West Philly Weekend

TigerBlog would like to add Uche Ndukwe to the list of people he congratulated yesterday. 

Ndukwe became the latest Princeton football player to get his shot at the NFL, as he signed with the Minnesota Vikings to participate in their rookie minicamp.

Every time TB sees a Princeton player get his shot after going undrafted, he thinks of Ross Tucker, who got his chance and made the most of it, lasting seven very productive years in the league as an offensive lineman. TB wrote a feature story about Tucker when Tucker was a Princeton senior back in 2000. In that feature, Tucker said that his goal was to get into someone's training camp to see if he'd get to keep the helmet when he got cut. 

Instead, he made it through and established himself as a legitimate NFL lineman. Today he has a big career in football media. 

So maybe Ndukwe will follow in those footsteps. Just getting as far as he has is quite an achievement, one that also earns congratulations. By the way, TigerBlog continues to believe that any NFL team that would give wide receiver Dylan Classi a shot would be impressed by him.

Meanwhile it will be a weekend of other congratulations, though it's not quite certain yet to whom. There will especially be lots of people to congratulate if you happen to be in the area of West Philadelphia.

In fact, there will be two Ivy League team championships, a bunch of individual Ivy League championships and an automatic NCAA tournament bid earned there Sunday. 

The Ivy League Heps outdoor track and field championships will be held at Franklin Field Saturday and Sunday. The Ivy League women's lacrosse tournament will be held about 100 yards away or so, at Penn Park.

The Princeton men will be going for yet another "Triple Crown" by winning Heps cross country, which the Tigers did in the fall, indoor Heps, which the Tigers did in the winter, and then outdoor Heps, which will be happening this weekend.

Should Princeton be able to pull it off, that would make 11 Triple Crowns for the men's team. The 10 that Princeton has so far are 10 more than the rest of the league combined does.

The indoor meet this year was insanely close, as Princeton edged Harvard by a single point. The final numbers were 164-163. 

Princeton's women are also one of the favorites on their side of the event. Princeton's most recent outdoor Heps title was in 2011. 

The first event of the weekend is the women's hammer throw, which starts at 11. The men's pole vault, by the way, is at 3 Saturday, if you want to see what heights Sondre Guttormsen can reach next. He is not the only Tiger worth watching, of course, among the men and the women. 

The full schedule of events for Heps can be found HERE.

The Ivy League women's lacrosse tournament starts tomorrow at 4 at Penn Park, which is behind Franklin Field and the Palestra. The first semifinal matches Princeton, the third seed, and Yale, the second seed, in a rematch of last year's championship game. Top-seeded Penn will take on No. 4 Harvard in the second semifinal at 7.

The final, which will determine the league's automatic NCAA bid, will be Sunday at noon, which is the same time as the women's steeplechase and the men's discus. 

Princeton lost to Yale 15-10 back on March 4. In that game, Yale had a huge edge on the draws (22-6). The Tigers got three goals each that day from Grace Taukus and McKenzie Blake.

That was two months ago today. It might have been a million years ago, for as much as it impacts what happens tomorrow. That's how seasons work. 

The men's tournament, by the way, is at a predetermined site, in this case Columbia, where Princeton will play Penn tomorrow at 8:30. The women's tournament is at the home of the top seed. 

TigerBlog had a chance to speak with Princeton head coach Jenn Cook for this week's podcast and asked her which she preferred, and she said that she likes having the women's tournament separate from the men. 

Also on the podcast, TB spoke with seniors Christy Sieber and Shea Smith. If you've been to a Princeton women's lacrosse game and seen the orange and black bulldog, that would be Smith's dog Watson.

A Princeton bulldog? Yes, indeed. Will he be torn tomorrow, when Princeton plays those other Bulldogs?