from New York City on which Hobey Baker had played for two years after graduating from Princeton in 1914.
Princeton won that game 3-2, and that brings us back to Howell Van Gerbig. It was Howell who scored the first (and second) Princeton goals ever at Baker Rink (for the sake of historical accuracy, J.E. Bierwith from St. Nick's scored the first goal of the game, and thus in the building).
The next night, 100 years ago tonight, Princeton defeated MIT 9-0, as Van Gerbig scored six times. Is that still the building record?
Van Gerbig would go on to become a lawyer, one with some pretty famous friends it appears. His son Barry also played hockey at Princeton, graduating in 1961. Here are some facts about Barry: 1) his godfather was Bing Crosby (yes, that Bing Crosby), his father-in-law was the famous actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and 3) he was the owner of the California Golden Seals of the NHL, an expansion team that lasted nine years. That's pretty fascinating stuff.
That's a lot of history, but this is a day for history.
As for the present, there are four games on the ice this weekend, with the women against Dartmouth today at 3 and the men against Harvard at 7, followed by tomorrow with the women against Harvard at 3 and the men against Dartmouth at 7.
There are all kinds of events around the games as well, including a visit from the Stanley Cup and from Princeton's recent women Olympians. There will also be a Hobey 100 Fan Village set up Saturday.
For more information about the Hobey events for the weekend, click HERE.
Princeton is a place that combines history and the present in so many areas, including athletics. Yesterday TB shared with you the story of the five women's swimmers from the 1970s who swam together in the Aegean Sea this past fall.
Today it's a building that dates to when Warren Harding was the President and yet still is alive and well to this day. This weekend is its turn to shine.
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3 comments:
When I was a kid, I remember watching Barry Van Gerbig playing hockey for Princeton in Baker Rink. He was the goalie.
When I was a kid, I remember watching Barry Van Gerbig playing in Baker Rink. He was Princeton's goalie.
When I was a kid, I remember watching Barry Van Gerbig playing at Baker Rink. He was Princeton's goalie.
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