Still Making Waves

TigerBlog has kept this space completely apolitical for the 14 years he's been doing this.

Today he starts out drifting a bit into the political arena, though not in a way you might think. 

You know the song "Brandy, You're A Fine Girl?" Of course you do.

TigerBlog has always liked that song. Most people do. It's a nice, sad little story about a waitress named Brandy and her love for a sailor who nevertheless leaves her because his first love is the sea. 

TB has been listening to that song for more than 50 years now. And now he'll never hear it the same. Why?

Because the other day, someone mentioned that the song sounds like it's being sung by Barack Obama. And if you listen to it, yes, yes it does. What the heck? 

The song was actually sung by a group called Looking Glass, with a lead singer named Elliot Lurie. The group is a classic one-hit wonder, but here's something that TB never knew until he looked it up yesterday: the group was originally formed at Rutgers.

"Brandy" was released on May 18, 1972. Since he's drifted to the outskirts of politics, TB would say that perhaps the Watergate burglars were humming the song a few weeks later during their break-in?

A little more than a month after the song's release, on June 23 of that year, Title IX was signed into law. As you know, the legislation, all 37 words of it, has done a lot to level the playing field for female athletes.

Not all of the progress was made by law. Much of it was made by the sheer force of the women who competed back then, and Princeton is a great example of that.

Women's athletics at Princeton debuted in 1970, with tennis players Margie Gengler-Smith and Helena Novakova and continued in the winter of 1971 with swimmer Jane Fremon and diver Cece Herron. By the time Title IX was enacted, Princeton was competing in six varsity sports for women. Today that number is 19.

Herron's married name is, aptly, Waters. She was the last person TB spoke to for his book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton (click HERE), and her story is covered in the book's introduction.

Cece, who graduated in 1974, lives outside of Seattle, and TB got a chance to visit with her when he was out there to see his brother a year ago. It didn't take very long to realize that she brings a lot of energy with her in whatever she's doing.

For further proof, TB refers you to the story that was posted yesterday on goprincetontigers.com. It was written by Waters about a trip that she and four of her former Princeton teammates — Carol Brown ’75, Jane Fremon '75, Deb Deffaa '76 and Patricia Freeman '77 — took to Greece this past October to swim in the Aegean Sea.

The whole story is great. Cece gives the credit for organizing the trip to Brown, about whom she says "And – no luck factor here – the same swimmer who pioneered the creation of that illustrious program in 1971-72 was the driving force behind our 2022 saga in Symi. Carol Brown"

TB has no trouble believing that. Brown is a powerhouse herself, and she helped get women's swimming and diving going while also being one of the first women rowers (and a 1976 Olympic bronze medalist in rowing). 

Cece also threw this into the story: "("I don't do horizontal in the water; only vertical") no longer held water." 

The story is about their trip. It's also about how it came about, with a touch of tragedy mixed in as the death of a former teammate helped provide motivation:

A second catalyst, also unexpected but numbingly tragic, came in February 2021, with the very sudden passing of swimmer Liz Osborn, '76. "It was a wake-up call," notes Deb. "I had had such a great conversation with Liz at Reunions and thought, 'We need to continue this.' Then she was gone."

More than anything else, the story is a microcosm for what Princeton Athletics is all about. It's a group of friends for the last 50 years who came together at Princeton all those years ago from very different backgrounds with very different experiences since. 

What holds them together is the bond they formed as undergraduates. And that bond is unbreakable. 

Read the story. You'll see what TB means.

Also, next time you listen to "Brandy," you'll laugh to yourself.