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.