Who Loves Ya Baby

TigerBlog stumbled onto a great marathon on TV the other day. 

Of course, you have to be around TB's age to appreciate it. First, there were about four or five episodes of "The Rockford Files," followed by a similar number of episodes of "Kojak." 

Ah, TV in the 1970s. It's never been equaled. If you were born too late, then you missed out. But hey, who loves ya, baby?

One interesting thing that TB noticed was during a commercial that played over and over and over, though it faded into the background for the most part. It was for a medication, though TB isn't sure which one. 

He does know at the end, when the announcer listed the side effects, among them were diarrhea and constipation. What? How could it be both? That was risk management at its finest, no? 

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The Olympic track and field trials are being held in Eugene, Ore., this weekend. Princeton has two women who qualified: Alexandra Kelly, who competed last night in the long jump, and Shea Greene, who goes in the javelin tonight (7 Eastern). 

Greene finished in 16th place at the NCAA championships earlier this month, earning second-team All-American honors. 

One Princetonian who is not there who otherwise almost certainly would have been is Kate Joyce, the two-time All-American javelin thrower who underwent Tommy John surgery that shut her down for essentially two years. 

The Olympic Games are filled with stories of athletes who missed out four years earlier because of any number of reasons, mostly injury. What you don't see on TV during the Games are the stories of those who missed out on their chance for the current Olympiad and who have to rededicate themselves for another four year cycle. 

Hopefully Joyce will get that chance. 

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The Premier Lacrosse League has four games this weekend in Minneapolis. If you don't know how the league works, it has eight teams, and for the first time, the teams now have home cities.

That does not mean that they play half their games at home and half on the road. Nope. They each get one home weekend, in which they will play two games while one other team has the weekend off. The weekends like this one that are at a "neutral" site will have all eight teams play one game each.

Princeton has more alums in the PLL than any other Ivy League school, with seven this year. 

You can see the games this weekend on ESPN+, including a matchup tonight at 8:30 between the Boston Cannons and the Utah Archers. It's a game that will feature a pair of rookies — Boston offensive midfielder Alexander Vardaro and Utah shortstick defensive middie Beau Pederson — who battled each other every day in practice as Tigers. 

The Philadelphia Waterdogs play tomorrow night (8:30) against the Carolina Chaos. The 'Dogs are 0-3, all by one goal, two in overtime. Their head coach is Bill Tierney, who is in his first season with the team and the league. 

Tierney first coached the Princeton men in 1988, going 8-21 in his first two seasons. In the 20 seasons that followed, he had only two losing streaks of at least three games: in 1999, when the team started 0-3 and then won nine straight, and in 2005, when the team started 0-5 and before winning five of the next seven.

Yes, it's not college lacrosse. Still, TigerBlog has a sense that Tierney is not thrilled with being winless, especially the way it's happened.

Here's an interesting stat: The PLL keeps touches, which is the number of times a player has the ball in his stick. Michael Sowers and Tom Schreiber have combined for 225 touches and only four turnovers. Vardaro, for his part, has no turnovers in 20 touches. 

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What are you doing Nov. 2? 

Circle that date on your calendar now. On that Saturday, Princeton will host the Ivy League Heptagonal cross country championships. 

Given that there has been a massive construction project where the old cross country course was, it'll be interesting to see the dynamics at play in the new one. No matter where it's run, of course, Heps cross country is always one of the best events in any sport in the league all year. 

Plus, once the races is over, you can head over to Powers Field at Princeton Stadium for the Princeton-Cornell football game.

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Nov. 2? It seems so far away, but it isn't.

June is ending. July begins Monday, which means that starting Monday, you'll be able to say Princeton has sporting events next month. 

In the meantime, have a great summer weekend.

Updating Olympians

How's this for the bio of a Princeton grad? 

A United States Olympic sailor. An architect. A spy during World War II. The person who rejuvenated the silk business in Thailand, where he also turned a forgotten hotel into one of the best in the Far East — all while possibly still being a spy.

That's pretty fascinating stuff. 

It belongs to James Thompson, Princeton Class of 1928. Shortly after graduation, Thompson sailed in the Olympic Games in Amsterdam, finishing sixth. 

He then studied architecture at Penn. When World War II broke out, he joined the Army as part of the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA. Fluent in French, he worked covertly with the French Resistance, and more overtly fighting in North Africa. 

Just before the war ended, he was sent to Bangkok, for his first time in Thailand. He came back to the U.S. briefly after the war, and then returned to Thailand to start his life there — even getting divorced from his wife, who did not want to follow him there.

He'd stay in the Far East from that point on. What happened to him? Nobody knows. He went off for a walk one day in 1967 and was never seen again. Ultimately, he was declared dead in 1974, though his body was never found.

Here's a quote from an Australian journalist who knew him:

I still insist, like others who know far more about the affair than I do, that he disappeared by his own choice and will, and not by force.

Now that's how you want to go out if you're a spy.

Why did James Thompson come onto TigerBlog's radar yesterday? 

It all started with an email that was forwarded to TB from the Daily Princetonian. It appeared that there were some issues with the all-time list of Olympians on goprincetontigers.com.

Not the recent ones, mind you. No. The ones from way back. 

A history question? About Princetonians in the Olympics? 

This was right in TigerBlog's wheelhouse. And so he dove right in. 

Of course, there is the question of the archives. The list of Princeton Olympians, like so many other records, goes back a long, long way.  TB isn't even sure who first put this list together. 

He relies on it, as he relies on all other records, to be accurate, since he has no reason to doubt them. And, for the most part, it's spot on.

On the other hand, he does realize that there have to be some discrepancies. As an example, there is an inaccuracy somewhere about the first season of women's lacrosse at Princeton. The official record book and the Prince archives disagree about the schedule and results from the 1972 season.

Meanwhile, back at the Olympic records, there were a few small corrections, such as the case of rower Tina Clark, who was listed with United States and not Canada. That was easy to check.

There were some others that required a cross-reference between the year they graduated Princeton and their Olympic competition. There were a few names on the email who weren't on the Princeton webpage, with some who turned out not be Olympians or Princetonians. 

There were others who belonged or needed to be removed. Tragically, one of the ones who need to be removed was Gerrit Schoonmaker, or "G.L. Schoonmaker" as he was listed on the webpage of Olympians.

As it turned out, Gerrit did not compete in the Olympics. He graduated in 1953, joined the Marines and passed away after a short battle with ALS.

There was an "L.M. Schoonmaker," Class of 1904, who fenced in Paris at the 1920 Olympics and then was an Olympic referee after that. Gerrit was his son. 

There was also an Olympic sailer named James (Bing) Schoonmaker. Ol' Bing was an alternate on the 1952 and 1964 teams, which is how Gerrit had been listed on goprincetontigers.com. As far as TigerBlog can tell, Bing never attended Princeton.

The bigger point isn't that there were a few errors on the page. It's that Princeton Athletics has produced so many Olympians throughout the years. 

The list of Princetonians who have competed in the Olympics will be growing significantly in the next few weeks, when the 2024 Games in Paris begin next month. 

There will be a record number of Tigers in Paris. TB will make sure they're all properly mentioned on the long, long list of Princeton Olympians.

Bones Is A Finalist

Back when TigerBlog was just starting out covering college sports back at the newspaper, he had the great good fortune of working for a legendary local sportswriter named Harvey Yavener. 

Yav, who lived into his 90s before he passed away two years ago, might have seem like just another grizzled old-time newspaper man. And yes, there were certainly elements to that — he was gruff and surly and a stickler for the journalistic rules that pretty much no longer exist.

What did you expect from someone who was born in 1929? He grew up and lived much of his life in a world that also no longer exists. 

Knowing all that, TigerBlog was never sure why Yav became one of the earliest proponents of giving valuable column inches in the newspaper every day to covering women's sports. If you think the discrepancy today between men's and women's coverage is still drastic, you should have been around in the 1970s and 1980s.

When TB first started to work with Yav in the 1980s, one of the first lessons Yav taught him was that the women deserve to be written about as well. As such, much like Yav, TB spent many, many nights as the only writer — male or female — to be at the women's game of a basketball doubleheader or to be at a field hockey or women's lacrosse or softball game.

If anything is Yav's greatest legacy, it's not his interview style (ask anyone he ever interviewed; when they were done, there was no possible question left to ask), the massively long stories he'd write or his tendency to call pretty much every game "the greatest ever played" and any player who happened to have a good night when he was there "the greatest player ever."

No. It's how he elevated women's athletics.

Perhaps it was working for Yav that pointed TB in the same direction. Or maybe it was just how great women's athletics have been since pretty much Day 1 at Princeton.

As you probably know, TigerBlog has written a 500-page book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton. What? You didn't know? 

You can get yours HERE.

TigerBlog is extremely proud of the book. He's also proud that he, as a man, was able to tell the stories of so many great women athletes. 

All of this brings him to Sean Gregory, one of the most beloved Princeton athletes TB has ever met. Gregory, whose nickname has always been "Bones," was a member of the great Princeton men's basketball Class of 1998.

The summer before the epic 27-2 season in 1997-98, the men's basketball team took a summer trip to Spain. Gregory asked TB (or maybe it was the other way around) to keep a journal of the trip, and the subsequent product appeared in the 1997-98 media guide (those were printed things that used to be standard, but that's not important right now).

That piece was all it took to convince TB that Gregory was a great writer. Nothing that has happened since has changed TB's mind.

Gregory has spent his career writing sports for Time Magazine. He writes long, well-crafted feature stories, and he's written about some of the biggest names in sports history. 

TigerBlog saw the other day that Gregory has been named a finalist for the first Billie Jean King Award. This is from the announcement: 

Journalists entered a portfolio of four stories, published in 2023, that include reporting about girls and women’s sports. Entries included live coverage, feature reporting and commentary about high school, college, amateur and professional sports across North America. The contest was administered by APSE through first vice president and contest chair Dan Spears.

There are seven finalists.

• Katie Barnes, ESPN.com
• Candace Buckner, The Washington Post
• Marisa Ingemi, The San Francisco Chronicle
• Sally Jenkins, The Washington Post
• Chantel Jennings, The Athletic
• Meg Linehan, The Athletic
• Sean Gergory, Time Magazine
  

Bones, as you might have noticed, is the only male in the group. It makes it a bit more special, TB thinks.

TB congratulates Gregory on being a finalist. He's certainly earned it. 

And for TB, it also conjures up images of Yav, someone Gregory knew well. It reminds TB of his earliest days covering college sports, when he wondered why he was the only one at so many women's games. 

Looking back on it, he knows the answer. It's because it was the right thing to do.

$25,411.76 Per Hour

TigerBlog has some math problems for you today that have been giving him trouble. 

First, if you make $120 for 17 seconds of work, much do you make an hour? Well, there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour, so that's 3,600 seconds per hour. 

If you divide 120 by 17, then that comes to 7.06, and multiplied by 3,600, that comes to $25,411.76 per hour. Seems like a good job.

Why are these numbers significant? Well, that would be because TB locked himself out of his house Sunday afternoon. He has no idea how he did this, by the way. 

As it turned out, it cost $120 for a locksmith to come out and let him back in. TigerBlog timed him when he arrived, and from start to finish, it took him 17 seconds to unlock the door. 

Seventeen seconds? What the heck? 

So that's one math problem out of the way. 

The other is this: If you're starting college in September 2024, what year are you graduating? 

For some reason, TB got that one wrong.

When he wrote the story about the incoming field hockey class, he referred to it as the "Class of 2027." Yeah, no. That's not right. 

It's actually the Class of 2028.

How in the world did TB get that wrong? That was so easy. And he did better on his math SATs than he did on his verbal, though that was a long time ago.

There are seven incoming field hockey players. Of that group, there are four Americans — all four of whom were selected to the USA Field Hockey Senior Nexus, a launching pad to the national team program. 

The other three are all from England. Their presence will bring to 24 the number of players on the team this coming season, and the group will be split evenly between American players and international players. That was pretty much the first thing that TB looked up.

It's the kind of balance that Carla Tagliente and Dina Rizzo love to see in their program. It's also the kind of balance that leads to an even more well-rounded experience among the players themselves, since they're exposed to teammates who have come from wildly different backgrounds and pre-Princeton experiences.

One of the interesting things about writing about an incoming class, at least as far as TB is concerned, is that you have to learn quickly how to spell everyone's name correctly. TigerBlog is the field hockey contact, so he'll have to make sure he's not messing things up from the start.

In the case of these seven newbies, TB now knows that there are two "Ls" in Lilly Wojcik. Actually, that's three "Ls;" there's that math thing again.

Clemmie Houlden wants to be "Clem." It's "Faulstich," for Anna Faulstich, without a second "T" near the end of her last name. It's "Molly" Nye, which is different than the way TB reflexively types that first name, from all the times he's written "Mollie Marcoux Samaan."

This is something only people in athletic communications think about. You can also multiply this out by Princeton's 38 teams, which means learning to spell all kinds of names.

Of course, the math on this particular equation is easy. If you have 12 American players and 12 international players, then you have a 50-50 balance.

What other math is there for today? This one is always a tricky one.

The last event of the 2023-24 athletic year was the NCAA track and field championships, which ended on June 8. The first event of the 2024-25 is on Aug. 23, when the women's soccer team hosts Miami.

So what does that make the midway point between last season and this coming season?

Well, that's 22 days of June, 31 of July and 23 of August. That's 76. Half of 76 is 38 — and 38 days after June 8 would be July 16. 

TB was in a meeting yesterday which ended with these words: "August 23rd will be here soon enough."

Yes it will. It always is.

Lastly, if you make $25,411.76 per hour for a 35-hour work week for a full year, then you've made $46,249,411.80 for the year.

According to a Forbes article, that would put you 47th among current professional athletes in annual salary, just ahead of Anthony Davis of the Los Angeles Lakers and just behind Rashan Gary of the Green Bay Packers. 

A Classic

TigerBlog had the Indiana Fever-Atlanta Dream game on his computer and Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals on his TV Friday night.

He's a lot of fun. He knows.

As has been the case with every Fever game this year, home and away, this one was a sellout. In fact, like Indiana's game at Washington earlier this season, it had to be moved to a larger venue to accommodate a crowd of nearly 18,000, which eclipsed the Dream's previous all time high of 11,000, which was in its first-ever home game.

Guess why? 

Then there is the Stanley Cup Finals. If you've been following along, then you know that tonight is Game 7, where Edmonton will look to become the fifth team to go down 3-0 in the NHL playoffs and come back to win the series. 

TigerBlog remembers one of them. It was in 1975, when the Islanders rallied from 3-0 down to beat the Penguins. If you watched back then like TB did, then you know what happened next: New York went down 3-0 to the Flyers, rallied to 3-3, had to win in Philadelphia, watched as Kate Smith came out onto the ice to sing Gold Bless America and then lost. 

TB is humored by the comparisons that are being made on TV between two Edmonton players: Wayne Gretzky and current Oiler Connor McDavid. Here's the only comparison you need for these two: there isn't any. 

Keep in mind, Wayne Gretzky has more career assists than any other player has points. Yes. Jaromir Jagr had 1,921 career points, while Gretzky had 1,963 career assists — along with 894 goals, giving him 2,857 career points. That's ridiculous.

Yes, McDavid is incredible. Just leave it at that. TB will root for him tonight. 

The historian in TigerBlog loves to see domination in the Princeton record books, and there is no shortage of it there. Look at men's lacrosse. 

Michael Sowers finished his Princeton career with 302 points. The old record was 247, set by Kevin Lowe, and it lasted 25 years. Coulter Mackesy enters his senior year 40 goals away from Jesse Hubbard's career record, which has lasted since 1998, but he is 128 points away from tying Sowers.

That's a little less than Sandi Bittler's record for points in women's basketball lasted. She scored 1,683, which stood from 1990 until 2020, when Bella Alarie beat her by 20 (1,703 if you don't want to do the math). Given how long it was before someone broke Bittler's record, and given the "spread it around" scoring that exists on great teams like Princeton's current ones, it might be a while until someone matches Alarie.

And that's nothing when compared to Bill Bradley in men's basketball. Bradley scored 2,503 career points, and that was without a three-point line and when freshmen were ineligible. 

TigerBlog could recite for you most of Bradley's statistics from memory, but there is something he's never considered. How many points did Bradley average for the 1961-62 Princeton freshman team? 

To find out, he headed to the best source there is, the Daily Princetonian archives.

The first mention of Bill Bradley came in a preview of that freshman season, which included this:

With the season's opener against Rutgers only a week away, freshman basketball coach Eddie Donovan still faces the double-barreled problem of "getting the team to play together," and finding "ten good men." With 6'5" high school All-American Bill Bradley, and all-staters George Fambach (Arizona) and Don Roth (All-Catholic, California) leading a squad that includes 16 former captains or all-conference players, Donovan is encouraged by the players' ability to adopt to the Princeton style of play. 

Yes. Had TB been Bradley's freshman coach, he, too, would have been encouraged. 

Bradley, not surprisingly, set the Princeton record for points in a season by a freshman with 398. If you add that to his varsity total, you get 2,901 — still without the three-point line.

Bradley's total came in 13 games, for an average of 30.6, to go with 17.1 rebounds per game. Princeton went 10-4 that freshman season (Bradley missed a game against Rutgers due to an injury).

Oh, and one of the four losses was to a Manhattan team that was led by Larry Lembo, who graduated as the Jaspers all-time leading varsity scorer. Larry Lembo. Larry Lembo. TB knew that name sounded familiar. 

Oh yeah. He was a longtime college basketball ref. TB knew if he dug enough, he'd find a good Pete Carril/Larry Lembo reference, and it ended up having the extra bonus of Joe Scott too:

To all of the 1,150 in attendance last night, junior guard Joe Scott appeared to have been fouled in the waning seconds of last night's game against Seton Hall. But the man with the best seat in the house — referee Larry Lembo — saw no evil and called no evil, sending Princeton to a 44-43 defeat at the hands of the Pirates in Jadwin Gym. "Joey got fouled three times on the play," a livid Coach Pete Carril barked afterward. "He got fouled going in, he got fouled the first time (he got the ball back), and he got fouled the second time." 

Classic.

Welcome To Summer

Yesterday, TigerBlog let Zack DiGregorio take the lead.

Today, he offers another great American writer: F. Scott Fitzgerald: 

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy­-colored porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”

As it turned out, that was yesterday. Grrrr. Does TB regret not mentioning it? 

Do you? If so, do you regret it like Daisy did, though Daisy wasn't really one for regrets. When it came to regrets, Tom and Daisy were more carriers than victims.

This, of course, is from "The Great Gatsby."

So what does TB have planned for the day after the summer solstice? 

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There are the wins and the losses. There are the lessons learned from both. There are the practices and bus rides. There's the time management required to excel athletically and as a student.

Beyond all of that, there's also the community spirit that comes out of Princeton Athletics. Tiger coaches and athletes spend hours and hours volunteering their time to open up themselves and their teams for any number of great reasons.

What better way is there to make a real difference for fans, especially young ones, than to be present and accessible. 

Perhaps the ones who benefit the most are the ones from Team IMPACT. Princeton's efforts for the organization have not gone unnoticed. 

In fact, earlier this week, Princeton was named the 2024 Team IMPACT Fellowship Division I Campus of the Year. From the release on goprincetontigers.com:

Princeton has a long history of supporting Team IMPACT, a nonprofit organization that matches children facing serious illness and disability with college sports teams. Since 2011, the Team IMPACT program has matched more than 3,000 children with 750 colleges and universities in all 50 states. Princeton first teamed up with Team IMPACT in 2013 and has since welcomed a total of 14 children to team rosters for multi-year partnerships. The 2023-24 academic year saw children matched with six Tiger teams, including softball, men's golf, men's lacrosse, women's swimming & diving, men's swimming & diving and men's basketball.

You can read the entire story — and see some great pictures — HERE.

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The day before Zack had the floor, TB mentioned Princeton photographer Shelley Szwast. As it turns out, it seems like a lot of people love Shelley. 

At least that's what all of the emails and texts that TB received seem to suggest. It reminded TB of when he was still at the newspaper and wrote two stories about sports movies, including one in which he ranked the best and worst he'd ever seen.

So what happened? In the days before email and texting, there was something called the "mail." In all his time at the paper, he got more letters about that one story than about every other story he ever wrote combined.

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TigerBlog missed more than the Summer Solstice yesterday. It was also the fifth anniversary of the hiring of Carla Berube as the head coach of women's basketball at Princeton.

When TB saw that it was the anniversary, it made him wonder if it seems like it's been a long time or not a long time since Berube joined the Princeton staff. As he's said before, it's one of those situations where it's both.

TigerBlog wrote this about Berube after he first met her in Jadwin Gym that day five years ago:

First, she's extremely nice, friendly, engaging. Second, she has a very easy-going manner, and yeah, that's a great way to describe her. She moves with ease, speaks with ease, carries herself with ease. It gives her a real presence, whether she's at the front of a room filled with media or on the Jadwin court. The third thing that you can't miss is that she loves basketball. She lights up when she talks about it, and you can see her competitive nature come though. You can see how much it means to her, how proud she is what she built in her 17 years at Tufts and how she's looking forward to coaching the Tigers.

That's one of the most prescient things that TB has ever written. If the last five years have proven anything, it's that those words are 100 percent spot on.

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It's the first weekend of summer 2024. Enjoy it.

Guest TigerBlog - Zack DiGregorio Reports On Jason Garrett's Starfish Camp

Jason Garrett hosted his annual Starfish Charities "Play It Smart" football camp this past weekend. Zack DiGregorio was there, and he files this report: 

As someone who went semi-viral for an essay that began “I have never won anything in my entire life,” it feels oddly fitting that my favorite day of the year included some heartbreak. At Princeton Stadium, my team lost a heartbreaker in the Championship of the World at the 22nd Annual Jason Garrett Starfish Charities "Play It Smart" football camp. 

In a tight contest that came down to the wire, a clutch interception on the right sideline by a junior from New Dorp High School gave our team the ball back with about a minute left to play. Our quarterback took a shot to the end zone where, in front of 300 high schoolers and about a hundred more coaches, the opposing team’s safety pulled in an interception of his own, sealing the game and the Championship of the World for Jerome Henderson’s Nittany Lions. 

Not that I am mad about it. I’m not. Not at all… Ok, maybe just a little. The Play It Smart camp is about so much more than the football that happens between the white lines, though. Each year, Princeton University opens its doors to former Princeton great Jason Garrett to host this camp where, for one day, over 300 kids from the area come to campus and play football where football was born. The goal of this camp, as Jason says every year, is to get one of them to walk around campus, and say “I belong here.” 

A lot of these kids come from challenging home situations. A lot of them have never been to a place like Princeton or met one of the NFL, business or military leaders who come to campus every year for Jason and these kids. Camp stalwart Freddy Santana was one of those kids. Freddy was a camper of the day at Jason’s camp before going on to be captain of Holy Cross’s football team. He then went on to do Teach for America and become a principal, and he now works to connect students and alumni of the KIPP school system to career opportunities. One of Jason’s favorite reminders is that nothing great has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm. Look up enthusiasm in the dictionary and Freddy Santana will be right there. 

Even if the camp is not necessarily about the football, that doesn’t mean players and coaches are not out there competing. Princeton legends Rick Giles, Kevin Guthrie and Howard Levy had a rough day on the field, ending up 0-5 on the day. Hours later and dozens of Conte’s pizzas later, Kevin was still stewing, going over crucial moments in games with Rick as the sun set on Princeton Stadium. Marcus Stroud, former Princeton linebacker and defensive coordinator for our team, sprinted on the field after every big stop or turnover, getting fired up for his defense that pitched two shutouts on Saturday. The whole afternoon is punctuated by occasional outbursts of joy and celebration from a big play from players and coaches alike — many of whom just met each other an hour prior. 

Because I am definitely only a little mad about losing the Championship of the World, I’ll take a step back to Friday. Again, the weekend is not really about football. It’s about trying to reach kids and have them realize they have it within them to be great in sports, in school, in their homes and in their lives. 

For the first time, this year started in McCosh 50 with an afternoon long seminar on mental health and athletics for around a hundred young men and women. If I am being honest, I walked into the lecture hall a little nervous. A hundred kids and a few hours of programming? You might lose most of the kids by the end when they get antsy or want to check their phone. I was happy to be wrong: these kids were locked in, participating and so much more articulate about mental health challenges in their communities than I was at that age. 

From there, everyone headed to Palmer Square for the Dig Deep Fun Run, where even more friendly faces were waiting for us. Charlie and Sandy Thompson, now retired and living a well-deserved dream in Newport, Rhode Island, were there, as well as Ret. Rear Adm. Ryan Scholl, also a Princeton football grad. Scott Rathke, a former Navy SEAL and Iowa football standout, has become a mainstay at the camp each year, not to mention one of the people I’m most excited to see. For me, this year’s Fun Run was a Fun Walk, first with Howard and Jason, with Jason remarking every few steps “This is a hell of a course.” He was right — going right through campus, the course hit the highlights. 

Friday night’s dinner was also one for the ages. All the coaches packed into the Nassau Inn for dinner and to catch up with friends whom they maybe haven’t seen in a year. I often call Friday of the camp the Good Guy Convention of America, where it seems like so many of these incredibly talented and intelligent people come together to share stories about the difference they’re trying to make and figure out how to support each other. 

Every year, Friday night features a conversation and a panel of football and leadership luminaries and this year, Jason may have out done himself. His conversation with New York Giants legend and Hall of Famer Michael Strahan was as engaging and insightful as you’d expect from someone who has excelled in entertainment and business as much as he has in athletics. The panel featured Strahan, Hall of Famer and Jason’s former teammate in Dallas Michael Irvin, former NFL player and current Giants coach Jerome Henderson, Giants quarterback Daniel Jones, Cowboys all time leader in receptions and one of the toughest players in NFL history Jason Witten, Giants Ring of Honor inductee Jesse Armstead and former Rutgers and New England Patriots standout Devin McCourty, now Jason’s teammate at NBC Sports. 

Between them, there are 11 Super Bowl Championships and more Pro Bowls and All-Pro teams than I have time to count. Each of them, though, talked about the importance of wanting to earn the respect of the people they most respected in the locker room. This throughline was striking as, for as long as I can remember I have looked up to and tried to earn the respect of so many of the men and women in that room at the Nassau Inn. One of those people I looked up to and tried to earn the respect of, though, wasn’t there on Friday: my dad. The camp every year falls right before Father’s Day and to be honest, the camp is so much harder than Father’s Day itself. Our favorite weekend of the year every year, I used to flit around the camp as a ball boy when all the coaches were a little younger and would stay out a little later on Friday night. Then in high school I would come as a player then head up to the concourse to talk a little trash to the coaches whose teams I beat (or, far more often, have a little trash talked to me). 

Since then, I’ve come back every year and will keep coming back for as long as they’ll have me. What an incredible gift it is, on that weekend, with those people, in that place, to be surrounded by such incredible role models on the field and in life. 

 

 

Saluting Shelley

TigerBlog starts today with a picture that had him smiling most of yesterday.

It came courtesy of Erica Denhoff, who has taken quite a few pictures for Princeton Athletics the last few years. This time, she was in the picture.

Erica shares an alma mater with TigerBlog, though she seemingly got more out of her education than TB did. In fact, if you go to her photography webpage, which you can HERE, you'll see that her bio includes this: "As a clinical researcher at a pediatric hospital for over 15 years ..."

Erica is also a huge Boston sports fan. The photo she sent yesterday was taken after the Celtics put away Dallas to win their 18th NBA Championship. It seemed Erica was pretty pleased by the outcome. The picture is outstanding.

It is not easy to be a great sports photographer. TigerBlog has tried it enough to know. He's taken exactly one great action shot, and that was last fall at the Princeton-Yale field hockey game in New Haven.

It also came with a huge asterisk. Princeton and Yale had gone to overtime, and the Princeton had scored. The officials were reviewing the play on video, so TB knew that the team would be celebrating if the call stood.

As such, it became the closest thing to a posed celebration shot, which is the only way TB could have taken something this good:

Not bad, right? 

That picture is labeled "Yale Jubo" on TB's computer. Pictures that have the "Jubo" distinction are the best kinds of shots, since the "Jubo," as TB has written many times before, is short for "Jubilation."

If you're looking for Jubo, you can find it in the picture of Erica Denhoff. 

Sometimes you have no idea that a great Jubo moment is going to arise. Other times you do.

For instance, you might not realize that something that almost never happens is about to happen, like a goal from a goalie in lacrosse. 

And hey, Princeton had just such an occasion this past year, when Michael Gianforcaro scored in a 15-10 win over Penn, on his Senior Day no less. 

Princeton photographer Shelley Szwast was at the game. For most of the day, it was just another game — one with some important stuff riding on the outcome but from a photographer's standpoint, just another game.

And then the goalie scored. You have to be ready for anything when you're snapping pictures. And Shelley certainly was:

In fact, Shelley had about 25 great shots in the immediate aftermath of Gianforcaro's goal. TB? He wouldnt' have had any.

TigerBlog has mentioned Shelley many times. She is seemingly everywhere at Princeton Athletics, camera at the ready. 

If you read TB's entry yesterday, you read the part about how athletics have an innate way of transcending so many of the issues that are tearing at the fabric of contemporary society. Shelley texted this to TB yesterday morning:

Your blog timing today is wild. I just had the same conversation this morning about why Athletics is so different to be around, and why it’s so refreshing to spend time there. I feel lucky every day that I get to experience it, even in my role.

TB wishes he had a way of figuring out how many words he's written about Princeton Athletics in his career. He also wishes he had a way of figuring out how many pictures Shelley has taken. 

The answer to both is of course "a lot." The final product of a game that Shelley shoots has several hundred pictures, but she's already deleted several thousand before she sends them over. 

Anyone who has met Shelley at Princeton instantly loves her and realizes that, as she says, "it's so refreshing to spend time there." She is just joyful about her role, and she sells herself short when she says "even in my role."

Her role is a huge part of Princeton Athletics. Her role captures the spirit and the joy and the love of the games, the competitions and especially the competitors. 

Also, she never really gets any credit for what she does. Like Erica, it's a rare moment when the camera is pointing to her as opposed to away from her. Also like Erica, this is a sidelight for her in addition to her full-time work in IT.

And so, if you wondering who she is, TigerBlog figured that after all of the shots of hers that he has used, he might as well offer up one of her:

That is Shelley across the front, with the women's hockey team in Ireland this past winter. 

Thanks, Shelley, for all you do. 

Princeton Athletics wouldn't be the same without your role in it.

"I Love Those"

When TigerBlog saw his son a week ago, the two of them had this conversation:

TB: "There is something different appearance-wise than at any time since before you were born. Can you guess what it is?"
TigerBlog Jr. (after 30 seconds of sizing up his father): "Nope. Got nothing."

That's okay. Nobody else noticed either.

Well, that's not true. One person noticed, and TB will get back to that in a minute.

TigerBlog isn't 100 percent sure how long he's been wearing glasses. He does know that he first got glasses back in the 1990s and, on the day he got them, Princeton had a home men's basketball game.

The first person he saw when he walked into Jadwin Gym with the new specs was, of all people, Brian Earl, who immediately said "hey, new glasses?"

TB will never forget that. New glasses. Technically yes, though he'd never before worn glasses. 

TigerBlog has gotten new lenses quite a few times since then, but the frames were always pretty much the same. In fact, for the last 10 years or so, they've been exactly the same. 

Until two weeks ago, that is.

For reasons unknown, TB decided that 2024 was the time to change his frames. They're radically different now. He doesn't know how to do describe it, but here are the old and new side by side. 

So that's the old ones on the left and the new ones on the right. And it's very stressful choosing new glasses, by the way. The woman in the eye doctor's office said "oh, I love those" to every pair TB tried on. To test her, he put on frames from the women's section, to which she said "oh, I love those."

Anyway, armed with his new glasses, TB went off to the NCAA women's rowing championships. Figuring that anyone who's known him would immediately realize that his glasses were different, he immediately set out to reconnoiter for a familiar face. 

He quickly saw four people he knew well in the first minute he was there: women's rowing head coach Lori Dauphiny, Princeton's Deputy AD Anthony Archbald, TB's Office of Athletic Communications colleague Joey Maruschak and Yale's longtime athletic communications person and former Princeton intern Tim Bennett. 

None of them said a word. When TB point his new glasses out to Anthony, all he got back was a laugh and a "never would have noticed."

When he got back to Princeton, he figured everyone would notice. Only one person did. And who was that? 

TB's colleague Andrew Borders. In a world of people who didn't notice, Andrew said "hey, new glasses" in the first 10 seconds.

TB would have guessed that Andrew would be the one.

A Day For Fathers

Happy day-after Fathers' Day to all the fathers out there.

For FatherBlog, it was his 63rd as a dad. TigerBlog got to spend the day yesterday with his father and his brother, who was in from Seattle, and he cannot even begin to remember the last time the three of them were together on Fathers' Day. 

Given how long ago he lost his mother (coming up on 30 years) and how many others have lost parents way too soon, TB will never take for granted spending time with his father. He's closing in on 89 years old, and TB would describe him as a car with 250,000 miles on it where the engine still works well though it does have more than its share of dings and dents.

For all of the ups and downs that parents and children have in their relationships through the years, TigerBlog can't remember ever going more than a week or so without speaking to his father on the phone.

Actually, in addition to that, he can't remember a time when FB didn't start a phone conversation without saying "what's the news and the views?" It's catchy.

For TigerBlog, it was his 27th. TigerBlog Jr.'s due date was actually Fathers' Day but instead he was born a few days later, so TB had to wait a whole year to be a father on Fathers' Day.

TB was happy that he spent last weekend with his kids and that they have turned out the way they have. He will often stop and tell himself how lucky he is in that regard, and in many regards.

TB's colleague Elliott Carr just celebrated Fathers' Day No. 1, after the recent birth of his son Leon. Elliott sent TB a few pictures, including one where he was watching Australian Rules Football (Leon is half Australian) and another where Elliott was reading to him from a book called "Quantum Physics for Babies." 

Now that's a great title. And here's a great quote: 

"Nice thing about having 38 sports is there will plenty of sports to introduce him to."

With any luck, Elliott and his wife Colleen, who works for the Ivy League office, will get to see Leon grow up the way TB and so many others who have worked at Princeton got to see their kids grow up — on Princeton's campus, attending Princeton sporting events, living the Princeton dorms at summer sports camps.

It's impossible to overstate just how much the campus helped shape the lives of so many kids that TB had the joy to see there alongside his own. The DiGregorio boys. The Levy kids. Mary Sutton (though that's not her married name). The list goes on and on.

There used to be an armory where the Frick Chemistry Building now stands. Among its other uses, it was the home for the ROTC program. And, additionally, the Princeton Band. 

When it was torn down to make way for the new building, TBJ was probably around six years old or so. TB remembers when his son, upon learning of this, said this to then-Director of Athletics Gary Walters:

"There are already a lot of science buildings. Where is the band going to put their stuff?"

TB hopes that Elliott gets to have the kinds of moments that he has had all those years ago.

The overwhelming majority of athletes who compete at Princeton, of course, did not grow up in town. Hey, they missed out on something special.

It's always great for TB to see the athletes he worked with here when they come around with their own children. It's a bit freaky when some of them, like Jack Crockett and Ellie and Cooper Mueller, for instance, actually come and play here. 

He's always said that he would feel old when that happened. And yes, perhaps that is true a bit.

More than that, though, it makes him happy to see something that incredible. 

So Happy Fathers' Day a day later, to them and to everyone. 

If you are like TB, then you realize that being a father is the best thing you've ever done.

Almost Summer

Summer begins this coming Thursday. 

The Princeton temperature for Thursday is supposed to be 96. It will be the fourth straight day in the 90s, apparently. Get ready. 

In the meantime ...

*

Sarah Fillier and Claire Thompson went first and third in the PWHL Draft this past week. The two were teammates at Princeton on the 2020 ECAC championship team and then again as gold medalists for Canada at the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Fillier went first overall, and TB could only think of two other Princeton athletes who were also the No. 1 overall pick in a professional sport draft: Ryan Mollett and Tom Schreiber in Major League Lacrosse.

TigerBlog couldn't figure out why Thompson wasn't already in the league. It turns out that she wasn't in the draft til this year because of the rather flimsy excuse of focusing on medical school.  

There's more information on the draft HERE.

*

Who doesn't like to jump in the pool when it's summer, especially when temps hit the 90s?

When TigerBlog was in Indianapolis last week, he walked from his hotel to the NCAA headquarters, which was about a 15-minute stroll. For most of those 15 minutes, TB could see the Marriott, which dominated the skyline and included a huge, multi-floor ad for the upcoming U.S. Olympic Trials in swimming and diving.

They begin tomorrow by the way. 

It's where they will be held that is extraordinary. They will be held in Lucas Oil Stadium, the home of the Indianapolis Colts.

TB didn't get to see inside the building, but it has to be incredible. A regulation Olympic swimming pool has been constructed inside a domed football stadium.

You can read more about the logistics of pulling this off HERE.

Apparently, since TB walked on Capitol Street, he walked past the fire hydrant that pumped one million gallons of water into the pool and another million gallons into the warm-up and warm-down pools.

TB was pretty fascinated to see that USA Swimming made the qualifying times tougher to reduce the number of competitors, which has dropped from 1,600 to 1,000. Among those 1,000, though, are 14 current or former Princeton Tigers.

That's a pretty impressive number. 

You can see their names and events HERE.

*

TB laughed when he first walked on Capitol Street last week. Why? It has to do with the 1996 NCAA men's basketball tournament. 

Princeton, as you probably remember, beat UCLA that year 43-41 in what was Pete Carril's last win as Tiger head coach. The game was held in the RCA Dome, which sat where Lucas Oil Stadium now does.

TB shipped Princeton's postseason media guides to Indianapolis, to the RCA Dome. When he got there, the guides were nowhere to be found, and he had to struggle to quickly get them reprinted, which he was barely able to do in time. 

It wasn't until he got back to Princeton after all of that excitement that he wondered whatever happened to the original guides, and when he investigated, he found out that a very nice woman signed for them and put them in a closet.

Turns out, the address of the RCA Dome was 100 South Capitol Street. The guides were delivered to 1 South Capitol Street, Room 100.  

They were probably still there in 2007, when the building was torn down.

*

TigerBlog has three Happy Birthday wishes for today, for college roommate Charlie Frohman, for longtime friend Tracy Lorenz Wolk and for Zack DiGregorio, who needs no introduction.

Zack, by the way, is seven days older and one foot shorter than Lior Levy, the oldest child of Howard and Riva Levy. Happy birthday to Lior as well.

*

Welcome to Princeton Jordan Evans. 

The newest addition to Carla Berube's women's basketball staff comes to Princeton from High Point, where she finished her playing career and then started her coaching career. Prior to coming to High Point, she played for two years at Niagara.  

Also welcome to Princeton Pat Harris, who joins the field hockey staff as an assistant coach. Harris has been a member of the U.S. men's national team for nearly 25 years, and he has spent 15 years coaching and playing in Europe.

*

Have a great weekend.

Riding For More Than Blog Content

TigerBlog had a chance to witness possibly the least empathetic moment of his entire life Saturday morning.

This happened as TB and Zack DiGregorio were about a mile from the end of the annual Million Dollar Bike Ride, which brings a lot of people to the Penn campus really early on a June Saturday. It's for a good cause, of course, as it is what its name says it is — a fundraising bicycle event

TB and Zack had been riding together. In SAT terms (or at least how the SAT used to be and maybe still is): Zack is to bicycling as TigerBlog is to golf; that is, those are pastimes they enjoy once a year.

The ride started near Penn's hockey rink and then headed through the streets of West Philadelphia, past the zoo and then onto Kelly Drive before turning around and coming back. There were police cars on every corner allowing the riders to go through, but that still didn't convince some that they weren't supposed to stop at red lights. 

In fact, as the large pack headed out 33rd Street, a group stopped at one such red light, leading the officer there to say this: 

"This is a race. You're supposed to try to win."

As TB and Zack were coming back down 34th Street headed back towards Drexel and Penn, suddenly Zack's chain fell off. 

As a public service announcement, if your chain comes off your bike, the best way to put it back on is to flip the bike over. Makes it way easier.

Anyway, as Zack worked to put the chain back on the bike, other riders began to pass them by. One gentleman, at full speed and without even slowing down, yelled out this:

"Dude, that sucks."

And then he went on his way. C'mon now. 

This was the 11th annual Million Dollar Bike Ride, which could actually be renamed the Two Million Dollar Bike Ride. In the first 10 years, the event has raised more than $20 million, all of which has gone to nearly 40 so-called "orphan diseases."

One of those orphan diseases — a rare disease that affects a very small percentage of people — is the A-T Children's Project. A-T stands for Ataxia Telangiectasia, a disease that, according to Hopkinsmedicine.org: 

" ... is a rare, inherited disease that affects several organs and systems, including the nervous and the immune systems. Most notably, it causes progressive degeneration of the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls movement and speech. Symptoms develop in early childhood. Some of the complications of A-T include cancer (typically leukemia or lymphoma), recurrent infections and chronic lung disease."

TigerBlog had certainly never heard of it until Derek DiGregorio was diagnosed with it maybe 15 or so years ago. Neither had anyone else in the DiGregorio family orbit. 

Since then, the DiGregorios have raised a ton of money and awareness to fight the disease. Derek, from his wheelchair, has been the inspirational, dynamic face of the effort. 

The Princeton University Department of Athletics has had its fingerprints all over this challenge. 

Jason Garrett. Pete Carril. John Thompson III. Howard Levy. Steve Verbit. Charlie Thompson. Noah Savage. The list goes on and on. 

To see the way they have given their all to this has been amazing. TB has been proud to be a very small  part of all this, with the bike rides and other ventures. 

As TB rode along Saturday, he thought back to the first time he'd been in one of these, 10 years ago, after he missed the first one. He has not, by the way, missed one since.

He pulled into the parking lot at Penn Park at 6:30 or so in the morning that Saturday, half expecting nobody to be there. When he saw Steve DiGregorio (former Princeton assistant football coach known as Digger) and Zack DiGregorio there, he told them that this would have made the best practical joke ever.

It might have been in Year 2 or 3 that Zack mentioned that TB was "riding for blog content." And yes, it does make for good blog content.

Of course it's about so much more than that. It's about putting a human face on a terrible disease, and that face — Derek's — has never wavered in all this time. He sits there, observing everything around him, make one sarcastically snide comment after another. It's who he is. It's perfect.

Steve DiGregorio, horrifically, passed away nearly three years ago, from pancreatic cancer. The patriarch of the family and the driving force along with his wife Nadia in all this, he is missed by everyone associated with Derek and the family on a daily basis. 

It's nearly three years later, and TB still wants to pick up the phone and talk to him, even though he knows he can't.

Nadia sent TB a few pictures from the ride after it was over. They got to talking about life, and she sent him this message: 

For the very first time in my life  I had my own room when Steve died. I would have given anything to keep it “our room.” 

That froze TB in his tracks and brought more than one tear to his eyes.

Digger would have been there, front and center Saturday. His presence hovers over everything that happens. 

It's so sad, and yet so inspirational at the same time.

Zack managed to right his bike and made it to the finish. Hopefully between now and a year from now, he remembers to get it checked out before his next time riding. 

TB will be there too. He'll be there every year they have this. 

And for more than just the blog content.

The Olympic Roster

Jackie Young was the overall No. 1 pick in the 2019 WNBA draft out of Notre Dame.

She grew up in Princeton. Well, the one in Indiana anyway. 

Young is one of 12 players on the U.S. Olympic women's basketball team, it was announced earlier this week. Young is one of two players in the WNBA who averages at least 16 points, six assists and 4.8 rebounds per game.

The other who meets those numbers is also the only player in the league with those three plus at least 1.5 steals per game. Who is that? Caitlin Clark, of course.

As you probably are aware, Clark is not on the U.S. Olympic team. All TigerBlog will say about that is that he would have loved to have been in the meeting where that decision was made.

Had he been there, he would have tried his best not to say anything until they came to him and said "should we put her on the team?" His response would have been simple: "Of course. Duh."

Meanwhile, in the Olympic selection good news of the day, or yesterday, Princeton (the one in New Jersey) had yet another athlete selected for the upcoming Games in Paris next month. This time, it was Beth Yeager, who was one of 16 players named to the United States field hockey team for the Summer Games. 

If you saw all of the content on Princeton field hockey Instagram, then you know the timing was incredible. The account had been hacked, of all things, and it had been down for nearly a month before it suddenly reappeared yesterday, just before the announcement. 

It wasn't all that shocking that Yeager made the team. She's been on the U.S. national team since she was a high school senior, and she recently made her 50th appearance in Red, White and Blue.

She was a huge part of the team as it navigated its ways through the rough Olympic qualifying process. It started for her when she decided to take off from Princeton after two years and two first-team All-American selections, devoting herself full-time to this pursuit.

It wasn't an easy choice to make. The Princeton field hockey team saw her in the airport on its way to Northwestern last fall, when Yeager was on her way to Charlotte for training. One of her best attributes as a player is that she's as good a teammate as she is a player, and you could tell that she loved being around the Tigers, even only for a few moments.

The first stop in qualifying was the Pan Am Games, where the winner got an automatic bid. The U.S. reached the finals — but fell 2-1 on a late goal to Argentina. 

That left one more path, at the Olympic qualifying tournament in January. There were two of them, actually, one in Spain and one in India. There were eight teams in each, and the top three at each location would reach Paris. 

The Americans, playing spectacularly, beat three teams ranked ahead of them, including the host country, to reach both the final and the Olympics. 

That success guaranteed the United States a spot in the Olympics. It didn't guarantee anyone on that roster a spot in Paris. 

It wasn't until Monday that Yeager found out that she was one of the 16 who had been selected. She used words like "relief" and "stress" and ultimately "excitement" to describe the emotions of the moment.

USA Field Hockey put out a great intro video for the team:

The U.S. team is in Group B, with Game 1 on July 27 against Argentina. The group also includes Australia, Great Britain, Spain and South Africa. 

The complete list of Princeton athletes who will be at the Olympics won't be finalized until the last of the team trials is complete. There are some athletes who already have their plane tickets, though. 

Yeager's selection brings to, TB believes, 21 current or former Tigers who will be competing in Paris. For now. That's a tremendous number.

If you're wondering, the most Princeton has ever had at an Olympics was 19, at the most recent Summer Games in Tokyo. 

And yes, there will be very, very extensive Olympic coverage this summer from Princeton Athletics. Get ready to follow.

That's A Wrap

TigerBlog would like to share with you part of an email he got yesterday, which, by the way, came from someone he's never met:

"Nope. Launching yourself off the pad is an automatic DQ."

Hmmm. If you read yesterday's entry, you get it.

And, giving credit where it's due, TB offers his colleague Chas Dorman's entry on X from yesterday, with the winners of the Princeton Athletics Hunger Games. You can find them at a local spa, getting their $100 treatments:

2024 Princeton Athletics Hunger Games World Champions. https://t.co/CYydkZxJ3x pic.twitter.com/NzX7W0dAwJ

— Chas Dorman (@ChasDorman) June 10, 2024

The winners were men's water polo coach Dusty Litvak, women's basketball assistant coach Lauren Battista, Jessica Muroff from the business office, Chas, CJ Ford from the events staff and grounds crew forman Brad Cabral. 

It was Brad, by the way, who figured out that the key to staying on the jousting pad was to lower your center of gravity as much as possible. TB ran into him yesterday, and he said his body felt it the next day but it was worth it.

So that's a wrap on the Hunger Games, as much fun as it was. 

And, by the way, on the 2023-24 athletic year at Princeton, that is.

As an aside, TigerBlog was talking to men's lacrosse coach Matt Madalon the other day about the rising high school junior class, which turns out to be the Class of 2030. Yikes. The whole Y2K thing was a long, long time ago.

The 2023-24 year ended over the weekend at the NCAA Track and Field Championships. The Tigers sent eight athletes there, and six earned All-American honors.

The list of track and field All-Americans is this:

Shea Greene, javelin, second-team
Siniru Iheoma, discus, second-team
Casey Helm, discus, second-team
Jackson Shorten, steeplechase, second-team
Georgina Scott, long jump, honorable mention
Tessa Mudd, pole vault, honorable mention
Nicholas Bendsten, 5,000, honorable mention

If you're wondering, that group of six athletes consists of five sophomores and two juniors (Iheoma, Bendtsen). 

Shorten, in the steeplechase, ran an 8:29.84. When Princeton's Donn Cabral (no relation to Brad, though both have won on the big stage) won the event in 2012, his NCAA title time was 8:35.44, winning by nearly five seconds.

What does that mean? TigerBlog has no idea. He assumes it has something to do with how conditions differ race to race, or the pace is set differently. 

For instance, two months after the NCAA final, Cabral in 2012 ran an 8:25.91 to finish eighth at the Olympic Games. This was after his Olympic qualifying time had been 8:21.46 and his all-time best of 8:19.14 was set in a college event one month before the NCAAs.

Hey, any reason to talk about Donn Cabral is a good one, right?

The track and field performance brings to an end another athletic year of overwhelming success for Princeton.

The Tigers won 12 Ivy League titles and 15 league championships overall. You want to hear something crazy? 

In the last three years, more than 40 percent of Princeton Athletic seasons ended in a league championship. That's across every team.

Can there possibly be another school in the country that can make that claim? TB wishes there would be an easy way to look that up. 

This success doesn't just happen accidentally. 

TB spoke to Madalon when he was on the sideline of a field at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, evaluating the next generations of lacrosse talent. Multiply that out by every coach at Princeton, who spend their summers on hot, dusty fields, in hot, sweaty gyms or in any other necessary venue, wherever it may be. 

For most of the people here in the department, the summer is a time to relax and take it slow as the new athletic year is still a few months away. 

For the coaches? This is the time of year when recruiting hits its peak. And you can't win if you don't work hard at this time of year too.

You can't take winning for granted. You can't rest on your laurels. You can't assume that you'll win again next year just because you did this year.

It's not a birthright.

And so TB leaves you with this, which he has played for you before. It sums it up perfectly. 

The Hunger Games

You don't want to mess with Carla Berube in any sort of competitive situation.

TigerBlog already knew this. Any Princeton women's basketball fan knows this about the team's coach.

March. June. What's the difference? 

When there's winning to be done, you want to be on Berube's team.

TB experienced that first-hand Friday morning in Jadwin Gym. Yes, this was the same venue in which Berube has coached the Tigers to a record of 47-4.

Those, though, were just basketball games. This was The Hunger Games.

Or at least the Princeton Department of Athletics version of it.

It came after the final department staff meeting of the year, during which Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack awarded the Lorin Maurer Award, which is the highest departmental honor each year. The official language of the award is:

Awarded to that member of the Princeton Athletics family who best reflects the passion, dedication and infectious enthusiasm that defined Lorin Maurer’s character and her inspiring impact on colleagues and friends. Awarded in the memory of Lorin Maurer h78, 1978-2009.

As you possibly know from reading TigerBlog each Feb. 12, Lorin Maurer was a member of the department when she was killed in a plane crash in 2009 at the age of 30. The award has been given each year since her death.

This year's two winners were Lisa Van Ackeren and Nancy Donigan. Lisa, you probably know, as the ultra-successful head coach of the Princeton softball team. 

Nancy, if you don't know, is the longtime compliance assistant at Princeton. TB once wrote this about her:

Nancy is a Princeton Athletics staple. She's funny, well-meaning, empathetic and always upbeat.

That all still stands. 

It was a nice moment when Lisa and Nancy were given their awards. This wasn't a morning for "nice," though.

After all it was time to let the "Hunger" games begin.

Now TigerBlog had never read the book or seen the movie, so he had no idea what it was all about. As it turns out, you probably already know this part: In the actual Hunger Games, they play to the death. 

In the ones at Jadwin Gym, thankfully, they only played for points. 

There were seven "Districts." TB was in District 7, the Gray Team, along with, among others, Berube. In the end, it was the Red Team that won, edging out the Grays by one single point.

There were mental challenges, such as trivia and riddles. TB did well in those. Here's a riddle for you: Is it legal for a man to marry his widow's sister?

It took TB a few seconds to get that one. The answer of course, is:

TigerBlog took that picture just to prove that those words once appeared on the Jadwin Gym video board.

If TB's team lost in the end, it wasn't for lack of effort on the part of Berube. Oh, did she give her all.

This first came out in the second leg of the day, which was a game of musical chairs. This wasn't the little kid's birthday party version, though. This was intense from start to finish.

Wrestling coach Joe Dubuque was TB's favorite, until he was shockingly eliminated to leave Berube and softball assistant coach Megan Murray as the last two standing — though only one could be the last one sitting.

Murray, for her part, had pretty much demolished the field to that point, throwing an elbow or a knee as needed to get control of the last chair. This time, though, it was Berube, who got the seat, stood up and gave a fist pump. 

Oh, and here she is afterwards: 

That was nothing compared to the effort she gave in the final event of the day, the jousting. 

The Gray Team held a slim lead into that event and needed a win over the Blue Team in the semifinals to possibly clinch the Hunger Games. As TB understands it, in the movie it means that the winner gets to live. Here it meant a $100 gift card to a local spa, so it's not quite the same thing.

The jousting took place in a bounce house that had four foamish blocks where the competitors stood while they whacked at each other with weapons similar to swimming noodles. There would be two "Tributes" from each district who would enter. The last one standing would win for that team.

In this match, those two would be Dubuque and Berube. Realizing she was about to lose her balance, Berube launched herself at Dubuque, knocking him off his perch and having him hit the ground before she did — only to have her majestic move waved off by the referee, Mack himself.

Had it stood, it might have been Berube's finest Jadwin moment.

Ah, but it was not to be. There would be no spa days for the Gray Team.

There would be a lot food though. The Hunger Games were followed by the Hungry Games, in which the department members celebrated the end of another wildly successful year with basically an all-you-can-eat situation.

When it was over, TB went home and watched the original movie "The Hunger Games." 

Why did they form partnerships? Why didn't they kill the other Tributes in their alliance while they slept? They'd have to do it anyway.

Yeah, TB like the athletic department version better.

Jamea, John And The Hunger Games

It's not quite summer yet, though it might as well be ...

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Nooooooo.

That was TigerBlog's reaction when he heard that Jamea Jackson was leaving Princeton to take the head women's tennis coaching position at Arizona State. 

Jackson spent the last two years in the same position at Princeton, where she led her team to Ivy League titles both times and to first-round NCAA tournament wins both times. Now she's off to Arizona State, one of the major national powers in women's tennis.

TigerBlog wrote this about Jackson after he ran into her and her team in the same hotel in Providence where TB was with men's lacrosse this past spring: 

"If you've never met Jamea, she is clearly the real deal. She's always smiling, and she appreciates any time anyone comes to watch her team compete. She has a way of making you feel like you're part of the women's tennis family, even if you just stopped in for a bit."

Arizona State is getting a great coach and a great person. Of course, getting a new women's tennis coach is not something that Arizona State does too often.

The first year for ASU women's tennis was 1967. What number coach all-time at the school will Jackson be? 

How about the third. 

The first coach in program history was named Anne Pittman. She coached the Sun Devils from that first season through 1984, putting up a record of 337-71. 

Next up was Sheila McInerney, who coached the team from 1985 until this past season ended. Her record was 589-315.

Now it's Jamea Jackson. Was McInerney successful? She made 35 straight NCAA tournament appearances.

At Princeton, the list of women's tennis coaches is longer than the one at ASU. Tennis was the first women's sport at Princeton, debuting in 1971 with just Margie Gengler Smith and Helena Novakova.

The next coach will be the 10th. Each of the first nine won at least one championship, with Ivy titles for the last six and Eastern or Middle States titles for the three who preceded the Ivy League.

*

TigerBlog flew back from Indianapolis Wednesday after attending the NCAA women's rowing championships and the NCAA men's lacrosse rules committee meetings. 

His flight back didn't exactly go smoothly. First, thunderstorms rolled in, delaying TB's flight to Philadelphia (and cancelling flights anywhere north of there). In fact TB's flight was supposed to have left at 4, but then the departures board changed that to 5:15. Ah, but in the "something TB has never seen before" department, it changed it back to "on time," which led to immediate boarding.

The plane pushed back from the gate, only to have the pilot come on and say that the flight was, in fact, delayed, though he hoped that it wouldn't be for that long. The plane taxied out to a remote part of the tarmac and sat there for about an hour before leaving just before six.

The seat next to TB was occupied by a man who was around TB's age, with his adult son directly behind him. They were trying to get to Cleveland from Los Angeles but had been redirected into Indy that morning and were now flying to Philly and then back to Cleveland at 9, arriving after 10.

If you're wondering, according to Google Maps, it's a four-hour, 45-minute drive from Indianapolis to Cleveland.

Directly behind TB was an off-duty pilot, in full uniform, on his way to Philly to then fly to Florida. The flight was then extremely bumpy, on the way up, in the middle and on the way down. They didn't even come around with the little cookies or pretzels. 

As the turbulence started to get really bad, TB turned around and told the pilot to tap him on the shoulder if it go to the point where there was something to worry about. As he never did, then everything was fine.

During the long delay and on the flight itself, TB started to read John O'Brien's book about his life's experiences at the Milton Hershey School. O'Brien, who would go on to be a member of the Class of 1965 and a football player at Princeton, later returned to the school as its president.

TB is about 50 pages in, but it's already very captivating. And very emotional.

He'll let you know when he's finished.

*

TigerBlog has never read or seen The Hunger Games. He has no idea what it's about even. 

He does know that he's competing in the Department of Athletics version of The Hunger Games today. He has no idea what to expect, but his team does include Carla Berube, which is always a good start. 

He'll report back on how this goes too.

June 6

It was 80 years ago today that the Allied forces launched their attack on the Normandy coast, beginning the process of reclaiming Europe from the Nazis during World War II. 

It would be less than a year from then that the Nazis were defeated. 

TigerBlog wrote about the 70th anniversary on this day 10 years ago. Since then, he's actually visited Normandy, which at the time was the most extraordinary place he'd ever been:

TigerBlog hasn't been touched by any place he's ever been to the way he was when he visited Normandy last week. The enormity of it all smashes you in the face from the first time you see any part of the region, understanding what went on there and how incredibly brave the people who made it happen were.

If you're wondering, the only place that TB has been that eclipses the emotion of being at Normandy was when he went to Auschwitz last summer.

The entire Normandy area is much larger than he realized before he went there. He drove through Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the little village made famous in "The Longest Day" by Red Buttons, who portrayed the paratrooper who was stuck in the church steeple. To this day, there is a statue on the actual steeple of the actual church.

Eventually he came to Omaha Beach, and the U.S. cemetery that rises above it. And Pointe-du-Hoc, where Army Rangers scaled a bluff that went straight up to a ridge where the German forces were dug in. 

It's just incredible to stand there and realize what happened. The landings have been immortalized in movies for decades. It's important as much as it is artistic, because it reminds you of what actually happened there. 

If you ever have the chance to go, you should do so. If you're a fan of history, or, for that matter, just freedom, it's not a place to miss.

This, by the way, is from the Alumni Weekly 10 years ago as well:

The Aug. 11, 1944, issue carried news of a casualty in the Normandy invasion: “On D-Day, June 6, 1st Lt. Jerry Schaefer [’40] was killed in action in France. Jerry was a member of an airborne artillery outfit and had previously seen action in Sicily and in the Allied landings in Italy. To his parents and to his widow, Mrs. Margaret Schaefer, we extend our sincere sympathy.” Schaefer is one of 355 alumni who died in the war. His place of death is listed as Sainte-Mère-Église, France, which is now home to the Airborne Museum, dedicated to the memory the U.S. Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. 

Having said all that, and recognizing how important it is to do so, TB segues now to the present day. 

Princeton's final athletic events of the 2023-24 academic year are being held in Eugene, Ore., where eight Tigers have earned the right to compete at the NCAA track and field championships. 

Of the eight, five are women and three are men. Broken down further, six of the eight Tigers there are in field events. 

Oh, and one of the runners is competing in that most Princetonian of events: the 3,000 meter steeplechase. That would be Jackson Shorten, who ran last night in the semifinal, finishing fifth out of 23 after finishing fifth in the regional. 

Shorten's run qualified him for the final, as the top five in each heat plus the next two best times advance to the last 12. The steeplechase final will be held tomorrow night at 9:24 Eastern.

Of course, Princeton and the steeplechase are very intertwined, with NCAA champ and two-time Olympic finalist Donn Cabral, women's Olympic finalist Lizzie Bird and men's Olympian Ed Trippas to name a few Tigers who excelled at the event. 

Princeton has three more athletes who are on today, including a pair of Ivy record holding sophomores: Tessa Mudd in the pole vault and Shea Greene in the javelin. The third is also a sophomore, Alexandra Kelly, in the long jump.

The final of the men's 5,000 is tomorrow night, with Nicholas Bendtsen, who finished 12th in the regional to earn the final qualifying spot. Casey Helm, who was eighth in the regional, is in the discus tomorrow as well.

Lastly, Princeton will have Georgina Scott in the triple jump and Siniru Iheoma in the discus Saturday.

You can find the complete schedule, as well as live stats and streaming information, HERE.

NCAA HQ

The NCAA men's lacrosse rules committee meetings, at which TigerBlog has been participating this weekend, are being held in the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis.

The building is quite impressive, with walls decorated with murals and inspirational quotes, meeting rooms named for the driving forces behind the evolution of college athletics and a Hall of Champions that celebrates some of the greatest athletes and greatest moments in college athletics history.

There is also the Logo Wall. He's not sure if that's the actual name, though it certainly fits. As you walk into the building, there are logos here, there and everywhere. 

After the first session Monday night, as the committee members were walking out, the challenge was to find their school's logo. Before TB even had a chance to look, there was Princeton, in what was possibly the most prominent position of any school.

Right in the middle is a giant NCAA logo. And just above it and to the right, there is the Striped P. 

The school next to Princeton? That's the Knights. Not the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers. Not the Knights of Bellarmine. These Knights are from Southern Virginia.

Above Princeton is Denver. Next to Denver is New Paltz, which is near where TigerBlog used to go to summer camp as a kid.

There doesn't seem to be any kind of order to the way the logos are placed. TB tried to find a pattern, but there wasn't one.

It makes it better, of course. The biggest of the big-time Division I, just below a very small Division III. It also makes it hard to find your school, unless, you know, it happens to be almost dead center. 

Back in the rest of the building, one of the murals reminds TB of a picture of former Princeton women's lacrosse and soccer player Elizabeth Pillion. TB can't find the picture, but he knows he's seen it somewhere before. 

This will torture TB until he finds the picture. He's positive he has it somewhere.

The men's lacrosse rules committee has been meeting in the James Frank Room. Who is James Frank? 

That's Dr. James Frank. His resume includes being a college basketball player at Lincoln University outside of Philadelphia, an Army officer in the Corps of Engineers, a college basketball coach, a college professor, a senior administrator at two different colleges and then the president of Lincoln.

From 1981-83, while the Lincoln president, he became the first college president ever to become the president of the NCAA. Do you know what happened on his watch? The NCAA first started to hold championships for women's athletics.

After that, he spent 15 years as the commissioner of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, which grew from three schools to 10 under his watch. 

Is that all a good resume? 

Dr. Frank passed away in 2019, at the age of 88. That's a life well-lived. 

There's also an Althea Gibson Room. Did you know that Althea Gibson was a legendary tennis player? Yes, you did. Gibson won 56 singles and doubles championships with 11 Grand Slam titles, including both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 1956 and 1957.

Did you know Gibson also played on the LPGA tour? TigerBlog had no idea about that. She was an alum of what is now Florida A&M, where she played on the men's golf team and on the women's basketball team.

Everywhere you look in the building you see college sports history. If TB had more time, he would have gone through the entire facility to find additional Princeton references. 

There are also the inspirational quotes. They all fall under the same general theme, and that theme is a familiar one for Princeton fans. 

They speak about the value that the college athletic experience has on those who go through it. At Princeton, that's always been known as Education Through Athletics.

It's quite a building, the headquarters of the NCAA. If you're a college athletics historian, like, say TB,  you can't really ask for much more.