There exists within Princeton Athletics a bridge between generations that keeps the connections within programs strong.
The ones who played here previously know what their athletic experience meant to them, and they in turn want the current athletes to be able to have something similar during their time as Tigers. It's why alumni support is so great for things like TAGD and why so many former athletes take such pride in the successes that current teams have.
It's one of the best parts of being here for as long as TigerBlog has. It's given him a real appreciation for just how genuine and strong this connection is.
If he had any reason to doubt that such a dynamic exists, it was reinforced for him as he spoke with former Princeton women athletes for his book on the first 50 years of women's athletics here. This was especially true of those who started and helped grow the programs, back in the 1970s.
Because of that, he was hardly surprised to hear that Maggie Benchich is a huge fan of Ellie Mitchell and how she plays the game. Nor was it a surprise that Benchich said, quite genuinely, that she's hoping that Mitchell can break a record that she has held for the last 46 years.
Maggie Benchich was Maggie Meier when she played basketball at Princeton in the 1970s, winning four Ivy League titles in four years. She graduated as the only Princeton women's player ever with at least 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds, and to this day she remains the only one ever to do so (Bill Bradley is the only men's player who has reached those numbers).
Benchich finished her career with 1,099 rebounds, an extraordinary total when you consider 1) how long the record has lasted and 2) that nobody has come particularly close. And that would be men (where Bradley holds the record with 1,008) or women.
Nobody, that is, until Mitchell.
Right now, as Princeton gets ready to play in the Ivy League tournament this weekend at Columbia, Mitchell, who yesterday was named the league's Defensive Player of the Year for the third time, has 1,088 career rebounds, leaving her 11 away from the record. She averages an Ivy League-best 10 boards per game.
Princeton's women's team, in all reality, has a minimum of two games to go this year, with more possible. First of all, there is Penn in Friday's first semifinal (4:30, ESPN+). Should Princeton lose, it would still play in a postseason tournament, so that's a second game.
In each of the last two seasons, Princeton has played four games from this point forward — two in the Ivy tournament and then two more in the NCAA tournament after winning the first game both years.
Will Mitchell break the record? It's quite likely that she will.
What does Benchich think of that? You can read for yourself. TigerBlog wrote a feature story about here, and you can get that HERE.
TigerBlog met up with Benchich at a deli not far from where she lives now and not far from Central Bucks East High School, where she first played the game in 10th grade. To that point, she had never been on a competitive sports team in her life.
In two years, she became the Philadelphia Bulletin area Player of the Year, and then she came to Princeton to play for Pat Walsh during the earliest days of the program.
She and her teammates played in Ivy League tournaments as well, though they weren't quite what the current team can expect. There was no TV coverage. There was no NCAA bid at stake.
In fact, the league champion was determined over a two-day tournament in which each Ivy team played every other team once, all at the same location. Think that would fly these days? Not a chance.
It wasn't that long ago, of course.
This weekend will be about more than the rebounding record. Mitchell wants to finish her career with a return to the NCAA tournament. She wouldn't care if she didn't get a single rebound this weekend if Princeton wins (though one is definitely helped along by the other).
Columbia and Harvard play in the second semifinal. The winners play Saturday at 5 on ESPNEWS for the league's automatic NCAA bid.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment