Game Week

TigerBlog tuned into the Colorado-Colorado State football game Saturday evening for one reason: Ross Tucker was broadcasting the game.

Tucker, as you know, was a Princeton offensive lineman who played for nearly a decade in the NFL. He was on the field blocking for Emmitt Smith when he broke the NFL's career record for rushing yards. 

Since retiring, Tucker has become a great football color commentator. You can hear him all over the college football world, as well as on NFL games, with none other than Tom McCarthy, who also has Princeton connections.

Anyway, at one point during the broadcast Saturday, it was mentioned that Colorado State's placekicker Jordan Noyes is the second-oldest player in Division I football. How old is he? How about 32.

The only player older than Noyes — who is married with three children and who is from England originally — is Luke Larsen of East Carolina, who was born 15 days before Noyes. Larsen is a punter from Australia.

Oh, and TB also thinks he heard Tucker and his partner mention that back in 1918, Colorado tried to poison the Colorado State dog. TB assumed that Deion Sanders was in on it.  

If you're wondering, Colorado won the game fairly easily.

Meanwhile, here are six words that will make any Princeton fan smile: It's Game Week for Tiger Football. 

Or is that seven words?

The 2024 Ivy League football season kicks off this weekend with eight non-league games, including Princeton at Lehigh. That game has a noon start time in Bethlehem.

The Mountain Hawks will bring a 2-1 record into the game, with a loss to Army followed by wins over Wagner and LIU. 

The other games this weekend: Stetson at Harvard, Lafayette at Columbia, Fordham at Dartmouth, Brown at Georgetown, Cornell at Colgate, Yale at Holy Cross and Penn at Delaware.

The Bob Surace coaching tree now has a few new branches as head men, both in the league and out of it. 

Former offensive coordinator Mike Willis is now the head coach at Marist, which is 0-2 with losses to Georgetown and Lafayette. If it makes Willis feel any better, Surace was 1-9 in each of his first two seasons and then 0-2 to start his third, leaving him at 2-20 after 22 games.

In the 108 games since then, Surace has a record of 76-32, with four Ivy League titles mixed in. His winning percentage in his first 22 games was .091; in the 108 since, it's .704.

Some things take time to build.

The Stetson-Harvard game will mark the head coaching debut of another former Tiger offensive coordinator, Andrew Aurich, who has taken over for longtime coach Tim Murphy. Yet another former Surace OC is Brown head coach James Perry, who is 12-28 in his first four seasons with the Bears. The 2023 season was his best to date, with a 5-5 overall record and 3-4 Ivy record, including his first win over his former mentor with a 28-27 overtime victory over Princeton.

Brown will be the second team of Bears that Princeton faces in consecutive weeks this season. The Tigers will in Macon, Ga., to take on the Mercer Bears in Week 4 and then host Perry's Bears six days later on a Friday night.

The home opener will be in Week 2, when Howard comes to Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. Like Mercer, Princeton has never before played Howard. 

Football is a sport where you practice much more than you play. In other such sports, much of the time you're preparing for a season is spent actually playing. In football, that's not the case. 

There is so much preparation that goes into getting ready to put a team on the field for those 10 Saturdays. By the time the season opener rolls around, you're completely ready to go.

During the weeks before the first game, the opening kickoff can seem like it's so far in the future that you can barely see it. 

During the week before the game, it becomes much more real. You're not just practicing. You're gameplannig, getting ready for a specific opponent. 

It's an exciting week for any football team. 

For Princeton, that mean's Lehigh, this Saturday in Bethlehem.

Friday The 13th

Welcome to Friday the 13th.

TigerBlog saw the original movie "Friday The 13th" on May 9, 1980, the day it was released. He may have jumped out of his seat at the very end, which remains the single-most startled he's ever been in a movie theater. 

Why is Friday the 13th considered unlucky? TB turned to Wikipedia for some answers and found this:

It is possible that the publication in 1907 of T. W. Lawson's popular novel Friday, the Thirteenth, contributed to popularizing the superstition. In the novel, an unscrupulous broker takes advantage of the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on a Friday the 13th.

Do with that information what you will.

*

This Friday the 13th marks the home opener for the Princeton field hockey team, which takes on Miami (Ohio) at 5 on Bedford Field. The Tigers went 1-1 on their trip to Louisville last weekend.

Princeton went into that weekend ranked 15th. Louisville was ranked seventh. North Carolina was ranked second.

On the field, the Tigers knocked off the host Cardinals 1-0 and then lost 2-0 to UNC. So where would Princeton be ranked this week? 

How about 15th? 

Of course, the rankings don't matter at all as far as the NCAA tournament is concerned or really anything. They're just for show. Still, you're 15, you beat seven, you lose a close one to two and you stay 15? 

Oh well.

Miami and Princeton, by the way, played once before, back in 1984, a game Princeton won 5-1. The RedHawks, who have reached the NCAA tournament every year since 2017 and who are the preseason MAC favorites, are 3-1 on the season with wins over Bucknell, St. Francis and Indiana and a loss to Iowa.

After the game today, the Tigers will head to Penn State for a game Sunday. That game will match U.S. Olympic teammates Beth Yeager of Princeton and Sophia Gladieux of Penn State. 

Princeton is more than Yeager, though. Aimee Jungfer, a senior, scored the goal in the win over Louisville. Defenders Ottilie Sykes and Gracie McGowan have played every minute of every game. Princeton has also started three freshmen in both of its first two games and seen three others get on the field quickly, with as many as five on the field at once. 

Admission at Bedford Field today is free.

*

The women's soccer team defeated Drexel 2-1 last night on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium with just an incredible second half. Princeton trailed 1-0 at the break on a goal five minutes in and then tied it on a Drew Coomans goal a little more than a minute into the second half and won it on Summer Pierson's goal with 17 minutes left.

Both Princeton goals were assisted by Heather McNabb, who led a ridiculous Tiger offensive display in the second half. Had the ball bounced a little bit differently, Princeton could probably have had five or six more goals. Princeton was outshot 5-4 in the first half and then outshot Drexel 11-4 in the second. 

Meanwhile, in Colombia, Pietra Tordin scored one of the United States goals in a 3-2 win in the Round of 16 at the U20 Women's World Cup. The U.S. advances to the semifinals Sunday night against Germany. 

Canada, with another Princetonian, Zoe Markesini, was eliminated in the Round of 16.

*

TigerBlog's series of feature stories on Princeton's three Olympic gold medalists from Paris continues this week with his piece on Nick Mead, which you can read HERE.

Mead won gold in the men's rowing fours, after finishing fourth with the eights in Tokyo three years ago. Fourth is not a great place to finish in the Olympics, and it definitely impacted Mead as he first had to decide whether or not to continue training for Paris.

Here's what he had to say about it:

“My first thought crossing the line was that I would never forget that feeling. You think of everything you could have done differently before that. It was one second out of five-and-a-half minutes. One second. That’s rough. And it’s not like you could say ‘okay, next year.’ You have to wait an entire Olympic cycle. You’re immediately full of regret. Could I have trained differently? Harder? Rowed better? Maybe it was my diet? Everything that factors into those tiny margins goes through your head.”

As you also probably know, Mead and Katie Ledecky carried to the U.S. flag at the Closing Ceremonies last month. To say that his experience in Paris went better than his experience in Tokyo is a bit of an understatement.

The third entry in the series will be next week, with TB's entry on Maia Weintraub, a current junior on the fencing team. 

*

TigerBlog will be on the bus to Penn State Saturday morning, so he'll be missing out on the Princeton-Navy men's water polo match that starts at 9:30 in DeNunzio Pool.

He will be stopping in to say hello to the Navy head coach before he gets on the bus. The Navy head coach? That is of course the great Luis Nicolao, who coached at Princeton for 20 years, coaching the men and the women to a combined record of 844-312, with 18 conference titles and seven NCAA tournament appearances. 

*

Congratulations to Dana O'Neil, who has now followed TigerBlog's lead and left the journalism world for life in college athletics. It sure took her long enough, of course. 

O'Neil, whose husband George is an athletic trainer at Princeton, is joining Villanova's Department of Athletics as Senior Associate AD for Strategic Communications. 

TB, by the way, fixed Dana and George up way back when.

James Earl Jones h’80

As you already know, James Earl Jones passed away earlier this week.

Some personas are so big, though, that they will live forever. Jones has one of those personas.

He also had one of the greatest speaking voices of any human being ever. He's probably tied for first all-time with Morgan Freeman, actually.

Ironically, Jones hardly spoke as a child. At least that's what it says on his Wikipedia page:

From the age of five, Jones was raised by his maternal grandparents, John Henry and Maggie Connolly, on their farm in Dublin, Michigan; they had moved from Mississippi in the Great Mirgration. Jones found the transition to living with his grandparents in Michigan traumatic and developed a stutter so severe that he refused to speak. He said, "I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school." He credited his English teacher, Donald Crouch, who discovered he had a gift for writing poetry, with helping him end his silence. Crouch urged him to challenge his reluctance to speak through reading poetry aloud to the class.

That's pretty good work out of Mr. Crouch. 

Did you know that James Earl Jones graduated from the University of Michigan and then was an Army officer? Maybe. 

Did you know that he also held an honorary degree from Princeton in the Class of 1980? TigerBlog didn't.

Here's what was said about him back at Commencement that year:

"Vigor and intensity are his trademarks; intelligence and sensitivity, his tools. He commands the stages of classic and modern drama using his supreme talents to penetrate and enrich the hearts and minds of his audiences." 

There were 997 seniors in the Class of 1980, by the way. The split was almost exactly two-thirds men, one-third women.

The Class of 2024 had 1,295 seniors graduate last May. The split was just short of 50-50, with a handful more men than women.

As TB was looking up how many graduates there were, he came upon this quote from University President Christopher L. Eisgruber from his speech at Commencement. It reminded TB that the Class of 2024 began its time here not actually being here but instead remotely during the pandemic:

“We had to learn anew how to show up for one another and with one another. We had to recall, or reinvent, the rituals that knit us together and the practices that enable us to cooperate effectively with one another. You leaned into academic projects and extracurricular ones. You reconstructed, refreshed, and revitalized a capella groups, athletic teams, dance troupes, musical ensembles, religious and spiritual groups, debating societies, scientific laboratories, co-ops, eating clubs, entrepreneurial networks, the undergraduate and graduate student governments, the Triangle Show, the Princeton University Band, and countless other organizations.”

TB definitely took for granted a lot of pieces of the Princeton experience prior to that. Now? He's promised himself that he would never do that again, and he hasn't.

From his piece of the Princeton universe, he appreciates even more now every time a new year starts, every time a team gets to compete. Starting tonight and continuing through Sunday, there will be seven Princeton teams who will compete in 16 different events. 

The game tonight is a women's soccer matchup between the Tigers and Drexel, with kickoff on Myslik Field at 7. Princeton is 3-1-0 on the young season, while Drexel is 1-3-1, with a tie and four one-goal games, including a 2-1 win over Penn.

Princeton is also home Sunday against Georgetown at 5.

The other teams who play this weekend are the field hockey team, women's rugby team, men's water polo team, women's cross country team, women's golf team and women's volleyball team.

If you're looking to see Princeton teams play, you can come to campus and see six events. Or you can hop in the car and head to Happy Valley, where Princeton teams will play seven events. 

That has to be a bit of a rarity, no, with more events on a non-Ivy campus than here at Princeton? For his part, TB will be at one game here (field hockey tomorrow at 5 against Miami of Ohio) and one at Penn State (field hockey Sunday).

If you want the complete composite schedule, you can find it HERE.

23 Years Later

TigerBlog spent the weekend traveling with the field hockey team to and from Kentucky.

This involved traveling by airplane, which involved going through security, making sure there was no water in TB's omnipresent big green water bottle and everything else that long ago became standard for being a passenger.

At some point, it dawned on TB that none of the 24 players had yet to be born on Sept. 11, 2001. To them, this is all they've ever known for traveling on a plane. For TB and many others, they can remember a time when anyone could go to the gate, when going through security meant simply walking through a metal detector, when there was nothing called TSA Precheck.

It all changed on that one awful Tuesday morning, 23 years ago today.

You can ask anyone who is old enough to remember where they were that day, and they can do so without hesitation. It's one of those moments that you cannot forget. 

Here are TigerBlog's memories of that awful day, which he has posted many times before.

He was dropping off TigerBlog Jr. at the University League Nursery School, on the far side of the parking lot outside Jadwin. It was the most perfect weather day, crystal clear, sunshine, no humidity, not a cloud to be found.

TB dropped TBJ off at the school, and the woman who was the office manager said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.

TigerBlog walked outside, looked up, and thought "how in the world did that happen?" By the time he got to Jadwin, he found out how.

Most of that day was spent huddled around the only television around, the one in the athletic training room in Caldwell Field House. It was a day where people spoke very little, where everyone had dazed looks on their faces.

By mid-afternoon, he went back to get TBJ at the nursery school. He can still see the children, swinging on the swings, playing in a sandbox, oblivious - happily oblivious - to what had happened to the innocence of the world outside that playground.

Later that night, after it was dark, TigerBlog walked outside to the end of his driveway and looked up. There were no planes in the sky. They'd all been grounded. TB remembers it vividly, the sight of the stars, without planes, above a world of confusion, angst, uncertainty, fear.

If he had to pick one word, it would be scary.  

In fact, when TB got to Jadwin that day, the first person he saw was John Mack, now the Ford Family Director of Athletics and then in his first year of working in the department. 

There were 14 Princetonians who were killed on 9/11. There were hundreds more who were near Ground Zero when it all happened.

One of those who died was men's lacrosse player John Schroeder, known to everyone in the program as "Stinky.". TB wrote about him on the 20th anniversary. It's as emotional and heartbreaking a story as TB has ever written.

When TB went to meet with John's father Jack, he was struck by the American flag that hangs in his kitchen. The stripes are composed with the names of every person who was killed that day.

It's an overwhelming thing to see them all there and to imagine all of their stories. And, each time the anniversary roles around, there are people who mark another year without them.

By the way, here is what one of Schroeder's teammates wrote about him shortly after 9/11:

“There are two images that run through my head over and over. One is of Stinky picking off that pass. It was as if he said ‘I’ll do my job when it’s asked of me. I am part of the greatness that is this team.’ The other is an image of Stinky on Tuesday. This is how I picture it – Stinky was badly injured initially but was capable of escaping from the building. He was on his way down the stairs when he ran into some rescue personnel heading the other direction. He did the right thing and turned back to help. I imagine him carrying a worse-injured person down the stairs, making typically Schroederian sarcastic remarks on the way to help the other person out, when the building collapsed. I agree with you, T, that Stinky is in heaven, probably playing lax, with too many members of our family watching in the stands. When we do gather, Stinky will be there too, and the first and last rounds will be on him.”

Sept. 10 is the last day of innocence.

Sept. 11 is the day it all changed. It's a day that always needs remembrance, and reverence.

Smile

The Princeton men's basketball team released its schedule yesterday, so you can start planning your attendance. 

You're in good shape if you're in New Jersey, where Princeton will play 17 times. Also, the same seems to apply to South Carolina, where the Tigers will play four times. 

You can see the entire schedule HERE.

And, to really get you ready, here's Xavian Lee, who will be back for his junior year, along with Caden Pierce (whose brother Alec caught a 60-yard TD pass for the Colts in their game this past Sunday). 

Whatever he's doing, he's smiling, which is not unusual for him. Actually, he can be today's inspiration, for the theme of "pictures that will make you smile."

There's this one, for instance. It's of one of Princeton field hockey player Beth Yeager's parents' new labs:

The Princeton vest really makes the whole look even better.

This picture was taken at Sunday's postgame tailgate outside of Trager Stadium at the University of Louisville, where the Tigers opened their season with a 1-0 win over the host team and then a 2-0 loss to two-time defending NCAA champion North Carolina. If you want to get people to smile, a good starting place would be not one but two lab puppies.

Here's the other one, in the arms of Molly Nye, who, by the way, is one of six freshmen who are playing significant minutes already for Princeton:

C'mon now. That doesn't make your heart melt? 

In the realm of humans, here's another one to bring joy to any bad day. This came from the women's volleyball team's season opening tournament at Villanova:

Now that's what is known in the Office of Athletic Communications as "Jubo," short for "jubilation." Princeton went 2-1 at the tournament, with five-set wins over Old Dominion and Loyola before a loss to the host Wildcats. The Tigers were represented on the all-tournament team by sophomores Sydney Bold and Erin McNair.

Meanwhile, back at field hockey, here's another example of "Jubo." This time it's Princeton's Aimee Jungfer after she scored the Princeton goal to beat Louisville:

In fairness, it doesn't take scoring a game-winning goal to get Jungfer to get that look on her face. For her a smile is pretty much a constant.

For instance, she's on a quest to spot random cars with license plates from all 50 states, which is why she screamed "Idaho" very loudly on the field hockey bus on the way to the Louisville states. If TigerBlog is correct, she's now only missing Hawaii.

Jungfer, by the way, came to Princeton from outside of Melbourne. 

Still not smiling? Okay, try this:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Princeton Athletics (@princetonathletics)

Who is that behind the camera? That's Fred Samara, the legendary Princeton men's track and field coach who retired before the start of the 2022-23 academic year.

So what's he doing now? Has he become a photographer? 

Samara was photographing Princeton's cross country teams at their season-opening races Friday at the new course on the Meadows Campus. The course will be hosting the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships on Nov. 2, if you want to get that into your calendar now.

Oh, speaking of Samara, the field hockey team used a lockerroom in the Louisville track and field center for Sunday's game. In the main hallway, there is a list of Louisville men's and women's indoor and outdoor records. 

TB thought to himself that the Princeton records for the same events would be better about 50 percent of the time. Boy was he wrong.

It was closer to 75-80 percent. That will also make you smile, even without a photo.

Forever Tigers

Wait, Aryna Sabalenka's big forearm tattoo is a Tiger? 

How in the world does someone who has the word "Tiger" in his name not already know that? 

TigerBlog didn't know that until Princeton head football coach Bob Surace texted it to him the other day. It's always been pretty obvious that Sabalenka had something big on her forearm. 

A Tiger? Yeah, TB should have known that.

Apparently, she has two Tiger tattoos, the one on her forearm and a second one on her thigh. That's certainly reason enough to root for her, right? 

The whole exchange with Surace started after TB wrote last week about Emma Navarro, who reached the U.S. Open women's tennis semifinals this past week. It was Sabalenka who took her out in two sets — 6-3, 7-6 — before also winning Saturday's final in straight sets over another American, Jessica Pegula.

TB had said that rooting for Navarro was like rooting for Princeton, since her grandfather Frank Navarro was once Princeton's head football coach. Frank's son Ben is a billionaire in the financial world; perhaps one of the Surace children could make that happen for their father as well? 

Anyway, Sabalenka's tattoo is also her nickname, "The Tiger." Here's a paragraph from a story that Surace sent to TB:

When asked about the meaning of her first tattoo, Sabalenka revealed that the tiger reflects “her aggressive attitude while playing tennis.” She also revealed that the tattoo helps her get motivated and keep her head in the game.

The Tiger. That's perfect. 

Rooting for Navarro is rooting for Princeton. Rooting for Sabalenka is rooting for the Tigers.

Julie Shackford was once a Tiger. Before that, she was part of the William & Mary Tribe (as a player), and now she is once again (as the head women's soccer coach). Shackford will always cherish her time in Princeton and more importantly her time with the players she coached here.

Shackford won 203 games in 20 years as the Princeton head coach, with six Ivy titles and eight NCAA appearances, including a run to the 2004 Final Four. No other Ivy women's soccer team has ever gotten there other than those Tigers.

Sean Driscoll, her replacement, brought 95 wins into the game yesterday at W&M, which Princeton won 2-0 on goals from Brooke Dawahare and Pia Beaulieu. Even with all of her William & Mary roots and current position, there will always be something very, very special about a game against Princeton for Shackford.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, the Women's U-20 World Cup has reached the end of the group stage for the 24 teams there, including two who have current Princeton players. Zoe Markesini has been playing for Canada, who went 1-1-1, while Pietra Tordin has been playing for the United States, who went 2-1-0 and earned a spot in the knockout stage with a 7-0 win over Paraguay Saturday.

Did Tordin impact that game? Uh, yeah. She scored thrice against Paraguay including two that came three minutes apart in the first half, to help the U.S. advance out of the group.

Tordin and the United States will play Mexico in the Round of 16 Wednesday night. 

As for Canada, it too will be playing in the Round of 16, after earning one of the spots for third-place group finishers based on goal differential. The Canadians will play somebody either Wednesday or Thursday, to be determined by the remaining group stage games.

Once the tournament ends, Markesini and Tordin will return to being Tigers. Their team has had to get by without them so far, and that has gone incredibly well, with a record of 3-1-0 and only a 1-0 loss to No. 8 Penn State. 

Next up for Princeton is Drexel Thursday night on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium, followed by another home game, Sunday at 5 against Georgetown. There's a trip to Fairfield after that before the Sept. 28 Ivy opener at Cornell. 

Expect the two internationals to be back at least by then. 

Learning to play without two such impactful parts of your team isn't easy, or even preferable. There is a plus-side though. When they come back, they join a team that isn't relying on them to carry it. 

Right now, those two are playing for different teams. Pretty soon, they'll be  back to being what they always are: Tigers. 

On The Way To Louisville

TigerBlog was walking around Terminal C at Newark Airport yesterday morning in advance of his flight with the field hockey team to Louisville, where the Tigers will open their season in the annual Ivy/ACC Crossover Challenge.

Actually, depending on which team's website you go to, it's either the Ivy/ACC Crossover Challenge of the ACC/Ivy Crossover Challenge.

Whatever you call it, Princeton will be playing Louisville today at 1 and then North Carolina Sunday at 10:30. Penn will also be in Kentucky, playing the same teams on opposite days. 

If you didn't check out the preseason rankings, Louisville is No. 7 and North Carolina is No. 2, despite having won the last two NCAA titles. Don't worry. Princeton will also play the preseason No. 1 (Northwestern), as well as No. 4 Maryland, No. 8 Harvard, No. 9 Rutgers and No. 10 Syracuse. 

Princeton is ranked 15th to start the year. 

Anyway, as TB walked around the terminal before boarding, he was wearing his brand-new Princeton Field Hockey longsleeve t-shirt. This drew the attention of a woman who said that she had two kids who were current Princeton students.

She then mentioned that her husband was a Princeton Lacrosse alum. As she was clearly a few years younger than TB, this meant that there was a near 100 percent change that he would know her husband.

"Who is he?" TB asked.

"Paul Murphy," she said. 

This triggered in TB the piece of his brain that has the Paul Murphy file in it. Murphy was a great player on the early NCAA championship teams as a face-off man and midfield force.

So just how much could TB share without coming across as somewhat strange? 

First he smiled, and then he said "Paul Murphy from Rochester?" This impressed Mrs. Murphy, who smiled. 

TB was then going to mention that Murphy was No. 44, but he thought better of it. He could have kept going from there but decided that was enough. 

Instead, he said that he had just seen him a week earlier at the Friends of Lacrosse golf outing. Murphy is a regular at those outings, and it's always good to see him there.

The moral of the story? There are two, actually. One, wearing Princeton gear is a great icebreaker. Two, sometimes you have to know when to dial back your overwhelming knowledge of something.

Anyway, moving back to the flight to Louisville. TigerBlog's boarding pass put him in Seat 21B. And while he always wants the window, he figured who would trade for the middle? 

Ah, but then it turned out that the plane was a regional jet that had two seats on each side, so 21B was the aisle. And who was dealt 21A? That would be Beth Yeager, back from her year out of school to focus on the Olympics.

Yeager hates the window, ironically. She always wants the aisle. It was the perfect trade.

As they took the nearly two-hour flight to Kentucky, Yeager was working on her homework. As TB looked over her shoulder at her iPad, he could see that her homework involved Chinese. 

"I can't help you with that," TB said. 

For Yeager, a less-than-two-hour flight is nothing. Not after all the international miles she's logged. 

Why go into all this depth? 

The team arrived at Newark Airport around 8:00 for the 9:55 flight. It did what teams do when they travel — went through check-in and security, surveyed the food options, did schoolwork, created social media content and lounged by the gate. 

There was laughing. Lots and lots of laughing.

The flight came in with a sweeping view over the city of Louisville. The rest of the day was spent eating, practicing, hanging out in the hotel.  

Speaking of the hotel, North Carolina is staying where Princeton is. So is the Notre Dame men's soccer team.

As TB has written many times before, moments like this are a huge part of the experience. In fact, when he talks to athletes from years and years ago, they as many times as not tell him that they remember the bus rides — or in this case plane rides  — as much as they do the games themselves. 

It's here that relationships solidify. 

Don't underestimate how much that helps once the games start.

As Promised

The Princeton women's soccer team is home again tonight (7), when Penn State comes to Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium.

Penn State is currently the No. 10 team in the country. Princeton is currently 2-0-0. It figures to be a good one.

TigerBlog didn't realize that Penn State and Princeton have such a minimal history in women's soccer. He just assumed they must have played a lot through the years. 

He was there in 2002 at the University of Maryland, where Penn State beat Princeton in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. As he recalls, it was 2-0 Penn State after about 10 minutes or so and it just stayed that way the rest of the night. 

That game was the third in the series, after the teams played in 1980 and 1981. They met again last year in State College, and that somehow was the first matchup between the teams since that NCAA tournament game. 

Admission tonight is free. Make sure you're there.

Meanwhile, as promised, here is proof that TigerBlog in fact once did have long hair, parted in the middle and feathered back. 

Like he said, this was the way it was in the 1970s and 1980s. 

That is, of course, TB's student ID from Penn. It's his replacement one actually, since he lost his original one — just the same way he's lost two or three of his Princeton IDs through the years. 

You want to know something really amazing about the student ID from the 1980s? Directly below TB's name was his social security number. Yup. Everyone's social security number was displayed right there.

In fact, if you wanted to go check on your grade for a test in a class, you would go outside the professor's office and everyone's grade would be listed by social security number. Those were the days. 

Also as promised, TigerBlog's first of three feature stories on Princeton's gold medalists from this past Olympic Games in Paris was posted on goprincetontigers.com yesterday. 

You can read it HERE.

The story is about Hannah Scott, who won gold in the women's quad sculls rowing with Great Britain. The race was the singular highlight for TB of these Games, as the British boat trailed for the entire 2,000 meters until it just somehow nipped the Netherlands at the finish line. 

TigerBlog wrote this the day after it happened, when he watched the race online, with the British announcers:

And then it changed on a dime. Suddenly, instead of talking about the certainty of a win by the Netherlands, one of the two blokes on the call went into Paul Revere mode and shouted "The Brits are coming! The Brits are coming!"

When TB spoke to Scott for the story, she was at her parents' house in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, about an hour from Belfast. With her medal, she became the second Northern Ireland woman to win Olympic gold.

Scott spoke about the first woman who did, Mary Peters, who won the pentathlon in Munich in 1972. Peters is now 85, and TB was able to get in touch with her through her foundation, the Mary Peters Trust, which has helped countless athletes in Northern Ireland get the resources they need to be successful.

Of course, if you know the history of Northern Ireland, you know all about The Troubles, the war that tore the country apart beginning in 1968. This was one of the things that Peters said: 

“There were three soldiers who were lured to a party next door to my flat, and the IRA shot all three soldiers dead. I heard the shots. You’d be on the bus, and there would be bombs going off in the city.”

That's a lot to take in when you're a young athlete. Or a young person. Or an old person. 

Scott mentioned the lingering effects of The Troubles that can still be felt in Northern Ireland these days. It's hard to imagine.

Peters and Scott met at the victory parade in Scott's honor after she returned to the small town. Those were happier times than when Peters returned to Northern Ireland with her gold medal 52 years ago. 

You'll have to read the rest of the story to find out why.

Up next in TB's series will be another rower, American Nick Mead. That one will be up in the middle of next week.

FDOC

Remember when TigerBlog wrote about his two young colleagues Alex and Joanna? 

Well, they sit in the outer area of the Office of Athletic Communications on E Level of Jadwin Gym, and they've started a tradition of writing an "OAC Question of the Day" on a small white board. The question yesterday was "what was your FDOC outfit?"

It took TigerBlog a few seconds to realize that they meant "First Day of Classes." Then he pointed out that his FDOC was nearly 45 years ago.

If he had to guess, TB would say that he wore jeans, high-top sneakers and a white button down shirt. That was his go-to look for pretty much all of the 1970s and 1980s. 

He forgot to mention to them that he also had long hair, parted in the middle and feathered back. Again, you had to be there back then to really understand.

Yesterday was the FDOC at Princeton.

Alex, Joanna and a few others were outside of Jadwin, offering snacks and Princeton stuff to athletes as they walked by, asking them if they would like to be part of the "First Day Of Classes" photoshoot. 

TigerBlog remembers what his first class of his freshman year was — a political science class on the history of the Supreme Court. Back then he wanted to be a lawyer, so it seemed to make sense.

The class was held in the University Museum at Penn, opposite Franklin Field. He can still remember more than anything else the smell of the tarring of Spruce Street as he walked down towards the museum. That smell, which is a fairly common one, has always, 100 percent of the time in all the years since, taken TB back to that moment.

If he knew what the future held, he would have worn something that said either "Princeton Lacrosse" or "Princeton Field Hockey." Of course, they were both sports he hadn't yet seen back when he first started college. 

For the first day of classes, the Department of Public Safety produced a very cute video promoting campus safety. It stars Lieutenant Sean Ryder, who in addition to his community relations role is one of the biggest Tiger sports fans you'll ever see. 

Here is the video:

Clever, right? 

TigerBlog spent some time on the campus yesterday. In contrast to the summer calm, it was obviously a bustling place. 

At one point, he stood outside a classroom that had an open window and heard a few moments of the opening lecture. He also saw classrooms that were emptying, including one where he heard something that had to have been repeated often yesterday: 

"Nice to meet you. What is your name?"

Some of those relationships will last forever. Most won't, but some will.

For the athletes of Princeton, yesterday was a reminder of why they chose to come here in the first place. It's a chance to mix a great athletic experience (you know, three Olympic gold medalists, professional athletes, that sort of thing) with being at the No. 1 academic school in the country.

It's a challenge, to be sure. Going through Princeton in both counts is not easy. To make it through is a great achievement. 

TigerBlog calls it "The Finish Line." He saw his own daughter go through what all of the current students, especially freshmen, have just bitten off. 

The entire time she was at Princeton, TB just kept hoping that she'd make it to the Finish Line, the FL, as it were, if the First Day of Classes is the FDOC. 

There were tough nights athletically and academically. There were doubts. There were tears. There was all of that. 

In the end, every minute of it added together to create the experience that is Princeton. And when she did get to the Finish Line, as a four-time women's lacrosse letterwinner on top of a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering degree, well, nobody has ever earned it or deserved it more.

And so that is what TB wishes for every Princeton student who had the FDOC yesterday. 

Get to the FL. 

And, like Miss TigerBlog, make sure you cherish the journey. It will pay huge dividends for the rest of your life. 

The Grandfather

Well, it's September.

TigerBlog likes to keep you updated on all important news.

He spent the last weekend of August watching college football and the U.S. Open in tennis. What he learned was that there was a connection between the two, in the form of Princeton, of course. 

First of all, his favorite player is Francis Tiafoe. There's something about the power and drive with which he plays, and the fact that he's always been a step below the top players. 

TB is hoping that he breaks through at this Open, where he reached the semifinals two years ago. He'd get back that far with a win tonight in the quarters against Grigor Dimitrov, in a match that probably won't start until around 9.

This is from his Wikipedia page, by the way:

His father immigrated to the United States in 1993, while his mother joined him in 1996 to escape the civil war in their country (Sierra Leone). In 1999, his father began working as a day laborer on a construction crew that built the Junior Tennis Champions Center (JTCC) in College Park, Maryland. When the facility was completed, he was hired as the on-site custodian and given a spare office to live in at the center. The Tiafoe brothers lived with their father at the center for five days a week for the next 11 years. They took advantage of their living situation to start playing tennis regularly at age 4. They stayed with their mother when she was not working night shifts as a nurse.

As far as TB knows, Tiafoe has no connection to Princeton. The same is not true of another player who plays today at the Open.

The first women's quarterfinal today will match Spain's Paula Badosa and Emma Navarro of the United States. Navarro definitely has a Princeton connection — one that TB didn't realize. 

Navarro defeated Coco Gauff, the defending champion, in three sets Sunday night. Gauff double-faulted an astonishing 19 times, compared to only two for Navarro.

As he watched the match, TB did what people do these days. He looked up Navarro online to see what he could learn about her.

How did TB ever watch TV before he could do that? Ah, the old days. 

So here's what TB learned as he started to research Emma Navarro:

First, she was the NCAA champion in 2021 at Virginia. Okay.

This got TB to think about whether or not she ever played against Princeton, and the answer is yes, she did. It was in the second round 2022 NCAA tournament in her second and final season as a college tennis player.

How did she do? Well, she didn't win, or lose. Playing first doubles, her match was tied when the other two matches finished in favor of the Cavs, so she didn't finish.

Then, in the No. 1 singles match, she played Princeton's Daria Frayman. Navarro won the first set 7-5 and was up 3-0 in the second set when UVa finished off the match, which meant that the first singles match no longer mattered and wasn't completed. 

Frayman, by the way, would win the von Kienbusch Award as the top senior female athlete a year later.

Next, TB found out that Navarro's father is a billionaire investor. Okay. That would be a fun thing to be, TB supposes.

Then, as TB looked up more about her dad, he saw that he was listed as "the son of a football coach." 

Wait? What? Football coach named "Navarro?" You mean, Frank Navarro?

As it turns out, that's exactly who his father — and therefore Emma's grandfather — was. Frank Navarro. 

If you are a fan of Princeton football, then you know that Frank Navarro coached the Tigers from 1978-84. He had a record of 23-23-2 in the Ivy League as Princeton's coach in Ivy League games, which mirrors his all-time career record of 99-99-6, including his time with Williams, Columbia and Wabash.

Navarro was the Princeton head coach the first time TigerBlog saw a Princeton football game. What TB didn't know about Navarro is that he played at the University of Maryland on a team that beat Tennessee in the 1953 Sugar Bowl to win the national championship. 

Navarro went 16-36-2 at Columbia, for a .307 winning percentage. While that might not seem too high, consider that it was the best by a Columbia head coach from the time he left in 1973 until the most recent coach, Al Bagnoli, went .500

Navarro didn't live to see his granddaughter get this far is this year's Open. He passed away in 2021, at the age of 91.

Rooting for Emma Navarro now is like rooting for Princeton.