Monday, June 12, 2023

More Congratulations

TigerBlog starts today with congratulations to his friend and colleague Warren Croxton. 

Warren, who has been a part of Princeton's Athletic Communications efforts for seven years, was named the College Water Polo Association SID of the Year. According to the wording of the award, it is given to an SID who: “has achieved notable excellence in the field of water polo communications during the past academic year.”

Warren is clearly deserving of any recognition he ever gets. He puts his heart and soul into every team, every athlete, he covers and always has. 

Warren covers both water polo teams and publicized both of their runs to the NCAA tournament, including a semifinal berth for the women. He also works with football, women's basketball and all four rowing teams, all of whom have enjoyed great success on his watch. 

Oh, and he also covers baseball. He saw first hand how Princeton went from seven wins a year ago to a third-place Ivy League finish and a spot in the Ivy League tournament championship round. If you asked him where he'd have liked to have been this weekend, he would have said with the Tigers at a Super Regional.

So congratulations Warren. Keep up the good work. And one day the Sixers will win the NBA title again. Hey, he'll always have 41-33 (you know, the Eagles' Super Bowl win over the Patriots).

Speaking of Super Regionals, there aren't too many baseball games that will have a better ending than Game 1 of the Duke-Virginia series Friday afternoon.

Virginia was down 5-4 with two out in the bottom of the ninth. Jake Gelof, he of the 23 home runs this season, launched a shot to deep left center. Deep, deep left center. Deepest left center. Would it carry? If it did, then it was a 7-5 UVa win. If it was caught, then it was a 5-4 Duke win. 

In the end ... it was caught, up against the wall. Duke wins. 

Now Virginia had to win Games 2 and 3 to advance to Omaha. What happened over the weekend? Virginia 26, Duke 6 in the next two games combined. Gelof, by the way, went 4 for 10 with a home run and five RBIs in those two games.

The field for the College World Series is shaping up. The final eight teams will meet up in Omaha beginning Friday and running through either June 25 or 26th, depending on the outcome of the best-of-three championship series.

When it ends, the 2022-23 athletic year across all of college athletics will be over. As it stands, all that is left is Division I baseball, and the eight teams who play in Nebraska are the only eight still playing.

For the record, Virginia, Florida, Oral Roberts and Texas Christian will make up one of the brackets. Wake Forest became the first team in the other bracket, and the top-ranked Demon Deacons were then joined by LSU.  Southern Miss-Tennessee will play Game 3 of their regional today, and Stanford and Texas may or may not be playing a Game 3 today (TB didn't stay up late enough to see who won Game 2).

The athletic year for Princeton ended Friday night, when the last Tiger competed at the NCAA championships in track and field. Fittingly, the season ended with an All-American performance, as sophomore Nicholas Bendtsen finished 16th in the 5,000 meters to earn second-team honors.

Bendtsen, by the way, is the younger brother of another former Tiger track star, Chris Bendtsen, a Heps cross country champion who was part of the winning 2011 Penn Relays 4x1-mile team (along with Donn Cabral, Kyle Soloff and Mark Amirault). Then are not related to Amanda Berntsen, a former Princeton women's basketball player, though their last names are certainly spelled uniquely similarly.

Bendtsen ran a 14:22.79, leaving him almost two full seconds ahead of the 17th place finisher. A day earlier, Kate Joyce finished 22nd in the women's javelin.

And with that, another year had come and gone. 

The next one is 74 days away. It'll start, as it always does, with women's soccer, which kicks off on Friday, Aug. 25, at 7, on Myslik Field against Roberts Stadium against Monmouth. 

A week later, field hockey, men's water polo, men's soccer and women's volleyball will start, and the cycle will start again.

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