Three Ex Three

Do you think that when Louis XIV of France built his palace at Versailles starting in 1661 that he thought to himself "this would make a great spot for the equestrian events in the Olympics in 363 years?"

He should have, since the setting is perfect for the Olympic horse events. TigerBlog was up early yesterday to watch some more horse dancing, which is among his favorite things to watch each time the Games roll around.

He was rooting for Belgian rider Larissa Pauluis after he read a story about her and how her husband passed away in 2020 at just 39 years of age, leaving her with two daughters. In his memory she runs a local equestrian club. 

He has no idea what he was watching, but he does love the artistry of it. 

Then there was Olympic women's rugby sevens yesterday. If you watched, you saw two incredible medal round games.

First, there was the United States team, who defeated Australia on the last play of the game to win bronze. Did you see how? You can now:

A FINISH YOU HAVE TO SEE TO BELIEVE! 😱

ALEX SEDRICK LEADS TEAM USA TO THE FIRST-EVER OLYMPIC RUGBY SEVENS MEDAL FOR THE UNITED STATES ON THE FINAL PLAY OF THE GAME! 🥉 #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/1FMu9SWxDo

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 30, 2024

That's craziness. Even someone like TB, who knows little about the sport, can appreciate the magnitude.

Contrast that with the gold medal game, in which New Zealand rallied to defeat Canada. What really impressed TigerBlog was the way the two teams took a post-medal ceremony picture together, with all smiles between them. 

That's the difference between losing the gold medal game and the bronze medal game. In the gold medal game, every player has already earned a medal. 

As for #PrincetonInParis, the big story for yesterday was the first day of 3X3 basketball. 

TB learned a great deal about the sport, including that you pronounce the "X," making it "Three Ex Three." Also, the announcers on the Peacock broadcast were very entertaining and very energetic. 

Before watching any of the games, TB saw that former Princeton men's basketball player Sean Gregory had written a story about the event, specifically on the USA's Jimmer Fredette. You can read the whole story HERE.

This is from the article, which helps explain why the last four players cut from the 5x5 U.S. Olympic team aren't just tossed out there.

But you can’t just throw four NBA players together and send them on a summer trip to Paris – 3X3 players are specialists. They have to participate in international tournaments and acquire ranking points in order to be eligible for the Olympics. So Fredette’s had to roll with crazy travel itineraries—since October 2022 he has played in 3X3 tournaments in 15 countries outside the United States. During one stretch last summer, the team zigzagged from France to Macau to Kosovo and back to France, before bouncing back to Asia (Mongolia), then back to Europe (Switzerland, then Hungary) over a nine-week span. He wasn’t globetrotting with NBA-style amenities. “You’re not staying in five-star hotels,” says Maddox. “A lot of times you’re roughing it.” 

The "Maddox" in the story is Kareem Maddox, the 2011 Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year at Princeton and a 3X3 veteran. The U.S. team in Paris is made up of Maddox, Fredette, Canyon Barry (Rick Barry's son who played at the College of Charleston and then Florida) and Dylan Travis (who won a Division II national title at Florida Southern).

The Americans had their first game yesterday, falling 22-14 to Serbia. Maddox was impressive nonetheless, leading the U.S. team with six points (you get one for a two-point basket and two for a three-point basket) while shooting 5 for 7 from the field.

The games are 10 minutes long, unless one team reaches 21. This is the second Olympics to feature 3X3 (Latvia won the gold in Tokyo).

There are eight teams in the field. The top two will advance to the semifinals, while the teams that finish third through sixth will play in the quarterfinals. The bottom two will be eliminated.

Next up for the U.S. will be Poland, who lost to France in its opener yesterday. That game will be played at 4:35 this afternoon (Eastern).  

Today will be a big day for Princetonians at these Olympics, including a medal race for Hannah Scott in women's quadruple sculls.

Tom George (Great Britain) - Men’s Pair A/B Semifinals (4:34 a.m., 4:44 a.m.)
Jonas Juel (Norway) - Men’s Quadruple Sculls B Final (6:02 a.m.)
Hannah Scott (Great Britain) - Women’s Quadruple Sculls A Final (6:38 a.m.)
Beth Yeager (USA) - Field Hockey vs. Australia (7:15 a.m.)
Ashleigh Johnson & Jovana Sekulic (USA) - Women’s Water Polo vs. Italy (12:30 p.m.)
Adell Sabovic (Kosovo) - 100m Freestyle Swimming Final (4:15 p.m.)
Kareem Maddox (USA) - 3x3 Basketball vs. Poland (4:35 p.m.)

Another Day In Paris

The Argentine women's field hockey team went into the fourth quarter of its Olympic Group B game against South Africa down a goal yesterday.

If that score stood, it would have been a huge upset. TigerBlog was watching — and rooting hard for a comeback. 

And that's exactly what he got. Argentina scored three times in the final 15 minutes to pull out a 4-2 win.

Whew.

Why did TigerBlog care so much? Well, the United States probably needed Argentina to win that game. At the very least, that was the outcome that would most likely help the Americans as they pursue a spot in the quarterfinals.

The Argentina-South Africa game was the third Olympic field hockey game TB watched yesterday. The second was Australia-Great Britain, which ended 4-0 in favor of the Aussies.

The first game was the U.S. and Spain, which ended in a 1-1 tie. The U.S. goal was a thing of beauty:

THAT WAS CRAZY. 🏑

Team USA field hockey robs Spain of a goal at one end, then goes down the other way and scores to take the lead. #ParisOlympics

📺 USA Network & Peacock pic.twitter.com/neOXpBOqyL

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 29, 2024

Princeton's Beth Yeager is on the United States team, who last played in the Olympics without a Tiger on the team in 2008. Yeager has started both games in the Olympics so far, which began Saturday with a 4-1 loss to powerful Argentina.

The Group B standings after two games have the U.S. in fourth with one point, ahead of pointless Great Britain and South Africa. Well, they're not pointless per se. They just don't have any points in Olympic field hockey.

Australia and Argentina are both 2-0-0, for six points. Spain is 1-0-1, with four points.

The United States plays Australia Wednesday and then Great Britain and South Africa to finish the group stage. The math is obvious.

That was a lot of Olympic field hockey for one day. The U.S.-Spain game started at 7:15 am, but that wasn't TB's first game. 

He'd actually been watching other events even earlier, including the equestrian show jumping, which followed the dressage and cross country. It was early, but TB is pretty sure he heard the commentator say that "the horse looks tired."

In between the field hockey games, TB also watched the United States-Spain women's water polo game. This was a big upset, as the Spanish knocked off the U.S. team 13-11. 

The teams met in the 2021 Olympic final in Tokyo, where the U.S. won 14-5. They could very well meet again in this year's final.

The United States has won the last three gold medals in women's water polo. Princeton alum Ashleigh Johnson has been the goalie for the most recent two. 

In addition to Johnson, Princeton is also represented on the U.S. team by Jovana Seculic, who now has three goals in two games. As TB watched the game yesterday, he was a bit confused because the announcer kept referring to No. 12 on the Spanish team as "Jovana Seculic," when she is No. 12 on the U.S. team.

The loss doesn't do that much to hurt the Americans' chances of reaching the quarterfinals. There are 10 teams in the tournament, and eight advance, with the top four in each group to move on.

Next up for the U.S., who hammered Greece 15-6 in its first game, will be Italy Wednesday, followed by France in the last group game.

By the way, win or lose (and she hardly ever loses), it's always amazing to see Johnson play water polo. She is extraordinary in the way she can launch herself from treading water to deflecting shots near the top of the cage. Against Spain, she also added a goal at the end when she came all the way up from her position.

The whole sport takes insane amounts of strength, fitness and toughness. It's almost anything goes in the water. 

And with that, here is today's #PrincetonInParis schedule:

Adell Sabovic (Kosovo) - 100m Freestyle Swimming Heats (5 a.m. session start)
Emily Kallfelz & Kelsey Reelick (USA) - Women’s Four Repechages (5:30 a.m.)
Kat Holmes & Hadley Husisian - Women’s Team Epee, Round of 8 through medal round (7:30 a.m. start)
Adell Sabovic (Kosovo) - 100m Freestyle Swimming Semifinals (3:30 p.m.)
Kareem Maddox (USA) - 3x3 Basketball vs. Serbia (4:35pm)

 

Opening Weekend

TigerBlog considers "Point Break" one of his all-time favorite movies.

He's serious. If you've never seen it, watch it. You'll agree.

It's easily the best action movie TB has ever seen. An a big part of it would be the surfing scenes. 

"Point Break" wasn't on yesterday afternoon. Surfing was though. 

Most of these 2024 Summer Olympics are being held in Paris and its suburbs. Some of them are being held in other parts of France. 

The surfing competition? That's being held in Tahiti, which is nowhere near France.

Imagine being in the Olympics but your event is 10,000 miles away from everyone else? To the competitors, it might not matter. This is only the second Olympics where it has been included. 

Why not? TB did a little research and found this:

One of the biggest obstacles to surfing being included in the Olympics for many years was a landlocked country hosting the games which would make surfing events difficult to stage, and another one was that drowning is one of the big risks in surfing.

Yikes. For the record, TB had no idea what was going as he watched. After reading what he saw, he's just glad that nobody drowned.

TB has never been a huge fan of golf and tennis in the Games, because they have much bigger events each year and this makes it seem like it's just another stop on the tour. At the same time, he was hoping to see Rafael Nadal win his first round match, so he could take on Novak Djokovic in Round 2, which will be this morning at 7:30. TB think Djokovic will wipe out Nadal, since he has an extra day off and was hardly challenged in his first match, but hey, you never know.

The Olympics rolled into high gear this past weekend. There have been all kinds of events, the obscure and the well-known.

And, most importantly, the Princetonian.

The first two days of the Paris Games saw 13 of Princeton's 26 Olympians open their competitions. Among the highlights: 

* Ashleigh Johnson made 10 saves in three quarters as she chases her third gold medal and Jovana Seculic had a pair of goals in her Olympic debut as the U.S. women's water polo team rolled past Greece 15-6 in its opener. The Americans will take on Spain this morning at 9:35 Eastern time.

TigerBlog doesn't really know all that much about the history of women's water polo, but he has to think that Johnson has to be making her way onto the list of the greatest players of all time.

* Princeton had eight rowers who raced for the first time. Of that group, four are still in contention for medals.

For the women, Hannah Scott was part of Great Britain's quadruple sculls team that won its heat, advancing directly to the final, which will be held Wednesday.

On the men's side, the men's fours saw two Princeton rowers finish 1-2 in the heats, as Nick Mead and his American teammates won and Tim Masters and his Australian boat finished second. They'll both row in the final, to be held Thursday.

Tom George, who won bronze in Tokyo for Great Britain, moved into the semifinals in the men's pair, and he will race in Wednesday's next round.

* Rising sophomore Hadley Husisian reached the Round of 16 in the women's epee. She and Olympic veteran Kat Holmes will compete in the team epee tomorrow.

* If you're reading this past 9 in the East, then the U.S. field hockey team has already played its second game, which was to be a 7:15 am start against Spain. The U.S., which features Princeton junior-to-be Beth Yeager, lost to powerhouse Argentina 4-1 in its opener Saturday.

Here is today's PrincetonInParis schedule:

July 29
Kathleen Noble (Uganda) - Women’s Single Sculls E/F Semifinals (3:54 a.m., 4:06 a.m.)
Tatiana Nazlymov (USA) - Women’s Individual Saber, Round of 32 through medal round (5:15 a.m. start)
Jonas Juel (Norway) - Men’s Quadruple Sculls Repechages (5:20 a.m.)
Claire Collins (USA) - Women’s Eight Heats (6 a.m.)
Mohamed Hamza (Egypt) - Men’s Individual Foil, Round of 32 through medal round (6:05 a.m. start)
Beth Yeager (USA) - Field Hockey vs. Spain (7:15 a.m.)
Ashleigh Johnson & Jovana Sekulic (USA) - Women’s Water Polo vs. Spain (9:35 a.m.)

Let The Games Begin

The Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games will be floating down the Seine today. 

While a few events have already been played, the schedule starts full force tomorrow. Of the 26 Princeton athletes in Paris, there will be 12 who compete by the end of the weekend. 

Remember, the best way to follow #PrincetonInParis is on the Olympics site on goprincetontigers.com (click HERE for that) and Princeton Athletics social media. 

*

The first Princeton athlete to compete in Paris will be fencer Hadley Husisian, one of the six Tiger undergrads in Paris. 

Husisian finished third in the epee at the NCAA championships as a freshman in 2023, which makes her one of the youngest members of the U.S. fencing team. She then took this past year off to try to qualify for the Olympics, and now she's in Paris at the age of 21 years ... and one day.

In addition to the Opening Ceremonies, Husisian also celebrates her 21st birthday today. Now that's how you celebrate in style.

Speaking of Husisian, she was part of the NCAA's "Olympians Made Here" campaign. More than 75 percent of the United States Olympic Team is made up of current or former NCAA athletes.

You can see her in this video (she's the third fencer to speak):

Olympians are built here and I think that is absolutely true 🗣️ Hadley Husisian#OlympainsMadeHere x @USAFencing pic.twitter.com/zi2Y2KngTs

— NCAA (@NCAA) July 25, 2024

Her Olympic debut is tomorrow at 10 am in Paris, which means 4 am at her family's home in Oakton, Va.

*

Hey, everything can't be about the Olympics, right? In fact, not that far after these Games end, the NFL season will begin. Training camps are now getting underway.

TigerBlog's favorite team this year? It wouldn't be a team on the field (though he'll be rooting hard for Andrei Iosivas and the Cincinnati Bengals). 

No, it would be a broadcasting team. One of the teams that CBS announced for the season is play-by-play man Tom McCarthy (former Princeton broadcaster) with Jay Feeley and Ross Tucker (former Princeton offensive lineman).

There aren't too many people easier to root for than McCarthy and Tucker. And there aren't too many people who are living out their dreams the way they are. 

*

TB's feature story on Beth Yeager was mentioned here yesterday. Again, if you didn't read it (yet), you can do so by clicking HERE. 

Yeager and the United States field hockey team will begin their Olympic run tomorrow at 1:45 Eastern against Argentina, one of the medal favorites. Can the U.S. get to the quarterfinals? That's the goal.

As you watch the Games on TV these next two weeks, you'll be inundated with stories about the athletes and what they've overcome to be there and all of the other glorification that the Olympic coverage employs.

What you won't see are the ones who aren't there, the ones who either just missed out on qualifying or, even more heartbreakingly, would have been there but suffered an injury. It puts those in both groups into the position of either giving up the Olympic dream or rededicating themselves to another four-year cycle.

One of the athletes in the second group is Jillian Wolgemuth, who played at Duke and who was Yeager's teammate through all of the Olympic qualifying. Instead of getting ready to play in Paris, though, Wolgemuth is out, having torn her ACL in the second-to-last game the U.S. team played before the Olympics. 

She wrote THIS for USA Field Hockey, which includes this:

I will likely cry when I see my teammates belt out the national anthem without me on Saturday and then play in some of the biggest matches of our careers. But more than that, I will be proud to have helped them get there. The Olympics is just another tournament. There will be more opportunities to compete at the highest level, to collapse on the turf after a running session, to be in the thick of it with my teammates.

She's someone to root for and to hope you see in Los Angeles in 2028.

*

Finally, even as the Olympic Games kick off, remember — the 2024-25 Princeton Athletic year is four weeks away, with the women's soccer team at home against Miami.

Oh, and TB guarantees you that he will call the United States Olympic Team "the Tigers" at some point in the next two weeks. 

Enjoy the Games, and your weekend.

Super Excited

So here's a pretty good "Princeton In Paris" picture:

That's Sean Gregory on the right. As you know if you read here yesterday, Gregory — a member of the men's basketball Class of 1998 — is in Paris to cover these Olympic Games for Time Magazine. 

On the right is Kareem Maddox, Princeton Class of 2011. He's in Paris as part of the U.S. 3x3 men's basketball team.

That's four Ivy League championships and NCAA tournaments between them, by the way. 

The Games themselves actually began yesterday with some rugby and soccer games. The Opening Ceremonies are tomorrow. 

Can you imagine how nervous you must be right now if you are one of the people who is responsible for staging those Ceremonies? Forget the security part. Just having the entire night go smoothly has to be a ridiculous challenge. 

One of TigerBlog's formerly favorite Olympic events is out of these Games before they start. Who is it? That would be Britain's Charlotte Dujardin, the three-time gold medalist in dressage. If you missed this story, she voluntarily stepped away after a four-year-old video surfaced of her abuses when it came to, as the story said, "horse welfare." 

That was really disappointing for TB. He loves to watch the dressage and the precision, and he doesn't want to think that the horses are abused in any way to make them perform properly. 

The first full day of Olympic action is Saturday, and Princeton will be well-represented from the start. One of the athletes who will be making her Olympic debut will be Beth Yeager, the two-time first-team All-American in field hockey who will be back as a junior this year at Princeton.

TigerBlog met with Yeager back in March in Greenwich, Conn., for a story after she was part of the U.S. team's dramatic Olympic qualifying. He didn't run the story then, though, since she wasn't officially named to the final 16 for the Olympics until early June. 

Now with the first game for the Americans set for Saturday at 1:45 pm Eastern time against Argentina, TB has finally posted the piece. To give you a sense of just how emotional reaching the Olympics is, here is what Yeager said about the countdown of the final seconds in the game that put them in Paris: 

"I have never experienced anything like that. I was on the sideline, and with 20 seconds left, it was pretty clear that they weren't going to tie it. Then I was super excited, but I also had an inner peace. It was such a relief. I was so happy. We'd achieved something that we'd been stressing about for so long. After that, I became so emotional and starting crying. I was just overcome with emotion. I was sobbing for a long time. I'd stop. I'd start again. My teammates were making fun of me."

You can read that story on goprincetontigers.com HERE.

When the U.S. team plays its first game, Yeager will be on the field. She'll also have considerable support in the stands, since five of her teammates have traveled to Paris to be there. 

Yeager took last year off from school to be a part of the national team as it went through its arduous qualifying journey. She'll be back at Princeton this year as a junior, which means that she'll be playing in the Olympics, taking two weeks off and then playing for the Tigers.

The U.S. team came perilously close to missing the Olympics, first losing by a goal late against Argentina in the Pan Am Games final in Chile, where an automatic bid went to the winner.

Then there was the final Olympic qualifying tournament, in Ranchi, India. The U.S. trailed in the fourth quarter of its semifinal game against Japan, and had the Americans lost, they would have had to beat the host team in the third-place game to get to Paris. 

Instead, they rallied for a 2-1 win. Along the way, the U.S. faced elimination twice, in the group stage at the Pan Am Games against Uruguay (a 2-0 win) and then in the game against New Zealand in Ranchi, also in the group stage. The U.S. won that game 1-0 on a Yeager goal.

To come through all of that and finally get to Paris? 

To use Yeager's words, that has to be "super exciting," or really, something beyond that.

Bones In Paris

TigerBlog went to empty the compost bin the other day when all of the sudden his kitchen was besieged by fruit flies.

They were everywhere. It was awful.

So how do you get rid of them? TigerBlog took the internet and read that if you put a bowl with two cups of apple cider vinegar and a splash of dish soap and leave it on the counter, the fruit flies can't resist them.

Okay. What could be the harm? So TB put out two bowls on either side of the counter and then went about his business. 

About an hour later, he went back to check on the bowls. And what did he find? Basically every fruit fly in the neighborhood came back, dove into the mixture and, well, died. 

It was amazing. Things don't usually work that well. The only downside was the smell of the apple cider vinegar, which can be a bit overwhelming. Still, it was a good trade-off.

This is TB's public service announcement for today.

Meanwhile, the 2024 Summer Olympics in France are (un)officially underway. The first events, mostly early group rugby and soccer games, started today, with the official Opening Ceremonies to be held on the Seine Friday. 

TB mentioned yesterday that the best way to follow is the Olympic website and the best way to follow Princetonians in Paris is with the Princeton Athletics microsite.

To those two, TB now adds another way. 

Sean Gregory, the Princeton men's basketball alum from the legendary Class of 1998, has spent most of his professional career as a sportswriter for Time Magazine. One of his best assignments through those years has been his coverage of the Olympics, which is really second to none.

Gregory, whose nickname at Princeton was "Bones," is in Paris, sort of another Tiger In Paris.

The path to the Olympic village dining hall that used to be a Paris power plant feels like the UN of mess. Follow along these next few weeks for such killer observations and more! pic.twitter.com/HS1hyULtbw

— Sean Gregory (@seanmgregory) July 23, 2024

Bones covers the Olympics the way TB would if he had that job. He writes about the people more than the results, and he does so in a way that very few people can match. He is a truly great storyteller. 

For instance, remember yesterday, when TB mentioned that breakdancing is now an Olympic sport? Well, TB learned a lot more when he read the story that Gregory wrote about an Afghani breaker who found the sport in an unlikely way and in a very unlikely place. It included this paragraph:

So once Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Talash and her breaking crew had to make a wrenching choice: live under Taliban oppression and give up breaking, risk their lives in Afghanistan by continuing to break under the Taliban, or leave their families and flee the country to pursue their passion. “If you want to do something to reach your dreams, or want to tell people who you are, where you’re from, and what you want to do, then let’s go,” says Talash. “This is the moment we need to leave.” 

Then there was his profile last month about American sprinter Noah Lyles. It starts this way: 

Noah Lyles should be a miserable human on this suffocatingly hot May morning near Orlando. Two nights earlier, the U.S. sprint star was up until 3 a.m. in the Bahamas, waiting on a delayed drug test after a race. You can still spot fatigue under his eyes.

Lyles, however, can summon social energy on command, and today he’s yapping away between stretches and sprints: about his love of anime, how he needs a pedicure, how he’s the most fashionable guy in all of track and field. He had been absent from the past few practices while running in Nassau, where he and his 4 × 100-m relay team took first place. “We did miss you,” one of Lyles’ training partners, Paralympic sprinter Nick Mayhugh, tells him. “But did we enjoy the peace and quiet of the past two days? Yes.”

They make you want to read more, don't they? Well, you can if you click HERE and HERE.

It'll be more of the same for the duration of the Games.

Make sure you're following him for the next two weeks. He's another Princetonian in Paris to root for during these Games.

Tigers In Paris

TigerBlog was walking near a golf course the other day when a ball rolled across the cart path and under a bush near his feet. 

So what do you do in that situation? Do you leave it where it lies? Or do you help out a bit and kick it back across the path into a better lie?

Ah, golf etiquette. TB doesn't know much about it, so he did what he thought was best — he knocked it back out of the bush and across the cart path. Now it was just a simple chip to the green.

It is TB's sincerest hope that whoever's ball that was, that little gesture resulted in holing out and leading to a completely better life all around. 

Does that count as a good deed? Or was there a downside? No good deed goes unpunished, as Elphaba sang in "Wicked."

Of course, had it been a serious tournament or something like that, TB wouldn't have done what he did. You know, if it was the Olympics or something? Then they'd be on their own.

Golf is one of the sports that will be held at the Olympics, which begin this week in Paris. The golf event is actually being held outside of Paris, near Versailles.

TB's good friend Sue Byrne, formerly of Harvard Athletics, is one of the 45,000 volunteers (out of 300,000 applicants) who will help the Games go smoothly; she has been assigned to the golf tournaments. 

In all, there are 32 different sports in these Olympics, including the debut of — wait for it — breakdancing. Yes, breakdancing is now an Olympic sport. How do you score that?

So is surfing, which will actually will be held in Tahiti, which isn't really all that close to Paris. There will also be basketball, handball and soccer games all over France, hundreds of miles from Paris. 

TigerBlog has two favorite websites between now and the Closing Ceremonies Aug. 11. 

First, there is the actual Olympic website, which you can see HERE. This website has the schedules and results for every Olympic event, and in fact the first of those events will be tomorrow, with preliminaries in rugby and soccer.

The other one, the site he'll get the most use of, is goprincetontigers.com/tigersinparis. You can see that one HERE.

As you might surmise, this is the complete listing of all things Princeton for these upcoming Games, and there are all kinds of things Princeton that will be there. 

First and foremost, there are capsules on all 26 Princetonians who are competing. In case you've forgotten, that's a record for Princeton.

The Opening Ceremonies are this coming Friday. The first Princetonians to compete will do so Saturday. 

The website has a day-by-day schedule for all 26 Princetonians, with all times Eastern. Here is the listing for Saturday:

Kathleen Noble (Uganda) - Women’s Single Sculls Heats (4:12 a.m.)
Jonas Juel (Norway) - Men’s Quadruple Sculls Heats (6:30 a.m.)
Hannah Scott (Great Britain) - Women’s Quadruple Sculls Heats (6:50 a.m.)
Hadley Husisian (USA) - Women’s Individual Epee - Round of 64 through medal round (4 a.m. start)
Ashleigh Johnson & Jovana Sekulic (USA) - Women’s Water Polo vs. Greece (9:35 a.m.)
Beth Yeager (USA) - Field Hockey vs. Argentina (1:45 p.m.)

The site will be updated with results each day. Of course, you'll be able to follow all of these athletes on Princeton's social media as well.

TigerBlog long ago began to enjoy the non-marquee sports in the Olympics much more than the so-called "major" ones. To that end, he'll be watching his favorite event, the dressage, or "horse-dancing," as he likes to call it. Who knows what other events will capture his attention.

He'll pay attention to sports like swimming and track and field, the ones that get the most attention. And basketball? He'd be much more likely to be interested in the women's games if Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese were playing, like they were Saturday night when their WNBA all-star team beat the U.S. Olympians. 

Mostly, though, he's interested in the Princeton athletes.

Not all of the Princeton athletes there are in realistic position to win a medal, though some will. For all of them, this is the result of years and years of sacrifice and training.

It takes a lot to be an Olympian. Once you have that on your resume, it defines you forever. 

Air Currier

The Olympic Games begin this week in Paris, with some preliminary events (mostly in soccer and rugby) and then the Opening Ceremonies Friday.

The next Summer Games will be in 2028 in Los Angeles. What will be different about those games? For one thing, they'll include the sport of lacrosse.

Will Princeton be represented on the men's side?

Maybe some of the younger alums, or even current players, make the jump to the national team level? There are three players who make the most sense at this point, though they'll all be in their 30s when the 2028 Olympics begin.

As impossible as it is to believe, Tom Schreiber is already 32 years old, which means he'll be 36 when Los Angeles rolls around. Will he still be on top of his game? Michael Sowers is 26 years old, so he'll be 30 four years from now. 

Those two are Americans. On the Canadian side, there is Zach Currier, who will be 34 in 2028.

Currier may or may not be an Olympian in four years, though it's hard to imagine that he'll be slowing down any time soon. He certainly was going full-speed this past weekend, when the Premier Lacrosse League made its stop in Connecticut.

If you follow lacrosse history, you're familiar with the "Air Gait," made famous by Syracuse's Gary Gait. This past Friday night, Currier did his own version:

HELLO @SportsCenter & HELLO @CachZurrier 👋🤯@CachZurrier unreal Air Gait yesterday landed him at the #2 spot on #SCTopTen!

pic.twitter.com/KIDHMhqAxJ

— Philadelphia Waterdogs (@PLLWaterdogs) July 20, 2024

Uh, yeah. That's quite a move.

Do you comprehend how athletic you have to be to do what he did? Forget getting the ball to go in the goal past the goalie. How about trying that without any defense on the field? 

To scoop the ball the way he did and then time it perfectly to release the shot in midair and not land in the crease until the ball was in the goal? That's ridiculous. 

Also, Currier is lefthanded, very lefthanded at that, and he did that with his right hand.

Currier's play was the No. 2 Play of the Day on SportsCenter and the highlight of the weekend in Connecticut for Princeton alums. It was far from the only impessive performance.

The Tigers are well-represented in the professional outdoor league, and pretty much all of them showed up in Connecticut. In fact, there are six Princeton alums who play offense who are in the league, and all of them had at least two goals.

That's six players. And that's six players with at least two goals this weekend.

For the record, those six are Schreiber, Currier, Sowers, Ryan Ambler, Jake Stevens and Alexander Vardaro. Throw in three assists from both Schreiber and Sowers and a two-point goal from Currier, as well as an assist from shortstick defensive midfielder Beau Pederson, and here were the numbers for the weekend: 

* 11 one-point goals, one two-point goal, seven assists, 20 points.

Schreiber, Currier and Sowers get a ton of attention. 

Ambler does not, but he has quietly put together a great professional career. In fact, between the PLL and now-defunct Major League Lacrosse, Ambler has averaged better than a goal per game, with 77 goals in 74 games (and 38 assists, for 115 points).

In his game this weekend, Ambler's first goal came when he took a feed in the middle with his momentum towards the cage. It was obvious he was going to score even before he ever shot it. That's the mark of a great veteran scorer.

As for the newbies, Pederson has already established himself as one of the best SSDMs in the league. And Stevens and Vardaro? They both have six goals, a very solid total for a rookie. Stevens has gotten his six goals on just 12 shots, making him one of only 15 players in the league to have at least a 50 percent shooting percentage.

Stevens is Canadian. He's also young. Maybe he'll be an Olympian in four years. The Olympic style of lacrosse — the sixes — seems perfect for the way he (and Currier) play. 

Will there be Princetonians in the Olympic lacrosse in Los Angeles. For that, you have to wait four years. 

First there will be the Paris Games, with the 26 Princetonians who will be there.

And if you need lacrosse this weekend, the PLL will be in San Diego.

The Games Are About To Begin

Another week has gone by. Another summer weekend is here.

As it turns out, the first athletic event of the 2024-25 season for Princeton will not be five weeks from today. It'll be five weeks from tomorrow, as the women's soccer team will be hosting Miami on Saturday, Aug. 24.

In the meantime ...

*

The Opening Ceremonies of the Paris Olympic Games are one week from today. As TigerBlog said a week ago, they begin at 8:24 pm in France. That's 20:24, which is the point of being so specific.

In case you're planning to watch the Games, there is a six-hour time difference between Paris and the Eastern Time Zone in the United States. 

Princeton will be represented by 26 athletes at these Games, of which 25 are current or former Tiger athletes and one of whom is a staff member who will run the marathon for Jordan. That's a record for a single Olympiad for Princeton.

The sport with the most Tigers will be rowing, which is also the sport all-time that has produced the most Princeton Olympians. This year, there will be nine Princeton rowers. 

Next up is fencing, which will have seven Tigers represented. There will be four in track and field, two in water polo and one each in field hockey, 3x3 basketball and swimming.

*

TigerBlog wrote a feature story this week about Lizzie Bird, who will be running the 3,000-meter steeplechase for Great Britain for the second straight Games. Bird finished ninth in the event in Tokyo three summers ago.

Bird is way more than just a track athlete. For one thing, she graduated from law school at the University of Colorado in 2.5 years, between the Tokyo Games and the ones about to start. On top of that, she has already passed the bar exam.

Bird graduated from Princeton in 2017 after winning two Ivy steeplechase titles and one Ivy cross country title. She has made a huge jump from her college career to her international success, which includes a second-place finish in the 2022 Commonwealth Games and the U.K. record in the event. 

TigerBlog tweeted out the link to the story (which you can read HERE). Bird then responded with this:

Probably the only article you'll read that features the Battle of Trafalgar, steeplechase, and my 3-year-old niece.

If that doesn't get you to want to read it, then TB doesn't know what will. 

*

Bob Newhart died yesterday at the age of 94. 

If you're in TB's age range, then you grew up watching "The Bob Newhart Show" as part of CBS's Saturday night lineup that included "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." You also probably watched "Newhart," his next sitcom, the one that had the most extraordinary ending of any series in TV history.

Don't believe TB? Watch every episode of both shows and then you'll get it.

Newhart was known for his deadpan delivery and perfect comedic timing. He's up there with the greatest of his time (and all time) — Newhart, Rodney, Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx and not too many others.

*

TigerBlog saw almost everything that Bob Newhart was in, and he at one point probably listened to all of his comedy records (those were things you put on a turntable; look it up).

At the opposite end of the entertainment scale is Flavor Flav, someone whose work TB knows little about, other than his trademark giant clock necklaces. Some research yesterday reveals that Mr. Flav can play 15 different instruments and was a founding member of the rap group Public Enemy.

Oh, and apparently, he's good at water polo. Or at least he's tried water polo.

Flavor Flav supporting the women’s water polo team is one of the best stories in 2024 🥹 pic.twitter.com/EJ0zwxl1sx

— maddy 🍉 (@phxsunz25) July 15, 2024

There are two Princetonians in that spot, by the way. Ashleigh Johnson is the goalie, and TB feels like she didn't give her best effort on that shot. Jovana Seculic will also be on the U.S. team in Paris. 

*

Have yourselves a great weekend. 

And remember — the first women's soccer game is now moved back a day.

Guest TigerBlog - Sail On, Sail On, Sailor

TigerBlog has a standing invitation to anyone who would like to borrow the floor here for a day. The people who have taken him up the most on this offer are men's soccer head coach Jim Barlow and Tad La Fountain, Class of 1972. 

Tad is back today with a story of Princetonians and Olympic sailing. He also pointed out a few errors on the list of Princeton Olympians, including having listed F. Gardner Cox as having a country of origin as "Princeton." 

Having said that, TB made the correction. He also hopes you enjoy what Tad had to say, because, as always, it's 1) very entertaining and 2) very well-written.

It was an entirely unexpected letter in early Spring 1968 – my senior year at Westtown School. This was long before Westtown became known for hoopsters such as Mo Bamba, Cam Reddish and Derek Lively, or even 30 years before Charlotte Kenworthy, who went on to captain the Princeton women's lacrosse team that defeated Georgetown in 2002 to win the NCAA tournament. It was about the same time that I was accepted at Princeton, but it was just coincidental that the letter was from F. Gardner Cox ’41. 

Gardner was the defending world champion in the 5.5-metre class and was mounting a campaign to become the American entry in the Olympics to be held in Mexico City/Acapulco later that year. His crew was stellar – Stuart Walker in the middle and Steve Colgate up in the bow. 

Dr. Walker had literally written the book – “The Techniques of Small Boat Racing” – that was the guide for every decent sailor back in the 1960s, and he was later to be inducted into the U.S. National Sailing Hall of Fame. Yale graduate Steve Colgate had been on the foredeck of American Eagle in the America’s Cup trials the previous year and had founded the Offshore Sailing School in 1964; he was also later inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame.

Living in Villanova, Gardner brought Dr. Walker up from Annapolis and Steve Colgate down from Long Island Sound for practice sessions on the Delaware just below Philadelphia International Airport. There were a couple of practice sessions that Dr. Walker was unable to attend, so Gardner was writing to invite me to fill in for him. I’m not aware of Miller Huggins asking a schoolboy to suit up for the ’27 Yankees, but it struck me as roughly equivalent.

For two glorious Sundays, I was Dr. Walker. We spent hours sailing out of the Corinthian Yacht Club in Essington, basically sail testing. As luck would have it, there was an identical 5.5-metre sloop in Philadelphia (somewhat unusual, as they were an “open” class with designs measuring conformity to a formula of measurements, rather than a “one design” class where the boats had to conform to an actual design), sailed by Don Cohen (who would go on to win the Bronze in Dragons at Munich/Kiel in 1972).  

By swapping sails between the boats and sailing them close together on identical headings, we could ascertain the better mainsail or jib or combination of the two. It could have been viewed as tedious, but to the 17-year-old me, it was simply glorious.

Gardner won the Trials with Cadenza and headed to Acapulco, where they had an unnaturally poor series and finished eighth. In the Princeton Olympic record, it shows Gardner’s nationality as Princeton; in fact, it should be corrected to United States.

There are other Princetonian sailors who have represented the United States. Herman (“Swede”) F. Whiton ’26 (not Whilton, as it shows on the list of Princeton All-Time Olympians) finished sixth in 1928 in Amsterdam in his 6-metre, was denied entrance to Germany in 1936 due to his outspoken criticism of the Nazis, then won the Gold in 6-metres in both 1948 (London/Torquay) and 1952 (Helsinki). Lockwood Pirie ’27’s Bronze in 1948 was a last-minute entrant – there was no American boat for the Swallow class, so Pirie (who happened to be in England) teamed up with Harvard grad Owen Torrey and gained the podium. Ferdinand P. Schoettle, Jr. ‘55 (not Schottle, as shown on the list) skippered the American 5.5-metre in Melbourne, with his classmate Robert Stinson, a third-team All-America lacrosse player, in his crew.

When Gardner Cox sailed for the U.S. in 1968, he was a teammate of Finn (the single-handed dinghy, not the nationality) sailor Carl Van Duyne, who had graduated earlier that year.  Like Cox and Schoettle, Van Duyne spent his summers sailing out of Mantoloking (N.J.) Yacht Club. When I started Princeton that fall, Carl’s log of running laps around the Dillon Gym floor was taped above the weight room scales.

Many of these Tiger Olympians had acquitted themselves well while sailing at the collegiate level. A glaring omission on the list of Princeton’s national championships (team and individual) is the compilation of Tiger sailing titles: three national dinghy championships, four women’s national championships and two single-handed national championships, all as club teams racing against varsity programs.   

The women’s titles are particularly noteworthy: four consecutive victories from 1974-1977, led by Collegiate Hall-of-Fame inductees Marilee Allan ’74, the late Nina Nielsen ’76 and von Kienbusch Award-winner Anne Preston ’77. The first five women’s teams also included two future University trustees, the chair of the University’s 250^th celebration and a future class president. Including the three women mentioned above, there are 11 Tigers in the Intercollegiate Sailing Association Hall of Fame (including Gardner, his brother Bill ’35 and nephew Bill, Jr. ’63), stretching back to Arthur Knapp, Jr. 1928, who founded the Princeton University Yacht Club as an undergraduate 100 years ago.

Any aspirations I harbored to attain a position on these lists faded over my undergraduate years like a dying breeze. But 35 years ago, my classmate Carl Arentzen – who had crewed for me senior year in winning the Ivy Dinghy Championship – invited me to crew for him in the Star districts trying to qualify for the Star Worlds later that summer.   

It was a daunting task – the Star is considered the most competitive and prestigious class of sailboats and I had never sailed in one. I flew to Chicago, we trailed the boat up to Green Lake, Wisconsin and raced together for the first time in 17 years. We took the first race, and in so doing beat a former Bronze winner, the alternate Star skipper to the previous year’s Olympic team, and a winner of one of the races in the previous Star Worlds.  That evening, the best way to celebrate was an ice cream cone at the next town over – Princeton, Wisconsin.   

Sad to relate, the wind came up the next two days and it became painfully apparent why all the other crews seemed to be 10 years younger, six inches taller and 40 pounds heavier. The obvious conclusion was that desk work was not the best preparation for competing in the most competitive class of sailboats at that level. 

Now I have an 18-foot Cape Cod catboat with 500 pounds of lead in the bilge (and that’s before I sit in the cockpit!), which is old, heavy and slow. I can relate very well and have developed an intense understanding of the wisdom of linking “cocktail” and “cruise.”  

 If one is in the autumn of one’s years, one needs to suck all the marrow out of summer’s pleasures.  And it’s true: the older I get, the faster I used to be. But when the sail fills and the boat heels and the bubbles in the wake start moving faster and farther behind, decades get dropped quickly and the teenager within feels extremely close.   

I’m sure every Tiger who has wiggled a tiller knows exactly of what I write, including all those mentioned above. If they are now sailing on courses that are spiritual and no longer watery, then it’s the best way I can memorialize them.

Six Months From Today

The high temperature in Princeton yesterday was 99 degrees.

Why not just call it 100?

It reminds TigerBlog of the Princeton Football record for rushing yards in a game, which was set back on Sept. 26, 1992, in Palmer Stadium. TigerBlog was in Palmer Stadium that day.

As an aside, it's become more and more amazing to TB how few people who work in Princeton Athletics ever saw a game in the old stadium, which was torn down after the 1996 season.

Anyway, back then, stats were still kept by hand, and Keith Elias ran for 299 yards (on 25 carries, with four touchdowns) that day. TB suggested pushing his rushing total to 301. Who would know? 

Were it 300, it might seem fishy. But 301? Nobody would question that. He was only half-serious at the time, but hey, like he said, who would know? 

Also, Princeton needed every inch Elias got that day. The final score? Princeton 38, Lafayette 35.

This was in the Daily Princetonian after the game:

The corps of seniors Chris Theiss, J.C. Stilley and lan Lombard and juniors Chris Cyterski and Scott Miller played a tremendous game, opening gaping holes and regularly allowing Elias to break into the secondary. 'The line was incredible," saidElias. 'They work so hard for me, I've got to work hard for them." 'They're the ones who should get their names in the book for the record."

They're not in the record book, but TB remembers all five of them. And 32 years later, they get to be remembered at least.

Elias broke the record that had previously been held by Homer Smith, who ran for 273 against Harvard in 1952, also at Palmer Stadium. Guess who was at the game? According to the Prince: 

The crowd of 35,000 included Massachusetts senator John Kennedy. 

Trivia question: Elias had two games with at least 260 rushing yards, and Smith had one. There are three other Princeton players who have rushed for at least 260 yards in a game. Can you name them? The answer is at the end.

Today is July 17 (happy birthday to Bryce Chase). If it seems odd to be talking about football today, then imagine how odd talking hockey is. Ice during a heat wave like this one? 

The lead story on goprincetontigers.com yesterday was the release of the 2024-25 men's hockey schedule. This coming season will be Year 1 as Tiger head coach for Ben Syer, who comes to Princeton after coaching at Cornell.

His first team will play 29 games, of which 17 will be at Hobey Baker Rink. The story on GPT pointed out that a date to circle on the schedule was when Syer would host the Big Red for the first time. 

TigerBlog saw that the date of that game was January 17. It took TB about five seconds until it dawned on him that January 17 is exactly six months from today. 

Princeton and Syer will be in Ithaca on Nov. 23, which is four months away. Four months? That's a blink.

Princeton will play all of its ECAC league games, and it will also play two non-league games against each of Ohio State, New Hampshire and Bentley. All of those games will be at Baker, where Ohio State has never been and where New Hampshire has not been since 1983. 

Syer had this to say: 

"It all comes together to hopefully produce an amazing experience for our players, staff and supporters this season. I can't wait to be behind the home bench at Baker Rink and embrace the energy of everyone in such a historic environment."

It is a great environment. That's for sure. It has the history of being 100 years old, but it remains a great place to watch a game, with every single one of the more than 2,000 seats pretty much on top of the ice. 

Trivia answer: 

Dick Kazmaier (262 vs. Brown, 1951), Jordan Culbreath (276 vs. Dartmouth, 2008), Collin Eaddy (266 vs. Yale, 2018). Only Eaddy did so on the road.

Canadian Tiger

So TigerBlog saw a picture on X Sunday, and his first through was "hey, that's Margie Gengler-Smith."

Gengler-Smith, of course, is one of the three great Gengler sisters, along with Nancy and Louise, who played sports at Princeton in the 1970s, during the earliest days of women's athletics here. In fact, Gengler-Smith was one of the first two women to compete for Princeton, when she played in the Eastern tennis championships with her partner Helena Novakova back on October of 1970.

It was only when he looked a little closer at the picture that he saw all these other people were in it: 

Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, Benedict Cumberbatch, Margie's husband Stan Smith ... and, oh yeah, Princess of Wales Kate Middleton, Princess Charlotte and Kate's sister Pippa.

That's the effect of being at Princeton for as long as TigerBlog has been. Hey, it's Margie and a bunch of other people who look somewhat familiar.

The Wimbledon men's final saw Carlos Alcaraz defeat Novak Djokovic for the second straight year and do so in dominant fashion, 6-2, 6-2, 7-6. Djokovic held off three straight match points on Alcaraz's serve in the third set, but that was it. 

Afterwards, in his on-court interview, Djokovic was asked about playing against an opponent who was so "hot." Djokovic played it off well. 

Then Alcaraz was asked about the upcoming England-Spain European championship soccer game, which was a tough question for the 21 year old. Oh, and Alcaraz, despite being 21, already ranks eighth all-time in career earnings on the pro tour.

Spain then broke England's heart with a late goal to win the Euro title 2-1, after England had tied it up earlier. That was a rough one for the English. 

The day of big international events ended with the game between Colombia and Argentina for the Copa America championship, which Argentina took 1-0 on a late goal, one that came even later than it otherwise would have after the start was delayed. Oh, and Lionel Messi got hurt.

It was the team that finished fourth that really impressed TB, though. That would be Canada, which lost to Argentina in the semis and then lost the third-place game on PKs to Uruguay.

The Canadians are now coached by Jesse Marsch, one of the most unique Princetonians TigerBlog has ever met. He's very much in the mold of his coach at Princeton, Bob Bradley, for whom he was an All-American.

Marsch can be defined by many of the same words as Bob Bradley: loyal, intense, intellectual, thoughtful, smart. 

Marsch played for 14 seasons in Major League Soccer, with 31 career goals. He then followed Bradley into coaching; in fact, his first assignment was as Bradley's assistant with the U.S. men's national team. 

He has gone on to be the head coach for teams in Canada, Germany, Austria, England and the U.S. — in addition to spending a year as Jim Barlow's assistant in Princeton. Marsch, like Bradley, coached in the English Premier League, in his case with Leeds.

And now he is the head coach for the Canadian team. If you watched him in the Copa America, you saw all of those attributes TB mentioned on full display.

He also made headlines when asked about any possible interest he might have in the U.S. job, now that it has come open after the team's disappointing performance in the Copa America. This is what Marsch said about that:

"I'm not leaving this job. I have no interest in the U.S. job. And to be fair, unless there's a big shift in the organization, I don't think that I'll ever have any interest in that job in the future. So I'm really happy here. I couldn't be happier actually in terms of what it's like to work with the leaders in this organization and what it's like to work with this team."

Pretty strong words.

Along the long road he has taken in his coaching career, he has never forgotten where his first loyalty was born. He and Princeton head men's basketball coach Mitch Henderson are incredibly close, and Mitch spoke of their friendship often during his team's Sweet 16 run in 2023.

He remains forever a Tiger, a Canadian one these days. 

Two Weeks Out

Maybe it should still be the Power 5 after all.

The top five conferences in terms of having produced Olympians for the United States this summer are:

1. Big Ten (116 athletes)
2. ACC (98)
3. SEC (85)
4. Ivy League (47)
5. Big 12 (28)

Don't worry, Big 12. You're not the only league that's looking up at the Ivies. 

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games are now just two weeks away, with the Opening Ceremonies to be held on the 26th, 14 days from today. By then, a handful of games will have already been played in soccer, team handball and rugby.

The Opening Ceremonies for these Games will be different than what you're used to, by the way. Instead of having all of the athletes gather in the massive stadium, the parade will be held on water this time around.

The Seine is the river that cuts through the heart of the city, and it will be on boats on the Seine that the 10,500 athletes will make their way through Paris, ending near the Eiffel Tower. What time does the parade of athletes begin? That would be 8:24 pm local time, which is 2:24 Eastern time.

Why so specific? Because 8:24 pm is also 20:24. Clever, right? 

If you've ever been to Paris — and TigerBlog is a veritable expert on the city, having spent 28 hours there once — then you know that this will make for an epic parade. You also know that there are countless buildings that stand next to the river, which has made security a major challenge. 

How much has gone into that aspect for the Opening Ceremonies alone? That would be north of $1 billion. Hopefully it turns out to be money well spent.

The United States Olympic Committee formally announced its rosters for Paris Wednesday. It also announced that 75 percent of U.S. Olympians played in college as well. 

There might be some people who are surprised that the Ivy League ranks fourth in the number of athletes produced, but they shouldn't be. The Ivy League may not have the money that those other power conferences do, but it does have a commitment to broadbased athletic participation and the lure of knowing that an Ivy education and an Olympic dream can go hand-in-hand and always have.

Princeton has produced 13 representatives for the U.S. team, or more than one-quarter of the league's American athletes who will be in Paris. Even more impressively, of those 13 athletes, there are five who are current undergraduates. 

Princeton has had three athletes win gold medals and come back to compete as Tigers afterwards: Bill Bradley in basketball in 1964, Ashleigh Johnson in water polo in 2016 and Sarah Fillier in ice hockey in 2022. Will anyone be added to the list this year? 

Johnson is aiming to become the first Princeton athlete to win gold medals in three different Olympiads. The only other Princeton athlete to win in two different games besides Johnson is rower Caroline Lind (2008, 2012).

If Johnson can make it three golds, then that would also ensure a fourth Princetonian to join the list of returning gold medalists. Jovana Sekulic will be Johnson's teammate on Team USA in Paris. 

The other current undergrads who will be in Paris for the United States are field hockey player Beth Yeager and fencers Hadley Husisian, Tatiana Nazlymov and Maia Wentraub.

Princeton has an extraordinary Olympic history, dating to the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, where four Tiger athletes combined to win nine medals. Since then, Princeton has been represented in every Summer Games except in 1952 in Helsinki.

The 13 American Olympians will be joined by an equal number from Princeton who will be there for other countries. There will be three from Great Britain, three from Norway and one each from seven others.

The 26 Princeton athletes will be the most the school has ever sent to one Olympic Games.

You'll be able to follow all of the Princetonians in Paris right here and through goprincetontigers.com and the Princeton Athletics social media channels.

Happy Summer Friday

Welp, is it too soon to start counting down how many weeks there are until the first Princeton Athletic event of the 2024-25 season?

No? In that case, the first event is six weeks from tonight. That would be August 23, when the women's soccer team hosts Miami (Fla.) at 7 pm on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. 

This is not to be confused with the Miami in Ohio, which will be at Princeton in September for field hockey. 

In the meantime, it's still July, so enjoy the summer weekend.

*

TigerBlog wrote the other day about the amazing lineage that is the history of the Princeton men's basketball program. 

The women's tennis program doesn't quite have the same connection between each of its own head coaches. What it does have is an extraordinarily successful tradition in is own right, dating to the first days of the program, which in fact were also the birth of women's athletics at Princeton.

The first women's tennis coach was named Eve Kraft. She took the position in 1971 after Merrily Dean Baker, who had been hired to get women's athletics off the ground at the age of 28, made her an offer she couldn't refuse: coach the team and get paid nothing.

Kraft jumped at the chance and then put together a three-year record of 26-0, with three Middle States championships mixed in. That's a pretty high bar, no? 

Nobody else has gone 26-0, of course, though Kraft's replacement, Ann Marie Hicks, did go 5-0 in 1974 as Kraft's replacement. The succession of coaches, the ones who actually began to get paid, might not have had the same perfect records, but they do have something else in common: They all won championships.

The new Princeton women's tennis head coach is Elizabeth Begley, hired this week to take over for Jamea Jackson, who left for Arizona State after winning Ivy League titles in both of the seasons she coached at Princeton. Begley already has two Ivy titles under her belt, as she was an assistant coach at Princeton under Laura Granville in the 2016 and 2018 championship seasons.

In between then and now, she spent time as an assistant at USC and Loyola Marymount. 

For more on Begley's hire, click HERE.

*

TigerBlog will never understand how a Major League Baseball manager could lift a pitcher who has a no-hitter going through seven innings. That's what happened yesterday when Pittsburgh rookie Paul Skenes threw seven hitless innings against Milwaukee and was pulled after throwing 99 pitches.

Pittsburgh won the game 1-0, but 1) Skenes didn't get a chance to finish his no-no and 2) the bullpen allowed a hit in the eighth. 

Imagine being a manager who tried to take Nolan Ryan out of a game in which he had allowed no runs through seven innings. Yeah, wasn't happening. 

And guess what. Starting pitchers didn't break down back then the way they do now. Oh well.

*

While the topic is baseball, how about Princeton's Jake Koonin? He's playing in the New England Collegiate Baseball League this summer, and he's sort of been on a tear of late. Actually, of late, as in the entire season.

Koonin, who plays for the Keene SwampBats, is second in the NECBL in batting at .405, and he leads the league with eight home runs in 84 at-bats. In addition, his 21 RBI are third in the league, one behind the two players who lead the league.

Koonin was a second-team All-Ivy League selection this past season, his sophomore year at Princeton, where he hit .319 with 52 hits in 44 games.

*

The Opening Ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris are two weeks from tomorrow. Princeton has 26 total Olympians, of which 13 are Americans and 13 are from a total of nine other countries. 

The 26 Princeton athletes will be the most the school has ever sent to one Olympic Games.

You'll be able to follow all of the Princetonians in Paris right here and through goprincetontigers.com and the Princeton Athletics social media channels.

*

And with that, enjoy your weekend. The six weeks between now and opening day will go fast, but not that fast. 

More Oodles

Okay, TigerBlog knows that he's written a great deal of late about the Henley Royal Regatta.

And yes, the event is over. For that matter, the Princeton contingent is already back in the United States.

Of course, included in that contingent on the way home was the Ladies' Challenge Plate, which the Princeton first varsity won while in England.

And really, TB wasn't going to write about Henley again today until two things happened.

First, he got an email that offered this about Pimms and Yoo-Hoo: "They both taste like oodles of s---" 

If you read Tuesday, you know the title was "Oodles of Power," a reference to the way the English announcer on the Henley broadcasts described the way the Princeton heavyweights were rowing at the time.

Oodles of s---? C'mon. That's a little harsh. 

In fairness, the rest of the email was very nice. It included this as well:

"Having been to Henley, I would have to say that it is as much fun as I've ever had at a sporting event, and that includes having attended multiple Super Bowls and Olympic Games."

It's a pretty apt description. Henley is, as much as anything, fun. Greg Hughes, the Princeton head coach, called it a "party with a race in the middle." TB a year ago called it "Reunions-on-Thames."

TigerBlog has never been to a Super Bowl or the Olympics, and he's not sure he'd ever want to attend either, since they've become so corporate. Maybe the Olympics. Definitely not the Super Bowl.

You know what he would like to go to one of these days? A Power 4 football game. TB loves Ivy League football. It's always appealed to him for the great balance it has between the quality of the play and players, the competitive balance top to bottom in the league and the integration of the players within the overall framework of the University. 

Heck, that's part of the overall appeal of Ivy League sports in general.

Still, he's never been to a Power 4 game, other than at Rutgers, back when Rutgers Stadium still had wooden stands and was in the Big East. He'd also want to go to a game between two teams that aren't perennial Top 10 teams, so maybe a game at a place like 'Ole Miss or Purdue (the basketball game he went to there was awesome, so why not football?) or South Carolina or someone like that.

He's been to a World Cup qualifier, back when the men's lacrosse team was in Costa Rica. As part of the trip, the team went to see Costa Rica host El Salvador, and it was pretty wild.

He's also been to a Barcelona game and a Tottenham Hotspur game. He's been to the World Series (in 1983, Orioles-Phillies), the U.S. Open for tennis and a handful of other major events. Henley had to be the most fun of all of those, in terms of just pure fun.

The second reason he wanted to follow up on Henley was a really charming video that was posted on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Eamon Glavin (@eamonglavin)

Pretty cool, right? 

Back in the day, it would have taken TigerBlog and Princeton Senior Associate AD Greg Busch days and days on a tiny, old, slow Mac to do something like that before a Princeton Varsity Club banquet. These days? 

There's an app that does it. Ah, technology.

Lastly, TB did want to say that he received a really nice note from Hughes once the coach was back in the U.S. thanking TB for writing the stories and blogs and saying that it takes a complete team effort to be successful. Hughes is spot on about that. 

When you're in TB's position, or in the position of pretty much anyone in a supporting role for Princeton Athletics, pretty much everything you do goes unseen — unless there's an issue with it. You don't usually get too much credit, if any, for what you do.

That's why it stands out so much when someone like Hughes takes the time to write a note like he did. It seems so obvious, but it stands out so much. Any time any coach has taken the time to show appreciation like that, it's always meant a great deal to TigerBlog.

It shows class. 

Oodles of class, you might say.

Happy 94th

Today is July 10th.

As is always the case, July 10th is a day to talk about Princeton men's basketball.

Why? Because today is the 94th anniversary of the birth of Pete Carril, who will remain forever one of the most unique people who ever walked onto the Princeton campus. 

And maybe his contributions to the world didn't rival those of Einstein and Oppenheimer and Turing and any of the many others who made Princeton into what it is, but don't let that fool you. 

Carril, the Hall of Fame men's basketball coach who led the Tigers from 1967-1996, brought with him every lesson he learned as the son of a Spanish immigrant who spent 40 years in the steel mills of Bethlehem, Pa.

His way to a better life was the sport of basketball, which he excelled at despite standing 5-7 or so. He played at Liberty High in Bethlehem for a man named Joseph Preletz, though he was known as "Pickles." In the style Pickles preferred, Liberty ran up and down the court, pressed and scored a lot of points.

Carril then played at Lafayette, where his coach his senior year of 1952 was Butch van Breda Kolff. Their meeting in that season — 72 years ago — was the pivotal moment in a basketball tradition at Princeton that endures to this day.

Think about it. 

Butch played for Cappy Capon at Princeton in the 1940s and eventually became the head coach in the early 1960s at Princeton, where he'd coach Gary Walters, who played for Carril and was his American government student at Reading High.

When van Breda Kolf left Princeton for the Los Angeles Lakers, it was Carril who took over for him after one year as the head coach at Lehigh. Carril coached the Tigers until 1996, by which time Walters was the Director of Athletics at Princeton.

Carril's successor was his longtime assistant coach Bill Carmody, who played at Union College for Walters. Carmody's successor was John Thompson III, who was followed by Joe Scott, Sydney Johnson and now Mitch Henderson — all of whom played for Carril at Princeton.

There cannot be another program anywhere that can match that pedigree.

Carril's teams won 13 Ivy League titles and made 11 NCAA tournament appearances, giving March some of its Maddest moments. His 1975 team won the NIT, winning all four of its games when the tournament was still played in a week at Madison Square Garden.

His offensive philosophy, by now immortalized, was a bit different than those of Preletz and van Breda Kolff. His was based on having five players on the court who could all dribble, pass and shoot, meaning he always needed a center who could do all three.

Nobody stood around. The ball and the players were in constant motion, using off-ball screens and cuts — "hard cuts," at that — to catch the defense a step behind and then exploit that for a layup or an open look from the outside, which beginning in the mid-1980s gave his teams three points instead of two. 

He'd tell you that all came from the Boston Celtics and Bill Russell. He'd tell you basketball was a simple game — you pass, cut, shoot, guard your guy and go backdoor once in awhile. He said that a million times. 

Oh, and he hated the term "Princeton Offense."

What separates Carril from being just a great basketball coach, though, were those Bethlehem roots and the work ethic that he learned from his father. He was, TigerBlog has said so many times, completely mismatched for Princeton, and yet he thrived here, largely because he refused to compromise his standards and expectations. 

TigerBlog called him the "conscience" of the University. He was a reminder that no matter what you were given, no matter what advantages you had, they were nothing without hard work, without dedication to the team, without understanding that you had to often put aside your own individual wants for the betterment of the group.

In many cases, it took his players until they were well out of Princeton to really, fully understand the education they had been given. 

It's been 28 years since Carril left his position as the men's basketball coach at Princeton. In that time, the game has changed. The University has changed. The world has changed. 

He never did. He was the same Coach until the day he died, nearly two years ago.

Today is his birthday. 

At Princeton, especially in the world of athletics, that will always make July 10th special.

Oodles Of Power

TigerBlog was in attendance at the Henley Royal Regatta a year ago.

This time around, he was watching it on the Henley's videostream, which was carried on YouTube. 

As you can probably guess, it wasn't the same as being there. What it did do was take TB back to being on the side of the river, dressed in his Stewards' Enclosure mandated jacket, tie and hat. It reminded him of all of the traditions that go on around the racing that make the regatta even more special than it already is.

One of those, of course, is Pimms. What is Pimms? Well, TB isn't really sure. 

TB is not much of a drinker. For his lifetime, he's consumed way more Yoo-Hoo than he has alcoholic beverages. He did, though, have a few Pimms at Henley last year. As it turns out, Pimms has some gin in it but not too much, which explains why TB was able to drink them without getting loopy.

Anyway, the commentary on the broadcasts was awesome. It was distinctly British, which is wildly different than distinctly American.

While American broadcasting is often a race to see who can get closest to the line or who can come up with the hippest new phrase — TB thinks this started with "score the basketball" — English broadcasters are more of a race to see who can sound the most fun to watch a game with, which is sort of the better way of doing it.

TB has no idea who the announcer was who said it, but he did hear this as Princeton pulled away for a win:

"Princeton are rowing with oodles of power." By the way, the British use the plural for a team's location, as opposed to the singular that is used in America, where that sentence would have been "Princeton is rowing with oodles of power."

Of course, had it been in America, the phrase "oodles of power" would never have made an appearance. Oodles. What a great description.

Is "oodles" a unit of measure on the erg machine? "How'd you do today?" "Great. I beat my oodles record."

The 2024 version of the world's oldest regatta — and one of the best sporting events you could ever hope to attend — ended Sunday. Princeton sent three heavyweight boats to England came away with a championship (first varsity 8 in the Ladies' Challenge Plate), a runner-up (the 2V in the Temple Challenge Cup) and some valuable experience for the underclass boat (the 3V in the Temple Challenge Cup, who won its first race before falling in its second race).

Added up, and Princeton's three boats were a combined 8-2 in their 10 total races in the head-to-head single-elimination format.

It takes oodles of power to be able to do that.

Almost as impressive as the racing itself was the photography that row2k.com's John Flynn provided for Princeton. His shots completely captures both the intensity of the racing and the beauty that is Henley. 

None of the shots he sent better spoke to that than this one:

That pretty much tells it all, no? 

It was a whole week of photos like that. And they culminated in the celebration shots for the 1V championship, with all of the emotions that went along with the victory.

One of TB's favorites was the one of Princeton head heavyweight coach Greg Hughes as he held up a trophy. Hughes, himself a former Princeton rower, runs a program that has an extraordinary team culture, one that enabled him to assemble the entirety of his top three boats to come to Henley.

If you think that's easy, it's not at this time of year, especially with recent grads. 

Anytime TB spoke to him during the week, Hughes stressed the overall experience that the event brought to his rowers, how supportive the alumni have been, how thankful he is to the seniors for the role they have played in maintaining the program culture. 

He also signed all of his texts with "Go Tigers!"

Of course, he is as competitive as it gets, so winning was a great accomplishment, one that brought great joy, as you can see here:

Yeah, there aren't too many better ways to tell the story of Princeton's week at Henley than that.

Henley Champs

The amount of energy, physical preparation, mental endurance and everything else that gets you to the winner's stand on the Sunday of the Henley Royal Regatta is extraordinary.

Hey, forget the years of work that are required to get you to be able to compete at that elite level in the first place. There's also the Henley week itself, where rowing is held day after day after day if you keep winning.

For all that, how are you supposed to sum up the feeling in one word? 

It's actually better to sum it up without using any words. You can see that really clearly in this wonderful video that the Henley people put together after the 2024 event ended:

What's it like winning at Henley Royal Regatta? 🏆

We asked the #HRR24 Winners to sum it up in one word 🗣️ @Nyetimber pic.twitter.com/d3BPqBNxZe

— Henley Royal Regatta (@HenleyRegatta) July 7, 2024

The words? They're secondary.

Look closely at their faces. They tell the whole story.

Also, as you watch the video, you can also see some Princeton Orange and Black. For the 10th time, Princeton has produced a Henley champion.

The victory came in the Ladies' Challenge Plate, where the Tiger heavyweight first varsity 8 defeated Cambridge University in yesterday's final.

The race went off at 5:40 am Eastern time. TigerBlog made sure he was awake to watch it. He wanted to see the emotions at the end. 

For the Princeton 1V, this was the third race in three days. The course at Henley is 2,112 meters, or 1.3 miles. For three days, that adds up to 6,336 meters — that's a lot of competitive racing in a very short elapsed time.

In the case of Princeton in the Ladies' Plate, TB is pretty sure that the Tigers never trailed at any point of those three races. Its closest race was the first one Friday, when Princeton held off a charge from an Oxford Brookes boat that Princeton broke away from quickly. 

How big a deal is it to win the Ladies' Plate, which is essentially the highest event for collegiate boats at Henley? Well, the event was first contested in ... what year? Any guesses? 

If you said "1845," then you'd be correct. Since then, there has been a Ladies' Plate winner every year except for the World Wars and the pandemic. 

Princeton became the first non-UK crew to win the Ladies' Plate since 2015. It was also the second time Princeton won the event, after winning in 2006 as well.

Princeton had two finalists at this year's Henley. While the 2V didn't win, it certainly gave everything it had along the way.

The 2V competed in the Temple Challenge Cup, which only goes back to 1992. TB isn't sure which is more startling — that the Ladies' Plate goes back 179 years or that the Temple Cup only goes back 32. 

The Temple Cup is the level just below the Ladies' Plate. Unlike the Ladies' Plate, the Temple Cup had 32 boats in the beginning.

The winner would be the boat that was able to win five races in six days, with one day off in between. 

Princeton won its first race, and second, and third, and fourth. Just doing that was amazing enough.

Waiting for the Tigers in the final was a different Oxford Brookes boat. To give you an idea of what Oxford Brookes is, well, it isn't affiliated with Oxford University. It's mostly a stepping stone to the British national team program, and Oxford Brookes won six separate championships yesterday.

Princeton led for much of the first half of the race before Oxford Brookes caught up and went ahead. The Tigers hung in until the end, but hey — imagine how much you need to have left in the tank and what a toll the first four days must have taken.

Princeton's 3V also was in the Temple Cup, and the boat with all underclassmen won one and lost one. In all, Princeton boats went off in 10 races this week and won eight of them. 

There were 772 boats who started out a week ago in 26 different divisions. There were 52 who were still standing rowing yesterday, and two of those were Princeton's. 

Princeton's 1V was one of the 26 champions.

TigerBlog could ask them their emotions — or you can just see the faces in the video.