Stick Around

So TigerBlog was in the supermarket yesterday afternoon when he stumbled upon a scene that belonged on some pretty good comedy special.

There was a woman who was using the self-checkout, which as you know is TB's preferred method of paying — except for the brick wall that is the dreaded "Please put your item in the baggage area" and the subsequent "Help is on the way."

This woman, her name was Tracy, was scanning her items when she hit that brick well. She tried and tried, and yet the message kept repeating: "Please put your item in the baggage area. Please put your item in the baggage area. Please put your item in the baggage area."

At this point, Tracy clenched her teeth, balled up her fist and appeared ready to start bashing the scanner. When TB said he could relate, Tracy said "Stick around. There's about to be cursing."

Who could have blamed her? 

In the meantime, you can stick around for some pre-Labor Day weekend Princeton Athletics things.

*

The women's soccer team played its second game of the season last night. By the time the weekend ends, there will be two more teams who open their seasons. 

The first is tonight, when the men's soccer team is at Rutgers for a 7 pm start (admission is free). Rutgers enters the game at 1-1-0, having defeated Northeastern 3-1 and lost to Delaware 4-1. 

Princeton has won the Ivy League title twice in the last five years. The 2023 Tigers were led by Daniel Ittycheria, who was second in the Ivy League in goals scored with nine as a sophomore after having one the year before. He also earned first-team All-Ivy League honors. 

The other team who opens its season is the women's rugby team, who will host Sacred Heart Saturday at noon. 

The game will be the first at the new Rickerson Field at Haaga House, which is part of the new Meadows Campus. Admission is free, and the first 100 fans will get a Haaga House t-shirt. 

*

TigerBlog has one last thing from the U20 World Championships for women's lacrosse. 

Princeton's Jami MacDonald was named to the All-World team after finishing fourth in the tournament in points and tied for second in goals. MacDonald's Canadian team was the runner-up to the United States, who featured Princeton's Haven Dora. 

Jami was in Hong Kong with her parents Steve and Linda, who also spent some time in Thailand as part of the trip. They sent along the above photo. 

*

Speaking of Princeton athletes who are representing the U.S. and Canada on the U20 level, women's soccer players Pietra Tordin (USA) and Zoe Markesini (Canada) begin play this weekend in the U20 World Cup in Colombia. 

The United States is in a group with Morocco, Paraguay and Spain. Canada is in a group with Brazil, Fiji and France. 

The USA will play its three group stage games in Cali, starting Sunday against Spain. Canada plays tomorrow in Medellin, beginning its run against France.

There are 24 teams in the field, of which 16 will advance to the knockout rounds. 

*

Lastly, TigerBlog went into New York City yesterday to meet with Nick Mead, the rower from the Class of 2017 who won gold in Paris in the fours and then was voted by his U.S. teammates to carry the flag at the Closing Ceremonies. 

TB had never met Mead before. You only have to talk to him for a few seconds to know that 1) he's really tall, 2) he's really humble and 3) he's really not looking to be in the spotlight. 

Unfortunately for Mead, the spotlight found him yesterday as he and TB ate in the Mr. Broadway Deli on 38th Street. 

The restaurant hostess, Chani Staniewski, saw that TB was on his laptop, taking down what Mead was saying, and asked if Mead was a celebrity. TB said that of course he was and explained Mead's accomplishments. 

Before he and Mead were able to leave, Mead posed for several photos and was the recipient of a chocolate lava cake with a sparkler in it as the restaurant's sound system played a song called "Congratulations." 

Mead, as you might expect, was a good sport about it all. Oh, and he stands 6-7. Chani? Yeah, no. She's a bit shorter than that, as you can see in the photo.

The full story will be on goprincetontigers.com probably the second week of September, after the story about another Princeton rowing gold medalist, Hannah Scott. You can look for that one over the weekend. 

Tigers And Pirates At Myslik

TigerBlog made a new friend yesterday.

He is currently working on his series of feature stories on Princeton's gold medalists from the Paris Olympics. As part of the piece on rower Hannah Scott, he connected with another Northern Irish athlete, Lady Mary Peters, who won gold in the 1972 pentathlon. 

Lady Mary lives in Belfast, and she and TB spoke via Zoom. Here's the first thing that she said to him after he called her "Lady Mary":

“You only have to call me 'Lady Mary' once, and then it’s just 'Mary P.' That’s what my friends call me, and you are now my friend.”

TB spoke to his new friend for about 15 minutes, and he came away wildly impressed. The rest of the story? It'll be out soon. 

Meanwhile, TB is off to New York City today. He'll be meeting up with another Olympic gold medalist in rowing, Nick Mead. 

In addition to having won gold, Mead also had the honor of carrying the USA flag at the Closing Ceremonies. It should make for another interesting conversation. 

That was an incredible honor for Mead, who became the first rower to carry the flag as the Games ended. He shared the flag-bearer responsibility with swimmer Katie Ledecky, she of the nine Olympic gold medals. 

And, it is TB's contention that Ledecky looks very much like Lady Edith, who was a different Lady Mary's sister on "Downton Abbey."

TB is very interested in hearing from Mead what it was like and especially how he was chosen and what that felt like for him.  He'll certainly be reporting back in on that. 

He's hoping to have the first of the stories by the weekend. That's the one on Scott, which will feature his new friend Mary P in a prominent way.

TigerBlog will be driving into New York City today. He prefers that to taking the train. It'll also give him plenty of time to get back to campus in time for the second Princeton event of the athletic year, which is another women's soccer game. 

Sean Driscoll's team opened its season last Friday night with a 1-0 win over Miami (Fla.) on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. The game wasn't secured until the final seconds, when Tyler McCamey made her fifth save on a tough chance that seemed headed to the far corner. 

Those five saves, with the big one at the end, earned McCamey the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Week award.

Tonight's visitor to Myslik Field is Seton Hall, which will be on the same field tonight at 7.

Tonight will be Game 5 for the Pirates, who bring a 2-1-1 record to Princeton. Seton Hall has wins over Marist and Rider, a tie against FDU and a loss against Lehigh. 

As TB looked into the matchup tonight, he learned that this is the first meeting between the teams since Driscoll became head coach. In fact, this will be the 13th meeting between the teams but the first since 2014.

Even more amazing is that every minute between Princeton and Seton Hall in women's soccer has come while Julie Shackford was the Tiger head coach. That was a total of 12 meetings, of which Princeton holds an 8-2-2 record.

For Princeton, it'll be Game No. 2 and Game No. 2 without Pietra Tordin and Zoe Markesini, both of whom are currently in Colombia for the U20 World Cup. Tordin, with the United States, and Markesini, with Canada, will begin their chase for that prize Saturday.

In the meantime, it's a great challenge for the Tigers to be without two of their best players. At the same time, it's also a great opportunity to have newcomers step up and make their own marks. 

It could be as late as Sept. 22 that the two will be in Colombia. By then, Princeton will be just beginning its Ivy League schedule. 

It's not ideal to be without two stars — but as TB said, it could be a benefit. If you were watching the game Saturday, you saw the only goal put home by Princeton's Isabella Garces, a sophomore who scored for the first time in her career.

It'll take more of that from Princeton in the early part of the season. That's part of the fun of the early season.

It's also fun just to be at Princeton events as the new year begins to unfold. Admission is free at Myslik Field. 

For more information on the game, click HERE.

Scrimmage Day

TigerBlog got some pretty good feedback from yesterday's entry on the Princetonian dogs.

Among them was this: "Well, doggone it, that was a really nice read!"

TB actually wrote that one after the Friends of Princeton Lacrosse golf outing. Once again, after finishing 18 holes, TigerBlog realized that he has a love/hate relationship with the sport. 

Love — As in, he hits enough good shots that he knows that if he played regularly, he'd get to be pretty good eventually. Hate — As in, he hits enough awful shots that he knows that will never happen. 

He can see why the game is addicting to the people who love it and can play it well. He also can see why people want to smash their clubs over the knees and hurl them into the nearest water hazard.

Oh, and in case you were wondering who the bulldog in the picture on goprincetontigers.com was, that was Watson, former Princeton women's lacrosse player Shea Smith's dog. Kudos to Princeton's gregarious photographer Shelley Szwast for being spot-on with that. 

This, of course, is Shelley's favorite time of year. In her world, there's her favorite part of the year (when Princeton is playing games) and her least favorite part (when Princeton isn't).

There has been, to date, one Princeton game to start the new year. That was a 1-0 win over Miami for the women's soccer team this past Saturday.

TigerBlog will sort of being going to a game today. It's actually a field hockey scrimmage, at Monmouth (start time is 4:30).

The Princeton field hockey team plays its first real game in eight days (Friday, Sept. 6), when it will take on Louisville on the Cards' home field as part of the ACC/Ivy League Crossover Challenge. Princeton will then take on North Carolina two days later, while UNC will face Penn Friday and Louisville Sunday.

Princeton field hockey has won 27 Ivy League championships, the most by any women's team in Ivy history (okay, grudgingly, TB will admit that Harvard women's squash has also won 27). Will Tiger field hockey regain the league this fall? 

Princeton fell in the championship game of the inaugural Ivy League tournament a year ago on a goal that barely squeezed across the line in the final minute of regulation against Harvard. This year's team will have a very similar, and very different, look.

There are 15 returning players on this team, and every one of them played in huge moments in 2023. That's a good starting point.

Then there are two players back who missed either all or essentially all of last season. One of those is Grace Schulze, who was Princeton's leading returning scorer a year ago — only to go down with a shoulder injury one minute into the second game of the season and miss the rest of the year. 

The other? That's Beth Yeager. Perhaps the name is familiar? 

Yeager is back at Princeton after 1) being a first-team All-American each of her first two seasons and then 2) took last year off in hopes of playing in the Olympics. As it turned out, Yeager made the U.S. team for the Olympic qualifying, then was part of the dramatic way the team reached the field of 12 for the Games and then started every game for the United States in Paris.

With all of that experience, Yeager is back in orange and black. At the opposite end of the experience spectrum is a potentially dynamic freshman class of seven players who are looking to make their own marks. 

As usual, Princeton will be playing its brutal non-league schedule, including both of last year's national finalists (North Carolina defeated Northwestern, who will be at Princeton Sept. 29. There are also five other NCAA tournament teams from a year ago on the schedule.

For today, it'll be the first chance to see how all the pieces fit together. 

It's also a chance to go to West Long Branch in late August. That's a place as well, what with the beach in walking distance of the field. 

Scrimmages aren't quite the real thing. That's the whole point. 

They are a good taste of what is to come. For Tiger Field Hockey ’24, hopefully it goes well into November.

Dog Days

TigerBlog has worked at Princeton for a long time, right? 

It's hard for him to remember something that made him smile as much as the email he received Friday from Alexis Branagan, the Communications and Event coordinator for Princeton University Concerts. The subject was the fact that International Dog Day was approaching (in fact, it was yesterday).

Here is what her email said:

"In celebration of the occasion and as a nod to Princeton University Concerts' "Listen Your Way" campaign, I'm planning social media posts with photos of dogs listening their way. Please send me photos of your dogs, preferably ones with alert ears, attentive eyes...something that suggests they're listening."

The email was sent to everyone on the University communications group, from every department, including, obviously, athletics. It took about five minutes for the first dog picture to come through — and then the rest of the day was one dog picture after another. 

In the end, Alexis got back 70 pictures of dogs, of all shapes, sizes, colors, breeds and names. She also got a picture of one bunny and this email: 

"Just want to chime in and say that I'm preparing NOW for Oct. 29 so I can have the purrfect photo on hand. This is so cool. Made my Friday!"

The last part was a pretty standard response. Alexis seemed to make everyone's Friday. 

In case you missed it, here is one of three videos that Alexis produced from all the pictures:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Princeton University Concerts (@princetonuniversityconcerts)

These, of course, are the Dog Days of summer. They refer to a time in summer when the days are hot and humid, and time seems to move a little slower.

TigerBlog didn't realize that the term originates from "the period following the heliacal rising of the star system 'Sirius," known colloquially as the 'Dog Star,' which Hellenistic astrology connected with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs and bad luck."

At least that's what it says on Wikipedia.

Oh, and mad dogs? Not in Alexis' videos. All 70 of them were happy and clearly listening intently.

There are no Cat Days of summer. Princeton has long been more of a cat place than a dog place, at least in its nickname. 

Princeton has long been the "Tigers," back to the 1870s. This is from the Princetonian (not yet Daily) of Nov. 21, 1879:

It may seem a small matter to notice editorially, yet it is well to get at the Tightness of things, however unimportant they may appear. Our College rocket, either through ignorance or carelessnees, is usually given in a fearfully and wonderfully mangled manner. The reporters have it "Phiz-boom-ah," "Yiss-boom-bah," "Siss-boom-bah," and various other unheard-of and indistinguishable sounds. We even heard a Freshman tearing his throat on " Sick-boom-bah." Giving the hissing sound incorrectly and beginning the final syllable with a b sound spoils the effect of the cheer. Our rocket, when given properly, is unsurpassed by any cheer we have ever heard, and since we have a good one let us make the most of it and give it properly. " Tiger s-s-s-s boom ah-h-h," a forcible tiger, a savage hiss with clenched teeth and a rousing boom, ending with a heartfelt ah. If we had talent and material we could give illustrations of a Princeton man (old graduate) in the different stages of the rocket. Unfortunately we have not. Stand before your mirror and practice for the coming game.

If you don't know how Princeton became the Tigers, it had to do with 1) the color orange, as in "William of Nassau of the House of Orange," 2) football jerseys that were black with orange stripes and 3) a newspaper story that credited Princeton with "fighting like Tigers." 

It just stuck from there. 

Even if Princeton hadn't been the "Tigers," it still almost surely would have been the "Lions." The Class of 1879 donated two bronze Lions that sat outside of Nassau Hall until 1911, when they were replaced by the Tigers that are there now and moved to outside of Wilson College.

Again, those are cats. 

The dogs? 

Well, TB asked Alexis if she thought her project would get as many dog pictures as it did and as many "OMG I love this" responses as it did. Here was what she said:

In honor of International Dog Day, I wanted to create a video of dog photos set to music as a fun way to give a nod to the upcoming Princeton University Concerts (PUC) 2024-25 concert season and to the playful spirit of dogs. I thought reaching out to the Princeton Campus Communicators Network (PCCN) would be a good way for me to reach beyond just the few colleagues I knew who have dogs, and it would also help bring some new attention to PUC!

I know people love their dogs, so I expected that soliciting dog photos to a large listserv would cause a bit of a fun buzz, but I didn't expect quite such a robust and enthusiastic response! I was hoping for maybe 10 photos! Over 70 people responded! I also did not expect so many people to "reply all" to the PCCN listserv. That made it all the more joyous. People from departments and organizations all over campus were exchanging comments about their cute companions. It was a nice way to step out of the day-to-day and sort of wave hello to both unacquainted and familiar colleagues.

And there you have it. 

The Dog Days of summer on a Cat-centric campus.

211-20 And 1-0

Just as quick heads up for your Monday morning, the United States was sort of dominant at the World U20 Women's Lacrosse Championships.

The tournament in Honk Kong ended Saturday morning as the USA, well, TigerBlog isn't sure of the right word to describe it. For instance, "won" doesn't really seem to cover it. Neither does "dominated," which comes up just a bit short too.

The championship game matched the U.S. and Canada, and it turned out to be by far the closest game the Americans played in the tournament. Final score? 

USA 23, Canada 6.

The United States played seven games between the group stage and playoff rounds. The team went 7-0 and outscored its opponents by a combined 211-20.

By the way, Canada was 6-0 before it played the U.S. and had outscored its opponents 127-10 to that point. 

Other than the game against Canada, the closest any other opponent stayed to the U.S. was 24 goals. The semifinal game against Australia figured to be at least competitive. Final score: 33-1.

Princeton had two players in the tournament, and both had huge performances. 

Canada's Jami MacDonald finished fourth in the tournament in points with 35 on 25 goals and 10 assists, which also made her one of two players to finish with at least 20 goals and 10 assists. MacDonald's 35 points were fourth overall and were the most by any non-American in the tournament.

Haven Dora of the U.S. had 29 points, seventh-best in the tournament, with six goals and 23 assists. Her assist total tied her for second.

As MacDonald and Dora make their way back to Princeton after their international summers, Princeton has two player who are in Colombia to prepare for the U20 World Cup of women's soccer. And, as was the case in lacrosse, there is one American (Pietra Tordin) and one Canadian (Zoe Markesini).

That tournament begins later this week.

The Princeton women's soccer team opened its season — and for that matter the entire 2024-25 Tiger season — by hosting Miami (Fla.) Saturday night. Isabella Garces scored her first collegiate goal with 26 minutes to play to give Princeton a 1-0 win.

TigerBlog was watching the game on ESPN+, where the play-by-play man was Jeff O'Connor, whose voice you know from Princeton soccer, hockey and women's lacrosse. As soon as Garces put the ball in the net, he immediately called it as the first of her career. That's one of the little things that makes for a really good announcer.

TB didn't have to be there to know that Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium was packed with athletes from the other fall sports. It's something of a late August tradition now. 

The goal itself was a thing of beauty. 

The game, Miami's third, was scoreless into the second half before the Tigers scored the one that would stand up. It started when Kelsee Wozniak played a ball down the right side to Kayla Wong, who then one-timed it back to the middle, where she played give-and-go with Pia Beaulieu. 

By the time Wong got the ball back, Garces was already pointing with her right hand to some open space inside the box. Wong played it perfectly into that space, and Garces redirected it into the far side of the goal. 

26' left, 2nd half | Princeton 1, Miami 0

First career goal for Isabella Garces gets Princeton on the board!

💻: https://t.co/Sz2fmJ4bwc pic.twitter.com/pPkBRf6n78

— Princeton WSoccer (@PrincetonWSoc) August 25, 2024

That goal might have stood up, but it came close to not doing so. Miami had a last chance in the final seconds, but a big-time save from senior goalkeeper Tyler McCamey as time was expiring kept the Hurricanes from tying it.

The win came on the first of three straight home games to start the season for the women's soccer team. Next up will be Seton Hall Thursday at 7 and then Penn State the following Thursday, also at 7. 

Within two weeks from today, every fall team other than the football team will be off and running. It'll get very busy, very quickly. 

Still, there's only one Opening Night. There's always something special about the first game of a new year, with no idea of what's coming between then and June.

For now? Princeton is unbeaten.

Opening Kickoff

Welcome to the start of the 2024-25 Princeton Athletics year.

Game 1 is actually tomorrow, when the women's soccer team hosts Miami (Fla.) on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. Opening kickoff — for the game and the new year — is at 7.

Between now and the NCAA track and field championships in June 2025, Princeton's 38 varsity teams and 1,000 athletes will compete in somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 events. Championships will be won (presumably hopefully). Great moments will happen. Tough defeats will have to be endured. 

There figure to be records set. There also figure to be injuries. Familiar names will do what they've always done. New names will become familiar names.

He's told you this every year, but he always thinks back to when he was still at the newspaper and Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey) had its kickoff luncheon. The college president at the time was named Harold Eickoff, and he started every one of those luncheons with this: "I predict this is the year that all Trenton State teams will go undefeated."

He obviously wasn't serious. He was more talking about the optimism that this time of year brings, that anything is possible.

There's an excitement that surrounds the start of a new year. It's always the same feeling, at least for TigerBlog.

It's the feeling that lets him know that yes, he chose the right career path all those years ago. What else could he have done with his life? 

If TB didn't have that feeling, then he'd know that it was time to do something different. He always figured he'd work in sports until he found a "real" job, and yet he'd always get to this time of year and thinks "one more year" until he realized that he was a lifer.

And so another year begins. Miami has already played twice, falling 1-0 to North Florida and tying Florida Atlantic 1-1 last weekend. 

There aren't many sports in the Ivy League where the national impact is as great as in women's soccer. There are 336 Division I women's soccer teams (TB is pretty sure that's the number), and a year ago four of the 64 teams in the NCAA tournament were from the Ivy League.

Princeton was one of those four teams. The Tigers won their first round game 1-0 over Michigan before falling to Texas Tech, the No. 2 seed in the region, on PKs after a 0-0 tie.

The 2024 preseason poll has the four NCAA teams from a year ago as the top four: 1. Harvard, 2. Brown, 3. Princeton, 4. Columbia. Harvard, Brown and Princeton all received first-place votes.

If you're looking down the road, Princeton has Brown and Harvard at home and Columbia on the road, the first two in October and the last one in November. For now, in late August, it's the opener. 

Princeton will have something of a new look this year, and even more of a new look in the early season than it figured — though for a very good reason. The Tigers will be without Pietra Tordin, who had 12 of the team's 33 goals last year, and defender Zoe Markesini as both are at the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup in Colombia.

Tordin, who plays for the United States, and Markesini, a Canadian, will begin play next Saturday. Depending on how far they advance, they could be gone until the final, which will be Sept. 22.

If you want more information on the game against Miami and the team outlook, you can click HERE.

In the meantime, you can keep in mind that there are few better places to watch a game than Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. You know that as the first game of the year, the crowd figures to be energetic and large. You know that there is no admission charge.

Princeton will also be home the next two Thursdays as well, both at 7, first against Seton Hall and then Penn State. 

And by the time Penn State gets here, the schedule for the other fall teams starts to come into play. And then it's really off and running.

Yeah. TB is in the right business.

Tiler? Timer? Tiger.

TigerBlog needs to hang his head in shame.

He plays a bunch of different puzzles each day, including Wordle, Quordle and Octordle. For one of the words in Quordle yesterday, TB had "TI_ER."

He tried TILER and TIMER before it dawned on him. TIGER. 

How in the world could he not have gotten that right? 

Luckily, the extra guesses didn't keep him from winning. He was, though deeply ashamed of how he needed three guesses to get "TIGER."

While TB tries to come to grips with that failure, here are some other thoughts for the last Thursday before the 2024-25 athletic year begins, as the women's soccer team hosts Miami (Fla.) Saturday at 7 in the first Princeton Athletic event of the new year. 

*

The Olympic Games ended more than a week ago. TigerBlog is currently working on a series of features on Princeton's three gold medalists from Paris. 

He's already talked to Hannah Scott, and he will be speaking with Nick Mead this coming week. He's also reached out to Maia Weintraub.

As part of the story on Scott, TB learned that before these Games, Northern Ireland hadn't had a gold medalists since the 1972 Olympics, when Mary Peters won the pentathlon. 

There was a celebration in honor of Scott in her hometown the week after the Games, and Scott sent TB a picture of her and Peters. TB thought it would be great to try to track Peters down to talk to her for the story, and he'll be catching up with her next week as well. Peters — Lady Mary as she is formally known — is 85 years old.   

Keep on eye on GoPrincetonTigers.com for these stories in the next two or so weeks. 

*

TigerBlog mentioned yesterday that Bill Roper holds the record for wins by a Princeton football coach (with 89) and that Bob Surace is currently tied for second, 11 behind (78).

TB should have mentioned that James McCormick, the head coach in 1909 (the one year that Roper left Princeton for Missouri) had himself a really interesting story. McCormick was a 1908 graduate who was a three-time All-American, with first-team honors in 1905 and 1907 and second-team honors in 1906. 

When he became the head coach, he was only 25 years old. He would go on to be a Marine Corps officer in World War I and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954, five years before his death. 

Princeton went 6-2-1 in 1909 under McCormick in his only season as a head coach. As a player, McCormick was part of Princeton teams that went 32-6-1 and outscored their opponents 716-77.

*

The weather in Princeton has gone from 100 degrees every day to the most perfect weather you could ever hope to have. In fact, all week it's been in the upper 70s with low humidity in the afternoon and down into the 50s at night. 

It's "turn off the AC and leave the windows open" weather. 

Of course, it'll be back in the high 80s next week. Still, a hint of fall for a few days has been pretty nice. 

*

TigerBlog plays golf once a year. This year's golf outing will be Monday, when he plays at the Friends of Lacrosse event at Springdale. 

Each year when he plays he thinks that he should take it more seriously, play more often, see how good he can get. So far, he's never done so. 

In the meantime, he's pretty sure he'll hit just enough good shots to make him think he could be good and too many bad shots to remind him that he can't be. 

*

Not shockingly at all, the United States and Canada cruised into the semifinals at the World U20 Championships for women's lacrosse in Hong Kong.

The semifinal matchups had the U.S. play Australia and Canada play Japan. Both of those games were to be played before dawn in the Eastern U.S. today.

It would be pretty shocking to wake up and see that either team has lost. The final will be Saturday morning Eastern time.

Both of Princeton's players at the event have done very well. Haven Dora of the United States entered the semifinal round tied for second with 17 assists and, with five goals, tied for seven with 22 points.

Canada's Jami MacDonald was tied for fifth in points with 17 goals and eight assists, for 25 points. The player she was tied with was Australia's Ocea Leavy, who also had 25 points — on 25 goals and no assists.

Today, And A Month From Today

Today is BrotherBlog's birthday.

Once again, TigerBlog has not gotten him a card, running his streak of consecutive years of not having gotten his brother a birthday card to somewhere in the neighborhood of a lot. 

Both brothers work on college campuses. TB, as you probably already know, works at Princeton, where he has spent 35 years writing about Tiger athletics. BB works at the University of Washington, where he is a professor in the law school and the interim Dean of Students. Clearly, TigerBlog is the smarter of the two.

BrotherBlog is two years older. He's a good man, TB's brother, and he's done a lot of good in the Pacific Northwest with his volunteer work in the field of justice. He has a good sense of humor and is always there for his brother when he needs him to be.

And, much to his credit, he likes to pretend he cares about things like Princeton Athletics when his brother starts to go in that direction. He's not the biggest sports fan, though he definitely is on the U-W football bandwagon (nothing says Big Ten football quite like the Sept. 27 Washington at Rutgers game).

He's also 50-50 to read the blog on any given day, so TB will still have to call him to say happy birthday.

Meanwhile, one month from today is another big day. 

It will be on Sept. 21 that the Princeton football team will open its season, with a noon kickoff at Lehigh. There are few better ways to start a football season than going to a game at Goodman Stadium, which is 1) close, 2) scenic and 3) the home of a great sausage/onion/pepper sandwich.

That game will be Princeton's opener. It will be Lehigh's fourth. That's a big wild

Lehigh opens its season in nine days, in fact, with a game at Army-West Point. Before playing the Tigers, Lehigh will also take on Wagner and LIU.

The first Princeton win of the season will move Bob Surace into sole possession of second place in career wins by a Tiger head coach. He currently has 78 of those, tying him with Steve Tosches.

The only coach at Princeton who has ever had more was Bill Roper, who won 89 games over the course of three tenures: 1906-08, 1910-11, 1919-30. Why did he leave in between?

First, he left Princeton to coach Missouri in 1909, returning a year later. He left in 1912 to work for Woodrow Wilson but then got back into coaching in 1915 at Swarthmore and then came back to Princeton after World War I.

Roper's record has stood for 94 years, and it'll stand for at least one more, since Surace needs 11 wins to tie him. 

By the way, as TigerBlog was doing some research about James McCormick, who coached Princeton to a 6-1-1 record in the one year that Roper was at Missouri, he came across this from a preview story of when McCormick was Princeton's best player, in 1907. It's from a preview story from a game against Washington & Jefferson:

The contest this afternoon should prove one of the most interesting games played in Princeton this season, and should afford the first real test of the team's strength. The Washington and Jefferson team averages 175 pounds, and the men are exceptionally fast and aggressive.

Ah yes, the dreaded 175 pounders. The current Princeton roster lists only five players who are less than 175 pounds: three defensive backs, one wide receiver and one placekicker. 

For the record, the final score of that 1907 game was Princeton 40, W&J 0. That game was in Week 5, and those were the first points W&J allowed to that point.

TigerBlog loves to go back in time and learn things about Princeton Athletics history that he didn't know much about. It's especially great in the summer.

One month from now, though, will be opening kickoff for 2024. It's always better to watch the current teams. 

Princeton's home opener will be Sept. 28, when Howard will be at Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. The other non-league game is Oct. 12, at Mercer. The Ivy opener is at Columbia Oct. 5.

The entire 2024 Princeton football schedule is HERE. Ticket information is HERE.

And, again, happy birthday to BrotherBlog. TB is sorry about the lack of a card, but he didn't have any stamps.

The Women's Basketball Schedule

TigerBlog isn't sure what seems crazier to him.

Is it the fact that there is a little more than two weeks until eight Princeton teams will have opened their fall seasons, or is the fact that there is a little more than two months until the Princeton women's basketball team opens its season?

If you didn't see the story on goprincetontigers.com, the 2024-25 schedule for the Princeton women was announced last week. You can see the schedule HERE.

The season opens November 4. Yes. November 4. That's a Monday, by the way. Is there some big event the next day? 

Today is August 20. That means there are just 76 days until the women's basketball season opens. 

Yes. That seems a bit soon.

There was a time when college basketball teams couldn't play their games until Dec. 1. The first season of Princeton women's basketball was 1971-72, or, more accurately, just 1972, since the first game wasn't played until Feb. 2, 1972.

The 1964-65 Princeton men's team that reached the Final Four didn't play its first game until Dec. 2 (an 83-74 win over Lafayette). That started a run that saw the Tigers play 11 games in 30 days to start the year — and that included an 11-day holiday break. Other than that break, Princeton never had more than three days off between games that month. 

Now? 

Well, the Princeton women this coming season will play their first 11 games in a span of 41 days. The 1964 men played their first seven games in 15 days; the women this year will play their first seven in 22 days.

College basketball has continued to move up and up and up, and teams have had more time between games. There are all kinds of reasons for this, and many of them are positive. 

No matter why, though, the reality is that this season will start on Nov. 4 for Carla Berube's team. This will be Season No. 5 for Berube with the Tigers, who are 100-17 since she took over. That record includes a 59-3 record against Ivy League opponents. 

Her teams have won the Ivy tournament each of her years. They've also won an NCAA tournament game twice.

What will 2024-25 hold? 

Princeton obviously graduated three major contributors — Kaitlyn Chen, Ellie Mitchell and Chet Nweke. TB would run down some of their accomplishments, but by now he probably doesn't need to do so.

If Princeton women's basketball has proven anything in the last 15 years, though, it's that it can survive program turnover — players, coaches, everyone — and still thrive. The challenge this year is no different.

The season that starts on Nov. 4 does so in Pittsburgh, where the Tigers will play Duquesne. Only one of the first nine games is at home (that's Villanova on Nov. 13), but then there is a stretch of seven straight home games that follows.

Even though the games early in the season are almost all away, there are some drives that are easier than others. You might not want to hop in the car for the road trip to Portland (the one in Oregon) and Utah or to the single game at DePaul, but you can easily go from Princeton to Rutgers, Seton Hall and Temple.

There is a Martin Luther King Day trip to Columbia that comes immediately after the seven straight at home, a streak that includes the first three Ivy games (Cornell, Harvard, Dartmouth on three consecutive Saturdays in January).

The growth of women's basketball in the United States has been fueled, of course, by Caitlin Clark, whose games for the Indiana Fever in the WNBA are all sellouts and huge events. 

Princeton women's basketball has been on an upward trajectory for the last 15 years. Game night at Jadwin has gone from being a small gathering of a few family members and friends to a spectacle, with the videoboard, crowds probably 10 times larger than they were before this current run began and of course a team that more often than not has been ranked in the Top 25.

You can check out the schedule now, and you can circle those game nights. 

They might not be around the corner, but, well, actually they are.

153-11

So what would you have done if you'd been Jack Draper Friday night? 

Did you see this one? The top-ranked British tennis player was playing in the Round of 16 at the Cincinnati Open, which is a tuneup event for the upcoming U.S. Open.

Draper was matched with Felix Auger-Aliassime for a spot in the quarterfinals. Auger-Aliassime won the first set 7-5 before Draper won the second 6-4 and went up 5-4, 40-30, in the third and final set. 

At match point, Draper hit a shot off the frame of his racket that popped into the air and landed across the net. Game. Set. Match. At least that's what the chair umpire said. 

Ah, but the replay clearly showed that the ball hit Draper's racket, then hit the court on his said and then launched itself over the net. In that case, the point belonged to Auger-Aliassime. Deuce.

Only there was no replay available in this match. And Draper didn't say anything. As such, the call stood, even though Auger-Aliassime said this to the chair ump: 

"You’re going to get out now and then it’s going to go everywhere and it’s going to look ridiculous. I’m serious. It’s going to look ridiculous."

Well, he was right. 

The question TigerBlog had was this: What is Draper's responsibility there? He said he couldn't tell if it hit the court on his side or not because he was focused on Auger-Aliassime, which seems a bit illogical for a professional tennis player. If you've played that much tennis, at that level, it's likely that you can figure out where the ball went after it left your racket.

Should have had said "no, it hit the court?" The answer is a resounding: Yes, he should have. 

This isn't tough. Sportsmanship, remember that concept? Besides, who would want to win a match that way? 

What about in a team sport? TigerBlog remembers very well the men's basketball game between Princeton and Temple in 2004, when Temple won the game when there was no goaltending called on a Will Venable layup that would have forced overtime at the buzzer. 

Should legendary Temple coach John Chaney have rushed onto the court and insisted the basket should have counted? Good luck with that.

Far away from the United States, the World U-20 Women's Lacrosse Championships are rolling along. It turns out TigerBlog was correct — expect lots of blowouts. 

How are these for scores:

United States 33, Germany 0
United States 28, Puerto Rico 4
United States 29, China 1
Canada 19, Wales 0
Canada 22, Haudenosaunee 4
Canada 22, Taiwan 2

That's a total score of 153-11. 

This is the by-product of not having the top teams all in the same group for pool play. In most international lacrosse events, the best teams all play each other in the round-robin stage and then again in the knockout rounds.

Here, the idea was more of a regular seeding situation, which is good for everything other than when the elite teams like the U.S. and Canada have to play the other teams. Then, the result is predictably lopsided.

Also, if you're wondering, there's a difference between scoring a lot of goals and running up the score. TigerBlog didn't watch the games, but it's quite likely that the U.S. and Canada did what they could to keep it as respectful as possible.

Princeton's women's lacrosse team is represented by two players in Hong Kong, and both of them have definitely gotten in on the scoring act. 

Haven Dora of the United States is ninth in the competition with 14 points (3G, 11A). Dora had 29 goals and 40 assists this past year for the Tigers to earn second-team All-Ivy League honors.

Jami MacDonald is fourth in the tournament with 17 points, on 12 goals and five assists. MacDonald, like Dora a rising junior, had 34 goals and 21 assists last season as Princeton reached the NCAA tournament.

For what it's worth, both the U.S. and Canada have clinched their respective groups. The Americans finished the group stage this morning against Israel, and the Canadians play Korea tomorrow.

The U.S. and Canada seem headed to a matchup in Saturday's championship game. If it comes to that, it will mark the third straight time that those two have played in the final.

As for Draper, he followed up the controversial win with a straight-set loss, and now a reputation for someone who might not have done the right thing when given the opportunity. 

Lastly, happy heavenly birthday to Brooks Friend, gone 46 years now, but never to be forgotten. 

8,000 Miles Away

So next week is the first Game Week for Princeton Athletics in the 2024-25 academic/athletic year. 

The first athletic event comes up in eight days, when the women's soccer team hosts Miami (Fla.) at 7 a week from tomorrow. Between now and then, athletes from pretty much every other fall team will be back on campus.

The sleepy summer stillness that defines the Princeton University will be over.  

The Miami women's soccer team actually opened its season yesterday, when it took on North Florida. That was a real game. In fact, pretty much all of Division I women's soccer opens its season this weekend.

Miami has already scrimmaged Florida-Gulf Coast and Central Florida and follows up last night's game by taking on Florida Atlantic Sunday before heading to New Jersey. The Hurricanes will be playing only a single game on their trip north.

In what is probably more normal than not normal these days among Power 4 teams, Miami's roster features nine returning players, eight freshmen and nine transfers. 

Miami went 3-10-4 a year ago. Princeton and Miami have played only once before, in 2005, when Miami won 3-0 in Florida. 

Also, the game last night featured a student promotion that $6 vouchers for Cold Stone Creamery ice cream for students. Now that should drive attendance. 

The women's soccer game next Saturday figures to bring out the other Princeton fall teams who will be on campus, even without free ice cream. It's one of the best parts of early season women's soccer games, with the support and spirit that comes out.

There are two Princeton spring athletes who will be nowhere near campus for the game. They'll be 8,000 miles away, and it's quite likely that one of them will be celebrating a World Championship.

Jami MacDonald and Haven Dora, teammates on the women's lacrosse team, will be opponents at the World U-20 Women's Lacrosse Championships. The tournament is currently underway in Hong Kong.

MacDonald is a member of the Canadian team. Dora is a member of the United States team.

This tournament is the eighth edition of the event. In how many of the first seven did the United States meet Canada in the final?

TigerBlog was a bit surprised to see that it's only been twice, though it has been the last two. In fact, the first five championship games matched the United States and ... Australia.

Contrast that with the men's U19 tournament, where Canada and the United States have met in the last six finals and seven of the nine that have been played. The only other two finals were Australia and the United States. 

Dora and MacDonald combined for 63 goals and 61 assists last year as sophomores, as Princeton returned to the NCAA tournament.

Will it be a third-straight USA-Canada final, also a week from today? 

Both teams play their first games today, with Dora and the Americans against Germany and MacDonald and the Canadians against Wales. Those games start at 8 pm Hong Kong time, which TB is pretty sure is 8 am Eastern time.

The tournament format is a bit different than it has been for other world lacrosse events. Instead of how it usually is at the World Championships, where the top teams are in the top group and then the next ranked teams are in the next one and so on, this time the teams have been placed into four groups based on world ranking.

The United States is the top ranked team and is in Group A. The Canadians are ranked second are in Group B. The Australians are ranked third and are in Group C. The highest ranked team in Group D is England.

After each team plays a round-robin, the top two from each of the four groups reach the quarterfinals. Expect a lot of blowouts along the way. 

You can get more information, including how to watch, at the tournament site HERE.

Enjoy your summer weekend. There aren't that many left for 2024. 

Welcome To The Family

TigerBlog began yesterday with a picture of something that appears to be a dangerous predator but in reality is just a cute relative of a dog.

Today? 

TB starts with a different picture, one that really is in no need of such interpretation.

See? Does it get better than that? 

This is a picture of TigerBlog's Office of Athletics Communications colleague Elliott Carr and his 10-week-old son Leon, who made a visit Monday. Elliott's wife Colleen, by the way, works for the Ivy League office.

Elliott has been a parent for only 10 weeks, but he clearly is a natural. There's something really special about seeing the way he has bonded with Leon and the way the Carr family has grown. 

Unfortunately for Leon, he didn't get to Princeton two hours earlier Monday, or else he could have had his first experience at Conte's Pizza. Wouldn't that be the perfect thing for a baby who's not even three months old to eat? 

The occasion at Conte's was a preseason OAC get-together. There was business to discuss, with the approach of the 2024-25 athletic year. In fact, the main topic was how a few hundred fall athletes were going to come through in the next week or so to get any number of photos and/or videos taken.

As TB has written before, those moments are a logistical nightmare for the OAC and the video team, but they're also a great part of the overall team experience.

Beyond the planning, the meeting at Conte's was also a good way to all be together in the same place at the same time. It had been a while since that had been the case, what with summer travels, general relaxation and not one but two paternity leaves (Elliott and Warren Croxton).

The OAC family has grown not only in terms of children but also with two new faces in the office. 

There was also one departure, as Joey Maruschak left Princeton for Georgetown after one year in the OAC. Joey is now a grad assistant at Georgetown, as he is working in athletic communications and pursuing his Master's. 

Unlike many of his generation, Joey is the kind who would do anything he was asked, would volunteer to pick up the slack wherever he could and had no ego. TB will miss him.

In his place, though, the OAC completed its trade with Georgetown by signing Alex Henn, who was a Hoya senior at this time a year ago. Joining Alex as OAC newcomers is Joanna Dwyer, who is a recent Elon graduate.

Alex apparently was a concert-level clarinet player before turning to her career in sports information. Or at least she played the clarinet. Joanna has some connection to Ed Sheerin. 

TB learned both of those things about his new colleagues at Conte's. From the moment he met them last week, though, he could tell that they were the kind of people who will fit in easily, that they could laugh, that whatever coaches or athletes with whom they work would like them very much. TB isn't just saying that. It's obvious.

Conte's, of course, is a Princeton institution. As the group sat there, TB was transported back to when he first started with Princeton Athletics, back in the 1980s, long before Alex and Joanna were born. 

He could close his eyes at see the late, great sociology professor Marv Bressler at the bar, which became his classroom after every home men's basketball game. You couldn't sit with Marv without quickly becoming a student, with the professor eager to teach you some perspective you had not previously considered.

And he could see and hear Pete Carril and Bill Carmody and the rest of whoever made up the coaching staff that year, recapping that night's performance and lamenting the fact that there was no way that any of them could imagine a scenario in which they would ever win another game. Then they'd win by 20 the next night and repeat the same conversation.

Ah, but that was an era that no longer exists. TB likes the idea that he can be a direct connection between Marv and Pete and so many others who long ago left Princeton and newcomers like Alex and Joanna. 

As for his two young colleagues, TB couldn't help but think that if they stayed around as long as he has, then they'd still be at Princeton in 2060 or so or even beyond. Will they? Unlikely.

But however long they are here, he hopes they have a great experience, a learning experience — and that after they leave, whenever that is, that they'll always remember Princeton as a great part of their lives. 

Welcome to the family.

Media Day

So this guy looks a lot more ferocious than he actually is. 

In fact, as TigerBlog thinks is the case, he's way more afraid of humans than humans are afraid of him. On the other hand ... there are tons of these guys who are running around the Princeton area these days. 

TB found this on an animal control website:

Just because you rarely see an animal like a fox does not make that animal dangerous or malevolent, and just because the animal has teeth and eats other animals does not make it dangerous to people. Most wild animals couldn't care less about humans. If they've invaded our space, it is because we first invaded theirs. Wild animals are just as much a part of this world as we are, and they will generally leave us alone as long as we leave them alone. 

This makes it seem like TigerBlog owes the fox an apology. He does look vicious though, doesn't he (the fox, not TB).

And even knowing that the fox isn't really posing a threat, TB isn't sure what he would have done had this guy started charging at him. He's guessing he would have simply turned and sprinted the other way but probably wouldn't have been able to outrun the fox. And reasoning with the fox probably wouldn't have been an option.

It's better that he didn't have to find out.

That's his fox story for today. Hey, he needed something to segue away from the Olympic Games.

The end of the Games bring with them the coming start of a new academic and athletic year at Princeton. The first game of 2024-25 will be a women's soccer home game against Miami (Fla.) on Aug. 24, which is, if TB is any good at math, only 10 days away. 

The football season will begin Sept. 21 at Lehigh (kickoff at noon if you're planning to attend). The Ivy League's football media teleconference was held Monday, as all eight head coaches talked about the season to come.

The preseason poll was released previously, and it has Princeton tied for fourth with Dartmouth. Yale was No. 1, followed by Harvard and then Penn. Ivy football history is filled with preseason No. 6 teams who have won championships and preseason No. 1 teams who have finished below .500.

TigerBlog is one of the few remaining people around Ivy football who remember when the league had an actual "Media Day" in Connecticut each August. It was held either at Yale Golf Course or Lyman Orchards Golf Course, and it featured coaches, media, breakfast, box lunches and golf. 

As TB thinks back to all his time here, there are quite a few archaic memories that used to be immediately circled on the Ivy athletic calendar that no longer exist. 

For TigerBlog, Ivy football media day was one of those days. It actually presented him with his first unmissable deadline each year, since he had to have his media guide — also extinct — to the printer in time to get it back for the big day in Connecticut.

The media day usually followed an in-person Ivy League sports information meeting and then dinner for all those in athletic communications. It was two days of renewing friendships with those throughout the league, whether they be in communications or the media or the other coaches. 

There's a great deal to be said about the modern way of presenting information. It's immediate. It goes directly to those who want to experience the content. You control the message. Your own creativity is challenged. 

That all makes sense. 

The cost of that, though, has been obvious — those relationships that TB was just mentioning. The closeness that existed among the people who work in Ivy athletic communications was much greater 20-30 years ago. The media numbers have obviously dwindled, and the daily or weekly interactions with a large media base no longer exists either.

TB remembers coming away from Ivy media day thinking that it was one of the first signs of the end of summer, and yet there would still be a few weeks until the first kickoff. He'd leave ready and charged up for another year. 

He has that same feeling now that 2024-25 is on the way. It's why he's done it all these years. 

It's just that progress has its downsides.

Closing Out

TigerBlog read two different stories yesterday about the top moments from the Paris Games. One listed 25; the other listed 10. All but four of those were from either basketball, gymnastics, track and field, swimming or soccer. 

That just made TB roll his eyes. There's so much more to the Olympic Games than that.

Oh well. And maybe TigerBlog watched a little of the Olympic Closing Ceremonies the other day.

And by a little, he means about five minutes. As it turned out, those were the perfect five minutes.

He turned it on just in time to see Tom Cruise launch himself from the top of the stadium into the pit of athletes below. And then he saw Hannah Scott, the Princeton gold medal-winner in women's quad sculls, phone out, as Cruise walked by.

TB texted Scott and asked her if that in fact he was correct that he had seen her. This is what she sent him back:

 That's pretty cool, no? 

It's hard to say who is happier there. Is it the athletes to see one of the most famous movie stars ever, or is one of the most famous movie stars ever to see the athletes? 

They all seemed to be enjoying the party. Also, where else are you going to find someone of Cruise's stature who would fling himself off the top of a stadium? 

Before these Olympics fade away, it's also worth checking out another video from the Closing Ceremonies. 

This one also had a Princeton rowing connection, this time in the form of American Nick Mead. Another gold medalist, Mead was chosen along with swimmer Katie Ledecky to carry the U.S. flag for the Closing Ceremonies. 

FLAG BEARERS CHECKING IN 🇺🇸@katieledecky x @meadna17

📺: @NBCOlympics and @peacock#ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/L6tTey1PTY

— Team USA (@TeamUSA) August 11, 2024

Mead, by the way, became the first American rower ever selected to carry the flag at the Closing Ceremonies. 

Princeton had yet another flag bearer Sunday night, Uganda's Kathleen Noble, who was participating in her second straight Olympic Games. Noble was born in and raised in Uganda, where her Irish parents were missionaries. 

Also from the Olympics, here's a great picture:

That would be from the USA's 1-0 win over South Africa in the final game in Paris for both. That's Princeton's Beth Yeager, who assisted on the goal, and South Africa's Hannah Pearce in the photo.

If you're as dialed into field hockey like TB is, then you'd know that it's also a picture of the 2021 Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year (Yeager) and the 2021 Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year (Pearce, from Harvard).

Oh, and here's another Princeton-Harvard picture:

You better be able to recognize the woman on the right.

As TB said when the Games began, his friend Sue Byrne, who recently retired as Harvard's Associate AD for Marketing, was working in Paris as one of the 45,000 volunteers who were there. Her assignment was at the golf course.

The other woman in the picture is of course Mollie Marcoux Samaan, who was the Ford Family Director of Athletics before she left to become the commissioner of the LPGA. She was there for the women's golf event.

With the end of the Paris Games, TB was able to finally update the Princeton All-Time Olympians page on goprincetontigers.com, which you can see HERE.

The updated numbers now have Princeton with 153 athletes who have made a total of 222 Olympic appearances, winning 36 gold medals, 27 silver medals and 26 bronze medals. It's a tradition that dates to the first Modern Olympics, back in 1896 in Athens.

These past Games had 16 current or former Princeton athletes who made their first Olympic appearance, as well as nine others who were returning Olympians. 

And with that, TB will be moving on from writing about these Olympic Games. 

He hopes you've enjoyed the coverage. 

Goodbye Paris

The 2024 Paris Olympics are officially over. 

TigerBlog is pretty sure he's never watched the Closing Ceremonies of any Olympic Games, and that didn't change with yesterday's event. In fact, for TB, these Games sort of crawled to the end, rather than peak in excitement.

Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, he did see the Tom Cruise part. That was cool. 

If he had to guess, TB would say that he watched "a lot" of these Games, though not as much as his brother-in-law Joe, whom he would have to guess was a one-man ratings booster. Apparently, he was so Olympics-obsessed that BrotherBlog actually left and went to Vancouver for a few days. 

BB and Joe live in Seattle. Apparently, it's not enough for Joe to get all of the NBC and Peacock coverage — he has to also get the Canadian television versions as well. 

The best part of these Games is that, while they were six hours ahead of the Eastern time zone, all of the events were available live. It's quite a big difference from the way it was when TB was a kid, when it was up to ABC and Jim McKay to decide what to put on an when, or the way it was even four years ago, when NBC tried to not present anything live to draw viewership to its primetime coverage.

There were parts of the Games that TB didn't like at all. For instance, the Breaking? Bad.  

For the most part, though, TB loves seeing the competitions that he won't see again for four years. Cycling. Canoeing and kayaking. Equestrian. So many others.

The first thing TB did when he woke up Saturday was to check the score of the bronze medal women' water polo match. That turned out to be brutal for the United States, who missed out on a medal when the Netherlands scored with one second left to win 11-10.

For Princeton, these Games had so many great storylines. TB would say it's hard to know where to start, but it's actually easy — with the three gold medalists.

Hannah Scott won gold with the Great Britain quad scullers in what was one of the most thrilling moments that Princeton has ever had in the Olympic Games. It was a 2,000-meter race. The British led for none of them, until the tip of their boat just edged out the Netherlands.

And who presented Scott with her gold medal? That would be Princess Anne. That's pretty special.

Maia Weintraub won gold with the United States women's team foil squad. When she comes back to school this fall as a sophomore, she'll be part of a very short list of Princeton athletes who came back to compete after winning a gold medal. 

Who else? Robert Garrett did in 1896. Bill Bradley did it in 1964. Ashleigh Johnson did so in 2017. Sarah Fillier did in 2022.

That's it.

Weintraub, by the way, is 21 years old and is already an NCAA individual champion and an Olympic gold medalist. That's impressive.

The other gold medal was also in rowing, this time by Nick Mead in the men's fours. What did that earn for him? The chance to carry the United States flag, along with legendary swimmer Katie Ledecky, in those Closing Ceremonies.

The fourth Princeton athlete to win a medal was Tom George, who won silver in the men's pair. That's two Olympic medals for George, who won bronze in Tokyo.

There were 26 Princetonians in all who competed in Paris. Some of the non-medalists were wildly impressive, like Lizzie Bird, who finished seventh in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, giving her two appearances in the Olympic final in the event. 

As TB wrote, Bird's time would have won gold once and silver three times.

Beth Yeager made her Olympic debut with the U.S. field hockey team and looked very comfortable on the highest stage for the sport. She'll be back at Princeton this year as well, as a junior.

Sondre Guttormsen finished eighth in the pole vault. His brother Simen, who did not reach the final, cheered him on from the stands, with his every reaction caught on TV.

TigerBlog spent much of the last two weeks watching his favorite obscure events and the Princeton athletes who were there. Now there's a two year wait for the 2026 Winter Games, which will be held in Milan and Cortina, Italy. 

The 2028 Summer Games will be in Los Angeles. How many Princetonians will be there? 

In the meantime, as someone who writes every day throughout the summer, the Olympics provide the perfect amount of content. Plus, they're just a lot of fun. 

TB will miss them.

Carrying The Flag

Ah, the Olympics. 

TigerBlog will miss them when they're gone. He won't miss the "marquee" events. Did he miss anything in the men's basketball competition yesterday?

For him, the Olympics are way better when you focus on the more unsung athletes and competitions. 

In fact, TB has watched exactly zero of NBC's coverage. What he has done is watch pretty much everything and anything on Peacock, including with the great announcers, mostly British, who have been on the broadcasts. 

Take, for instance, the women's pole vault from Wednesday.

There was Roberta Bruni, an Italian pole vaulter. She's also a police officer. That's what the British announcer said just before one of her vaults in Wednesday's final. Then, when she missed, he said this: "put the cuffs on her."

Ah, the British announcers never let you down.

Also from the women's pole vault, there was Eliza McCartney from New Zealand. She was all smiles, at all moments, even when she was vaulting, or even when she was eliminated. One of the replays of her in super slo-mo showed her as she clipped the bar, and even then she was ear-to-ear.

TigerBlog was watching the cycling the other day as well. To be precise, it was the men's team pursuit track cycling. 

As he watched, two things were apparent to him: 1) he didn't understand the strategy at all and 2) he couldn't figure out how this was a team event, since it certainly looked like a head-to-head race. Eventually, he realized two other things: 1) there is a lot of strategy in team pursuit and 2) he was actually watching individual sprint at the time.

In the end, the Australians defeated Great Britain to win team pursuit. For the record, TB did learn that the team's time is determined by when the front wheel of its third rider touches the finish line. And since each team has four riders, that leads to all kinds of jockeying, moving up and down the track and ultimately an all out sprint to the finish.

The field hockey semifinal between China and the Netherlands was tremendous. The Dutch team scored in the final minute to tie it and force a shootout, which China won — but not before one of the Dutch women dribbled into the circle and then lifted it over the Chinese goalie into the cage. It was something TB had never seen before. 

As he's been saying, his favorite things about the Olympics are 1) the events he never gets a chance to see and 2) the Princeton athletes.

The women's water polo semifinals were yesterday, and the United States saw its run of three-straight gold medals come to an end with a loss to Australia. It was a brutal way to lose, in a penalty shootout. 

Ashleigh Johnson was again extraordinary in goal, as she always is. Someone more knowledgeable than TigerBlog needs to tell him if she's the greatest women's water polo player ever. 

Princeton's other Olympic women's water polo player, Jovana Sekulic, had a goal in the game. The Americans will now play for bronze tomorrow at 4:35 am Eastern time against the Netherlands, who lost 18-17 to Spain in the other semifinal.

By the time TigerBlog comes to you again, these Games will be over. 

For Princeton, the women's water polo match is a chance for two more medals, to go with the three golds and one silver already won. One of those gold medalists was Nick Mead, who won in men's fours rowing.

Mead was named yesterday as one of the Americans to carry the flag at the Closing Ceremonies Sunday. He was chosen in a vote of the American athletes, and he will share the honor with swimmer Katie Ledecky (whom TB believes looks exactly like Lady Edith from "Downton Abbey"). 

That's a really, really huge honor. Here's what Mead had to say about it:

"It is an incredible honor to be selected as the flag bearer, and to represent the United States and the sport of rowing, which has never had an American flag bearer in the history of the Olympics. To share this privilege with Katie makes it all the more special. My experience at the Paris Games has been the dream of a lifetime and I'm filled with immense pride, gratitude and joy. I also wish to thank the city of Paris, and the entire country of France, for hosting an incredible Games. I'll cherish these memories forever."

That's what the Olympic are about. The experience. The memories. The athletes who train their lives to get there. 

It's what TB loves about it. 

Enjoy the end of the Games. It's bittersweet, but they're always special.

Ashleigh The Great

So what has been the single greatest individual performance ever by a Princetonian in any Olympic Games? 

You could make a case that it goes all the way back to the very first modern Games, in Athens in 1896, when Robert Garrett became Princeton's first gold medalist. In fact, he won two — in the shot put and the discus.

He'd actually never seen a discus until the boat ride to Greece. The first one he held weighed 20 pounds and was made by a blacksmith. It wasn't until he got to Athens that one of the Greek throwers gave him an actual one, which weighed four pounds, that he had a real sense of what he was doing.

The only reason the Greeks let him borrow a discus is that they didn't think he was much of a threat to their dominance of the event. Instead, he won gold.

Bill Bradley was the second-leading scorer on the 1964 USA men's basketball team that did win gold. It's only close game was a 69-61 win over Yugoslavia in which the Americans were up 35-34 at the half, and Bradley had his Olympic-high of 18 points in that one. 

That same year, Jed Graef set the world record while winning gold in the 200 meter backstroke. His record would stand for three years before it was broken.

It's easy to point to the gold medals that Princetonians have won, a total that is approaching 40. Caroline Lind won two in rowing. Sarah Fillier led the Olympic ice hockey tournament in goals scored in 2022. 

One of TigerBlog's favorite stories about a Princeton gold medalist dates back to the second Games in 1900, which also were the first of three that have occurred in Paris. Princeton's Frank Jarvis won the gold medal in the 100 meter dash (in then world record time of 10.8), which was nice enough. The cool part is that Jarvis was a direct descendant of George Washington.

Not all of the top performances have resulted in gold, of course. The silver that Gevvie Stone won in singles rowing was massively impressive — and led to the great picture of her with the American flag afterwards.

For that matter, the great performances don't always result in medals. You can add Lizzie Bird's seventh-place finish in the steeplechase from Tuesday to that list. 

Speaking of Tuesday, Bird's performance was incredible, though it might not have been the best of a Princeton athlete in Paris that day. 

In fact, you can make a case that what Ashleigh Johnson did in the women's water polo quarterfinals was in fact the greatest single individual performance a Princeton athlete has had in an Olympic Games. Sometimes it takes TB a while to get to the point.

Johnson has already won two gold medals as the goalie for the Americans, who have won three straight overall. That streak would have ended stunningly Tuesday in the quarterfinals against Hungary had Johnson not done what she did.

The other three quarterfinal winners averaged 12.7 goals in their games. For the record, that was Spain (18-8 over Canada), the Netherlands (11-8 over Italy) and Australia (9-6 over Greece). 

The final of the match between the USA and Hungary? How about 5-4 U.S.?

And how did Ashleigh Johnson play? She was extraordinary, finishing with 17 saves, including two in the final 90 seconds, as well as a steal during that late frantic push.

You don't usually win international water polo matches with five goals. Or any water polo matches, for that matter.

Johnson was amazing, launching herself out of the water to tip away shots, reacting in milliseconds to keep Hungarian drives out of the U.S. goal, coming up clutch time after time after time. 

If you watched it like TB did, you probably gasped "wow" about the same number of times he did, which was pretty much every time Hungary took a shot. She shut out the Hungarians for the final 11:34, and her team needed every play she made, since the score was tied 4-4 for nearly nine minutes before the winning goal was scored by Rachel Fattal with 3:02 left.

Almost solely because of Johnson, the U.S. is still in medal contention. Next up will be the semifinals today at 2:35 Eastern time against Australia, while Spain will play the Netherlands at 8:35 this morning. 

The bronze medal game will be Saturday at 4:35 am Saturday, and the gold will be determined at 9:35 Saturday. 

Should the United States win gold again, Johnson would become the first Princeton alum to win gold in three separate Olympiads.

Lizzie Bird In The Amazing Race

TigerBlog was walking in Jadwin Gym the other day when he ran into Mike Poller, the associate head coach of the women's soccer team. 

As they said hi, TB mentioned how crazy it is that Poller's team has a game in two weeks. Poller corrected him to say that it was closer to three, but hey, it's still almost time for the 2024-25 athletic year. 

The women's soccer team opens its season — its actual regular season — by hosting Miami (Fla.) on Saturday, Aug. 24. It also dawns on TB that a month from today he'll be in Louisville, where the field hockey team will be in between its opening games against Louisville (Aug. 6) and North Carolina (Aug. 8).

It'll all be here soon enough.

The football team begins its season Sept. 21 at Lehigh, with kickoff at noon. TB loves to watch games at Goodman Stadium, especially when it's opening day for the Tigers. 

Princeton, by the way, was picked fourth in the Ivy League's preseason football poll. There will be plenty of time to dive into that later.

For now, though, it's the final few days for #PrincetonInParis at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. 

By the way, did TB hear the announcers correctly during the women's 400 hurdles semifinals? Does Sydney McLaughlin-Leverone run that event faster than any of the runners in the 400 do without the hurdles?  

By the way, TB thinks the field events should change the way they award medals. It shouldn't be just the top throw. It should be total between the top three throws, or at least top two. Someone get on that.

As TB has been watching the track and field, he's decided he loves the way the athletes are introduced. Each one's name is called, and then it's up to each man or woman to decide what his or her specific entrance will look like. It's a bit like when Princeton's athletes are on video in the preseason for content for social media. 

As such, TB was curious as to what Lizzie Bird would do yesterday prior to the final of the 3,000-meter steeplechase, for which the 2017 Princeton grad had qualified for the second straight Games after her ninth-place finish in Tokyo. In between, by the way, she finished law school at the University of Colorado in 2.5 years. 

And then they didn't even show it for the steeplechase. Grrrr. Oh well. 

TigerBlog was asked an interesting question the other day, for which he had no answer. If there's only one steeplechase event, why do they call it the 3,000-meter steeplechase? Why not just the steeplechase? 

He had never considered that before. Wouldn't that be the same as calling it the 26.2 mile marathon? 

Meanwhile, as for the race itself, it turned out to be one of the greatest women's steeplechase runs of all time. And when the dust had settled, Lizzie Bird had finished seventh with a Great Britain record of 9:04.35 (which broke her own record, but still).

Her time would have won her a silver medal in 2021 in Tokyo. It would have also won silver in Rio in 2016. It would have won gold — by four seconds — in 2012 in her native England. It would also have been silver in 2008, the first time the event was run by women in the Olympics.

That's how ridiculous this race was.

The winner was Winfred Yavi of Bahrain, who set the Olympic record in 8:52.76. The old record was nearly 8:59. It was obvious from the beginning that the old record had no chance of making it.

In all, the race featured a European record for France's Alice Finot (8:58.67), four national records and nine personal bests. TB isn't the most trained eye when it comes to track and field, but he could tell early on that this wasn't a race of tactics, more of a race of pure speed.

For the most part, there were five runners in the first group. As the British announcer said: "five doesn't go into three," meaning two wouldn't win medals. At the end, Finot made a run at them, passing two of the runners who had set the pace to grab fourth. 

And then there was Bird. You had the five who were in control the whole way and Finot, and then suddenly there was Bird. 

Yes, she didn't win a medal. 

Yes, she was an amazing part of an amazing race. It was one of the great moments for a Princeton athlete in track and field in Olympic history. 

Tomorrow? Ashleigh Johnson wills the U.S. into the women's water polo semifinals in another ridiculous performance.