Sondre Guttormsen's Own March Madness

TigerBlog will say this again, as he has said every year: The NCAA basketball tournament is the only sporting event that is at its most exciting at the start and then sees that level of excitement dwindle with each successive round.

There is nothing in college athletics quite like the first round of the NCAA basketball tournaments. It's wall-to-wall games on TV, with history-making upsets that join the list of iconic moments that of course includes Princeton-UCLA in 1996.

If you're a college basketball fan, you can't wait to watch. 

If you work for one of the teams that is in the tournament, the time between the Selection Show and tip-off is the most hectic, most exciting, busiest, most fun time you'll ever have in your job. There are hundreds of details to be looked after, from travel arrangements to postseason guides to patches on uniforms to finding a local practice venue and on and on.

And you're doing this all under the guise of hoping that your team will indeed be making history this March.  

As you know, Princeton's men's and women's teams are both in the tournament. They are both heading west, the men to Sacramento to play Arizona Thursday at 4:10 and the women to Salt Lake City to face North Carolina State at 10 Eastern Friday night. The men are a 15 seed; the women are a 10 seed.

The men flew out to California yesterday morning. The women leave today for Utah.

Of course this past weekend was one big Jadwin Gym party with the Ivy League tournaments and the Selections Shows. Still, the great celebrations in Princeton Athletics from this past weekend were not limited to just basketball.

There was, for instance, this:

His Name Is Sondre... There Is None Higher...

National Champ ✅✅✅

Collegiate Record Holder ✅ pic.twitter.com/MZqOu8RdRb

— Princeton Tigers (@PUTIGERS) March 11, 2023

Princeton's Sondre Guttormsen won his third straight NCAA pole vault championship, following up on winning indoors and outdoors a year ago by taking the indoor championship this past Friday night in Albuquerque. 

Guttormsen cleared six meters, or 19-8 1/4 feet, to tie the NCAA all-time record. Only one other competitor in the field, Zach Bradford of Texas Tech, was within a foot of Guttormsen (Bradford cleared 19-4 1/4). This is the NCAA championships, by the way, and only one competitor could stay within a foot of him.

Another would have, had Sondre's brother Simen not missed the meet due to an injury. The brothers are from the Norwegian town of Ski, a suburb of Oslo. That's pronounced "She," as an aside.

TigerBlog has followed the brothers during their Princeton careers, but he'd never spoken to either until he sat down with them a few weeks ago to talk to them for a feature story for goprincetontigers.com. You can read the story HERE.

One of the best parts of watching Sondre's win was seeing Simen there in support and the genuine joy that Simen felt in seeing his brother's win.

It's an extraordinary event, the pole vault. It takes a variety of skills — speed, strength, the flexibility of a gymnast — but more than anything else, in the words of Princeton track and field coach Fred Samara, it takes "fearlessness."

Sondre came into this year's NCAA's as one of two Princeton track and field athletes to have won multiple national titles, along with high jumper Tora Harris, who also had won indoors and outdoors (in 2002). Guttormsen now has three, with a shot at a fourth this spring in the outdoor event.

In case you're wondering, Princeton's other NCAA champs in track and field are Julia Ratcliffe in the hammer in 2014, Donn Cabral in the steeplechase in 2012, Dave Pellagrini in the indoor weight throw in 1980, Bill Bonthron in the mile in 1934, the distance medley relay (Peter Callahan, Russell Dinkins, Austin Hollimon, Michael Williams) in 2013 and the indoor two-mile relay (Charles Norelli, Richard Aneser, Charles Hedrick, Craig Masback) in 1975.

Back to the Guttormsens, there are this summer's World Championships in Hungary, where both Sondre and Simen will compete for Norway. Their goal is next summer's Olympic Games in Paris. Sondre already has one Olympic appearance under his belt after having competed in Tokyo in 2021.

Elsewhere in madness this month, the Princeton fencing teams competed at the NCAA regionals this weekend, and all six individual weapons champs were Tigers: Tristan Szapary and Hadley Husisian in the epee, Mohamed Hamza and May Tiue in the foil and Ronald Anglade and Chloe Fox-Gitomer in the sabre.

The NCAA fencing championships will be held March 23-26 at Duke. Princeton will find out today which of its fencers have qualified.

See? Not all celebrations were in basketball. 

Speaking of basketball, though, coming tomorrow here: Princeton Basketball in the NCAA tournament, A to Z.