The Fountain Of Youth

Raquel Welch died the other day, at the age of 82.

If you are a little bit younger than TigerBlog, then maybe the name is familiar and that's about it. If you attended Princeton when it was still all-male, then there's a strong likelihood that you were enthralled with her.

Perhaps no role better summed her up than the one she played in 1976 in the movie "Mother, Jugs and Speed." On the one hand, she threatens to sue her employer for discriminating against her based on her sex. On the other hand, her character, Jennifer Jurgens, is called "Jugs" by all the men (and the list of cast members is somewhat epic) in her workplace. Hey, it was the 1970s.

Welch was great in so many movies, including "Kansas City Bomber," where she played a roller derby star back when roller derby was a big deal. She was as big a star as there was at the time. 

TB learned after her death that her cousin, a woman, served as the President of Bolivia and that her real name was Jo Raquel Tejada. With each big star of TB's youth who passes away, he feels a little bit older.

Then he remembers where he works and the people with whom he works, and he feels eternally young. The Fountain of Youth? It's not in Florida. It's on campuses like Princeton's.

This is a typically busy weekend at Princeton.

The Ivy League women's swimming and diving championships are wrapping up today and tomorrow in DeNunzio Pool (preliminaries at 11, finals at 6). The men's hockey team is home, obviously, against Brown tonight and Yale tomorrow night (puck drops at 7 both nights). 

The men's basketball team has two big games in Jadwin, against Brown tonight (7) and Yale tomorrow night (6). Not too far away, the women's squash team will be competing in the CSA National Championships at Penn and Drexel, and the men's volleyball team will be at its big rival Penn State tonight and tomorrow. 

There's also a lacrosse doubleheader on Sherrerd Field tomorrow. The women start things off at noon against No. 13 Virginia, and Princeton then takes on Monmouth at 3. 

Two storylines: 1) It's the first game as head coach for Jenn Cook on the women's side and 2) Princeton is ranked anywhere from second to fifth in the national polls after its run to the Final Four a year ago on the men's side.

Maybe a third storyline is that the start of another lacrosse season is something that TB looks forward to all year. Even after all these years, and this will his 34th with the men's team, he still gets the same level of excitement. He's never lost that, which to him is a sign that he's been in the right career.

TB wrote a pair of feature stories in advance of the season, one on Kate Mulham and the other on Tyler Sandoval, which you can read HERE and HERE. They both have great stories to tell.

As for the basketball teams, the women are on the road, at Brown tonight and Yale tomorrow night. The Tigers would clinch a spot in the Ivy tournament with a win in any of their four remaining league games (home against Harvard next weekend, at Penn the following weekend), but the bigger goal is the league title. Princeton and Columbia are currently tied for first at 8-2 each, one game ahead of Harvard and Penn at 7-3, followed by Yale at 5-5. 

Should Princeton and Penn both beat Yale at home, then TigerBlog is 99.5 percent sure that would mean that the field for the tournament would be set, though the pairings would very much be up in the air. Should Princeton and Penn both beat Yale and Harvard win once this weekend against Columbia or Cornell, then that number goes to 100 percent.

On the men's side, Princeton and Yale are tied for first. Both would clinch Ivy tournament spots with two wins this weekend and one loss each from Dartmouth and Cornell. 

As a reminder, the Ivy tournaments will be in Jadwin Gym March 10-12. Ticket information is HERE.

Lastly, happy birthday to Digger, in the next world. Kalnikov knows a genius.