In A Rush

There was only time for one more play in the Princeton-Howard football game, and TigerBlog was disappointed as he looked on from the press box.

Disappointed? In the Tigers? 

Nope. Not at all. How could he be?

Princeton led for the final 58:14 of a 60-minute game while taking down the Bison 30-13 in the Powers Field at Princeton Stadium home opener. Princeton put up the first 23 points of the day and then, after Howard had cut it to 23-13 in the fourth quarter, ended things with a masterful 75-yard drive that ended with a Dareion Murphy 22-yard touchdown run. 

So why the disappointment? 

Well, it's because prior to that final play, Princeton had exactly 200 rushing yards in the game. And TB knew that the final play would be a kneel-down, which would mean negative rushing yards, which would mean fewer than 200 for the day. 

Actually, Princeton ran for 226 yards, with minus-26 on sacks of Blaine McAllister and the five-yard loss to the team on the kneeldown. And 200 is a nice round number, but hey, 195 is still impressive.

It was all part of the massive turnaround from Week 1 to Week 2 for Princeton. It's something that TB spoke about last week, and it's something that was on full display on a drizzly afternoon. 

What stood out the most was the running game. Princeton struggled to move the ball on the ground in its 35-20 season-opening loss to Lehigh, finishing with minus-7 rushing yards. Even if you take away the sacks from that game, Princeton had 25 carries for 41 yards. 

Against Howard, it was a much different story. 

John Volker went from 10 carries for 28 yards against Lehigh to 12 carries for 88 yards against Howard. That's going from 2.8 per carry to 7.3 per carry. McAllister, even with the 26 yards in sacks, finished with 50 rushing yards.  

The Tigers had a 10-minute disadvantage in time of possession against Lehigh. The running success led to a nearly four-minute edge against Howard. 

The ability to move the ball on the ground wasn't the only improvement for Princeton. In fact, like you'd expect from the first game to the second game, pretty much everything from Princeton was tightened up. 

McAllister, a senior, was making his first career start, and his first pass of the day was a 37-yard TD strike to Luke Colella. McAllister also ran for a touchdown. 

The defense tackled well and shut out the Bison into the fourth quarter. Princeton only gave up 226 total yards of offense, after Lehigh put up 346. 

Punter Brady Clark had a big day, with four punts for a 47.5-yard average, including one 70-yarder and two inside the 20. 

All in all, it had to be a big confidence boost for a team that could have used one. And it came at the right time.

Princeton now heads into the first game of its Ivy League schedule Saturday at Columbia at noon. The two league games this past weekend were both surprising, as Cornell defeated preseason favorite Yale 47-23 and Brown rallied for two touchdowns in the final five minutes to shock Harvard 31-28. 

Columbia will also be 1-1 heading into the game next weekend. The Lions' two results? A convincing win over Patriot League preseason favorite Lafayette and then a loss to Patriot League preseason No. 5 Georgetown. 

For that matter, Lehigh was the Patriot League preseason No. 6 pick. Howard is the defending MEAC champion and the runner-up for the HBCU after falling to Florida A&M in the championship game.

You never can tell from week to week. 

In fact, six of the eight Ivy League schools are 1-1, with Penn and Dartmouth at 2-0 each. Those two, by the way, play this coming weekend in Hanover. 

For Princeton, the game against Howard — and the week of practice before it — became a hugely important stretch of this 2024 season. It's not easy in football to have to sit on a disappointing loss for seven days before you can play again.

It's even harder when you haven't had any on-field success to date. To be able to put together the performance against Howard that Princeton did was a great step in the right direction.

What happens next? In the Ivy League, who knows. 

The goal, as always, is to play meaningful games in November. As October starts, all eight Ivy teams are trying to put themselves into that position.

Welcoming Howard

Wait, was that Terrance Stokes in the Princeton football video? 

The Terrance Stokes? Yes it was. 

It's the same Terrance Stokes who still to this day, 31 years later, holds the Penn football record for rushing yards in a game, with 272 against Princeton in 1993. Somewhat amazingly, he had 136 yards in the first half and 136 yards in the second half.

TigerBlog was at Franklin Field that day, which is one of the rougher days in Princeton football history. It was a matchup of two unbeaten teams in November, but on that day, it was all Quakers, who rolled 30-14. 

TB remembered Stokes from his days as a running back at Trenton High School. And now, all this time later, there he is, in a video produced about Princeton football's time working with the kids of Trenton at a youth clinic.

At the time of that Penn-Princeton game in 1993, by the way, TigerBlog lived in the city of Trenton. 

Among his many other civic-minded ventures in his home city, Stokes is now the founder and president of  Trenton Youth Football. In the video, he speaks about the importance of seeing Princeton football players, especially the Black players, who spent time with the kids in Trenton, which is primarily Black.

"To see people who look like them, at an institution such as Princeton, playing football, that kind of opened their mind to what is possible," Stokes says in the video.

The entire 2:45 of the video is worth watching. You can see for yourself:

In Service of Humanity.@Evanhaynie__, @GeerJalen and others helped give back to the Trenton Community with a football clinic earlier this summer. #JUICE 🍊🥤 pic.twitter.com/s5VDU4te0f

— Princeton Football (@PrincetonFTBL) September 26, 2024

Tomorrow will be a special day on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium, and not only because it's the Tigers' home opener. The opponent will be Howard, marking the second time Princeton has played an HBCU at home, after hosting Hampton in 2007.

It will be a day of celebrations and pageantry — and also an important football game against a good team. 

Howard is 2-2 on the season, with an opening week loss to Rutgers and a loss last week to Hampton, as well as wins in between over Mercyhurst and Morehouse. The Bison are the defending MEAC champs and were the HBCU runners-up a year ago.

Princeton is 0-1 after dropping its opener last week at Lehigh 35-20. This will be Princeton's only home game in its first four weeks, since next up will be trips to near (at Columbia) and far (at Mercer, in Macon, Ga.).

Howard is a very balanced team, with an average of 191 passing yards and 180 rushing yards per game so far. Its opponents are balanced as well, having rushed for 174 yards per game and thrown for 176 yards per game.

Princeton struggled on the ground last week against Lehigh. This will be a good opportunity to improve in that area, as opponents average five yards per rush against the Bison.

TB once again will say that he would love to see college football treat sacks like the NFL does — as negative team passing yards. Instead, they become negative rushing yards for the quarterback (and by extension the team). 

Against Lehigh, Princeton quarterback Blaine Hippa was sacked six times for minus-48 yards. That number put the Tigers below zero for the day on the ground.

Of course, that was Game 1. The difference between Game 1 and Game 2 is often huge, so trying to draw sweeping conclusions about a team after one game is usually impossible. 

The game at Lehigh was Hippa's first start, and he threw for 219 yards and two touchdowns despite the six sacks. He certainly has the look of someone who can lead a team. 

Howard's biggest offensive threat is quarterback Ja'Shawn Scroggins, but he is out injured indefinitely. In his place the last two weeks has been Jaylon Tolbert, who is 41 for 67 for 468 yards, four TDs and two interceptions.

Defensively, Howard is led by Kenny Gallop Jr., who has more solo tackles (26) than any other player on the team has total tackles (25). In all Gallop — the 2023 MEAC Defensive Player of the Year — averages 9.8 tackles per game, which is 18th in the FCS. 

Oh, and according to his bio, the 6-foot, 215-pound Gallop lists what as his favorite food? Salad.

Princeton has lost its opener eight times in the last 20 seasons. It has won its second game six of those eight times.

What does the game tomorrow have in store? Kickoff is at 3, with the game also on ESPN+.

The News And The Views

September 26? Why does that date sound familiar?

Oh yeah. It's FatherBlog's birthday. Happy 89th to a man whose regimen for longevity has been 1) eat pretty much whatever you want and 2) rarely exercise.

Whenever TigerBlog calls his father, he always starts off with the same question: "What's the news and the views?" TB isn't sure where his father first came up with that, but he does know he's heard it about a million times.

So, for his dad's birthday, here are some news and views from Princeton Athletics. 

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TigerBlog spent about 10 minutes on the men's and women's soccer schedules to try to figure out how they could both begin their Ivy League schedules Saturday of this week but end them one week apart. 

Both the men and the women play eight league games. They both start in two days. They both play a league game every weekend between now and the end of the regular season.

It wasn't until he went back and forth a few times that he realized that the women's teams play a midweek game — in Princeton's case, against Penn Oct. 9 at home. In fact, that Wednesday will see all eight Ivy women's teams play a game against their traditional travel partners. 

The women's and men's NCAA tournaments begin a week apart, as always, which means that the Ivy League tournaments are a week apart. The race to get the four spots in the Ivy tournament begin this weekend.

Princeton's women will be at Cornell at noon, presumably at full strength now that the U20 World Cup has ended. Pietra Tordin is back from Colombia with a bronze medal with the U.S. team, and Zoe Markesini has already played twice with the Tigers after helping Canada to the knockout stage.

Without those two, Princeton put together a 4-3 record. There have been seven different players with at least one goal, and it was the first career goal for five of them. It's been a great experience for the entire team without Tordin and Markesini, and it's been timed somewhat perfectly that they're all back together for the Ivy opener.

The men will open their Ivy season at home against Harvard at 4. The Tigers are 2-3 against what has been a very tough non-league schedule, with the most recent game a 2-0 loss at Georgetown Tuesday afternoon.

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You can see two different Princeton teams play in New York City tomorrow night.

The field hockey team is at Columbia at 6. The men's water polo team is at Fordham, also at 6. Those two venues are about three miles apart. 

By the way, the water polo match is between two Top 10 teams, with No. 7 Princeton and No. 10 Fordham. 

You may want to check out the first half of water polo and then catch the second half of field hockey. If you're doing it, let TB know. You deserve recognition.

The water polo team will be staying in New York for Saturday games at Iona and LIU. 

The field hockey team returns home Sunday to take on Northwestern, who has been ranked No. 1 all season until this past week, when it dropped to No. 2, switching places with North Carolina despite not losing. That game will begin at noon on Bedford Field.

Princeton and Columbia are two of the four Ivy teams who are 1-0 so far, along with Harvard and Brown. The game will match the reigning Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week (Princeton's Beth Yeager) and Defensive Player of the Week (Katie Wimmer, who made nine saves in a 1-0 win over Cornell and 13 in a 1-0 loss to Monmouth).

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The women's rugby team is home Saturday at noon against Brown. The Tigers got their first varsity 15s win last weekend, 59-0 over Bowdoin. 

Princeton women's rugby features Lauren Barnds, whose grandfather Jack was in the Class of 1954 and was a football and rugby player for the Tigers.

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The women's volleyball team has a home-and-home against Penn this weekend, beginning in Dillon Gym tomorrow night at 7 and then concluding at the Palestra Saturday at 5:30.

The women's golf team hosts it Princeton Invitational at Springdale this weekend as well.

The complete schedule can be found HERE.

Golden Features

Before the page completely turns on last weekend, it's important to acknowledge what the men's water polo did in California. 

Princeton went 2-2 on a trip to the West, and it's possible that one of the losses was its most impressive performance. 

The Tigers lost to No. 1 UCLA this past Friday 17-16 in overtime. That's an extraordinary effort against a team that, if it's not the best in the country, is certainly as good as any. 

Princeton's other loss came against Cal, who is ranked third, by a 15-10 score. The two wins came over No. 10 Long Beach State (14-12) and over No. 15 UC-San Diego (17-10).

Not that it really matters, but Princeton, by the way, somehow dropped in this week's poll, going from sixth to seventh. 

Roko Pozaric has 30 goals so far this season for the Tigers, which gives him 236 for his career. The Princeton career record is 254, set by John Stover, who graduated in 2005. 

Pozaric is currently in sixth place, trailing Stover, Kevin Foster and Matt Payne (244 each), Robert Urquhart (242) and Andrew Hoffenberg (238). Next up for the Tigers is a trip to New York this weekend, with games at Fordham (tied with Long Beach State for 10th) Friday night and then at Iona and LIU Saturday. 

Pozaric was a first-team All-American a year ago and the Northeast Water Polo Association Player of the Year each of the last two years. He's a native of Croatia, which is an international water polo powerhouse. 

This past summer at the Paris Olympics, Croatia won silver after losing the final to Serbia 13-11. Water polo has been contested at every Summer Olympics other than the first one in 1896, and the first gold medal belonged to Great Britain in 1900.

TigerBlog didn't realize the sport went back that far. 

Croatia was part of Yugoslavia from 1918-1991. The first time Yugoslavia won an Olympic medal was in 1952 with a silver; in all, the country would win eight Olympic medals, three of which were gold.

On its own Croatia has won one gold and two silvers. Could Pozaric find himself on the Croatian team in Los Angeles in 2028? 

As you probably already know, Princeton had three Olympic gold medalists in Paris. As you hopefully know, TigerBlog has written feature stories about all three of them. 

The first one was about Hannah Scott, who won in quad sculls rowing. You can read that one HERE if you haven't already. 

The second was about Nick Mead, who won in men's pairs rowing. You can read that one HERE if you haven't already.

The third was about Maia Weintraub, who won in the U.S. team foil fencing event. That one was released yesterday, and you can read it HERE.

Weintraub is back at Princeton now, ready to become the fifth Princetonian to compete as a Tiger after winning Olympic gold. The other four are Robert Garrett (who won two track and field golds in 1896), Bill Bradley (basketball gold in 1964), Ashleigh Johnson (water polo gold in 2016) and Sarah Fillier (ice hockey gold in 2022). 

If you want to feel old, TB had to explain to Weintraub who Bill Bradley was. 

TigerBlog had never met any of the three gold medalists before he spoke to them for the stories. He came away thinking he had a pretty good understanding of who they were and what drove them as athletes and people.

In Weintraub's case, she talked about the dichotomy that exists between who she is an athlete and who she is away from fencing. It's hard to get people who don't know much about fencing to really understand just how physically and mentally demanding the sport is and what it takes to be great at it.

If you read the story, you'll see how that side of her had to be developed and coached as much as her skill. 

And then there was the other side of her, the one that doesn't give off the vibe of a world class athlete. That's the side of her that, when asked about her summer, says ...

... well, you'll have to read the story to find out what she says. 

TB guarantees you it's worth it.

Shelley Shots

TigerBlog was on the field hockey bus Sunday morning as the team prepared for its short ride up to Rutgers.

So was Shelley Szwast, a most amiable photographer for Princeton Athletics. You've seen Shelley's pictures many times. If you've ever talked to her, you know what TB is saying about her being amiable. 

Anyway, Shelley was sitting across the aisle from TB. As the players walked on, they all had the same reaction: a huge "Hi Shelley!!!!!!" with all those exclamation points, followed by a nod or a half a wave when they saw TB. 

It's okay. TB wasn't offended — too much.

No, he understood. It's Shelley after all. 

It was a big weekend for Shelley and her photos. First, there was women's rugby Saturday, when the Tigers knocked off Bowdoin 59-0 for its first-ever win in 15s. 

Shelley was there. Of course she was. She's everywhere all the time.

Here's her picture of head coach Josie Ziluca, as she gets drenched by the water postgame:

That's a great shot. That's a shot that will be blown up and hung on more than one wall forever.

Meanwhile, Sunday, the field hockey team defeated Rutgers 3-2, getting two goals less than a minute apart late in the fourth quarter to get the come-from-behind victory. Princeton's three goals were all scored by Grace Schulze.

It had been, as TB noted in his game story, a mere 681 days since Schulze last scored for Princeton. That goal came in the 2022 NCAA tournament first round game against Syracuse.

She ended that season as an All-Ivy League selection, and she was to have been Princeton's leading returning scorer a year ago. All of that vanished relatively quickly.

The 15 or so goals that she would have scored last year never happened, since she was hurt less than a minute into the second game of the year and missed the remainder of the season. If you're wondering how she spent that time (and the impact it had on someone else), then you should click HERE.

Now healthy, and once again a team captain, Schulze broke through in a big way against Rutgers. After not scoring in the first five games of the year, Schulze scored all three in the win against the Scarlet Knights. 

Somewhere in the middle of the game, Shelley came up with this picture, which TB thinks is seriously cool:

You can see the ball clearly. It also makes Schulze look like a giant, rather than the barely five-feet that she actually stands.

Her first came two minutes into the game, off a penalty corner. After waiting 681 days between goals, she then scored two more less than a minute apart in the final five minutes of the game. 

Those two goals including one incredible individual effort on which she dribbled from close to midfield into the circle and then lifted the ball across the goalie and into the top far corner of the cage to tie at 2-2. She then won it on almost an instant replay of the first goal.

Did her teammates approve of her performance? 

Well, they lifted her up, which isn't the toughest chore, given her size. It did make for great jubo, of course:

That's also great stuff from Shelley. 

After the game, on the short ride back to Princeton, Shelley was inundated with compliments from the players about the pictures she had taken. Did any of them even notice that TB had written a game story?  

Kidding. Kidding.

Once again, if you're a Princeton Athletics fan and you don't follow Shelley on social media, you're definitely missing out. Her stuff is great, and she is a fan first and foremost.

You can find her at @split2ndphoto on X and Instagram.

Week 1

The Princeton football record book runs 17 players deep on its list of career receptions.

The 17th player is Blair Morrison, who had 104. This leaves TigerBlog uncertain of how many players had either 100, 101, 102 or 103 — in other words, how many Princeton receivers have had at least 100 career receptions. 

One player who is not on the list is Michael Lerch, who apparently had 99 for his career. Maybe he should get credit for his sack against Penn on the final play of Princeton's 20-14 win over the Quakers at Palmer Stadium en route to the 1992 Ivy title.

TigerBlog was covering that game all those years ago. He remembers seeing Lerch, who was maybe 170 pounds, come in and line up and defensive end and then explode into the backfield to sack the Penn QB. 

Here's what Joel Samuels wrote about in the Daily Princetonian:

On third-and-10 from the Princeton 23-yard line, with just 15 seconds left, Lerch replaced sophomore Scott Matchett at right defensive end and shot into the Quaker backfield like a bolt of lightning to sack quarterback Jim McGeehan and end the game. On the play, Lerch flew past Penn offensive tackle Chris Fragakis so quickly that the 6-5, 250-pound senior was still in his three-point stance by the time Lerch had blindsided McGeehan. 

It wasn't the first time that year Lerch had done something like that. In fact, he had 3.5 sacks in 1992. 

Lerch is one of the absolute best players that TigerBlog has seen in all his time watching Princeton football. Even without reaching 100 career receptions, Lerch still ranks eighth all-time in program history in receiving yards, a testament to his 17.3 yards per catch career average. 

He also had the single most amazing individual performance TB can remember by a Princeton football player. If you are a longtime fan, you already know these numbers by heart, though TB will repeat them anyway: nine catches, 370 yards, four touchdown receptions in a 59-37 shellacking of Brown in 1991. 

Why bring up Lerch today? Well, Lerch wore No. 1 for the Tigers. The current No. 1 for the Tigers is another dynamic receiver who, while not exactly being Michael Lerch, brings the potential for excitement to any moment the ball is coming his way. 

Luke Colella was No. 83 the last three years, but he is now No. 1 for his senior year. At 5-10, 190 pounds, he like Lerch is also not a giant. Against Lehigh on Saturday in the season opener, Colella caught five passes for 86 yards and a touchdown in a 35-20 loss to the Mountain Hawks. 

Should Colella catch exactly five passes in every remaining game then he would join Princeton's 100-reception club, something TB hopes to have researched by then. Colella came into this season with 50 career receptions, 47 of which came a year ago when he earned All-Ivy honors. 

His five catches against Lehigh included a diving stab in the end zone that popped off him before he recorralled it while horizontal and another where he perfectly tiptoed the sideline to set up another Tiger TD. 

Colella's personal highlight reel was impressive enough. The touchdown he set up on that drive was even more spectacular, as a fourth-down pass from Blaine Hippa smacked off intended receiver Tamatoa Falatea and changed direction, where Tyler Picinic caught it just before he came down out of bounds. 

As opening games go, you always hope for a win but what you're really looking for is seeing how the pieces start to fit together, how players gel in new roles and what the areas of improvement are. Princeton certainly got to see all of that Saturday. 

Lehigh is a much-improved team over the last few years. Just as importantly, Lehigh was playing its fourth game of the year. Do you think its the same team it was on opening day, when it lost 42-7 to an Army team also playing its first game? 

Lehigh has won three straight since. Princeton would love to be able to look up in three weeks and be able to say the same thing.

Princeton will have plenty of chances to learn from the game Saturday, which was Hippa's first start and the first game without its graduated leaders on defense, linebackers Ozzie Nicholas and Liam Johnson. 

Next up for Princeton will be the home opener against Howard, who is 2-2 with losses to Rutgers and Hampton sandwiched around wins over Mercyhurst and Morehouse.

It'll also be a somewhat different Princeton team. The Tigers were much improved from the first half to the second half Saturday. They'll be looking to make another jump between Week 1 and Week 2, the jump that almost every team makes. 

It'll be a great Saturday at Powers Field at Princeton Stadium, with kickoff at 3.

The Huddle

What do TigerBlog and Princeton offensive lineman Scott Becker have in common? 

It's not size. Becker is 6-2, 305, which puts him a bit out of TB's weight class. 

It's not age. TB is about three times as old as Becker.

So what is it? How about footwear? Apparently, they both have multiple pairs of Kanes.

How did TB learn this? He listened to a new podcast on goprincetontigers.com called "The Huddle." 

It's being hosted this year by senior linebacker Nicholas Sanker. The first episode was up yesterday, and you can listen to it HERE.

The premise is that Sanker will be interviewing two of his teammates each week, starting this week with two of the 2024 captains, Collin Taylor and Mason Armstead. 

TigerBlog has done a bunch of podcasts, and he understands that they have to be conversational. What he never has been able to do is take you, figuratively, into the huddle.

Sanker, of course, can do that. Figuratively, and literally.

The perspective that a current player has is radically different than someone who is an observer, like TB or a broadcaster. To make it work, though, the player needs to take it seriously and not turn it into a bunch of inside jokes and laughing. 

If Week 1 is any indication, Sanker has already mastered that balance, of being a player and a podcaster. He does a great job of keeping the conversation going and to cover all sorts of topics, from their development as football players to the toughest classes they've taken. There was some joking, and there was some serious. Like TB said, Sanker has already mastered the balance.

It's definitely worth your 33 minutes to listen (you can also hear head coach Bob Surace with play-by-play man Cody Chrusciel on the "First In Football" podcast HERE).

Speaking of Week 1, tomorrow will mark the opening kickoff for the 2024 season for the Tigers, who will kick off at Lehigh at noon. 

It's Week 4 for the Mountain Hawks, who bring a 2-1 record into the game, with an opening loss to Army followed by wins over Wagner and LIU. Princeton won't care who the opponent is; after the long weeks of training camp and then watching everyone else play games, opening day is a welcome moment.

So what is there to expect from the 2024 Tigers? Well, there are lots of knowns and some big unknowns. 

The knowns? Princeton's top four receivers last year combined for 130 catches, 1,650 yards and 12 touchdowns; all four (Luke Colella, AJ Barber, Tamatoa Falatea, Tyler Picinic) return. So does leading rusher John Volker and Dareion Murphy, while the offensive line is also experienced. 

Defensively, you have familiar names up front, as outside linebackers and in the secondary.

The unknowns? That would be quarterback (Blake Stenstrom has graduated) and inside linebacker (likewise with Liam Johnson and Ozzie Nicholas). 

Those are some really big holes at really big spots. 

Want to know more? You can read the same preview stories that TB read, HERE for the offense and HERE for the defense/special teams. And you can thank princetontigersfootball.com write Craig Sachson for that. 

Princeton is one of six Ivy teams who will be playing a Patriot League school this weekend. Princeton leads the all-time series with Lehigh 43-17-2 and has won three straight. 

So, if TB is doing the math correctly, 43+17+2=62, which makes this the 63rd meeting in a series that dates to 1887. 

The other two non-league games this year will be against teams Princeton has never before played. The first will be next Saturday, with the home opener against Howard. The other will be Week 4, at Mercer, which is in Macon, Ga.

Week 3 will see Princeton play at Columbia in its Ivy opener.

For this weekend, it's not about anything other than getting onto the field against an opponent and seeing how the returning pieces and new pieces blend and watch how the 2024 Princeton team begins to build its own identity for the season. 

And then when this game is over? 

You can go back in The Huddle with Nicholas Sanker next week to learn more about it.

Watch This

So TigerBlog has a television that is clearly on its last legs. 

In fact, he turned it on the other day and nothing happened. Nothing at all. 

He figured that the inevitable had happened, and so he went online to get a new one. It even came with free one-day delivery.

And there it was yesterday, delivered right to his front door. He took it out of the box and went to move the old TV out of the way, when he noticed something that may have contributed to the fact that the old one wasn't working: It wasn't plugged in.

Anyway, he now has a TV that is still on its last legs and a brand-new one all ready to take its place. Still, he can't help but think that he didn't exactly cover himself in glory with this process.

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If this video doesn't get you hyped for Princeton Wrestling, well, then you're just not hypable (if that's a word):

Tiger Nation, don’t miss out - season tickets are on sale NOW 🚨

We’re ready to do whatever it takes, and we can’t wait to see you in Jadwin 👊

Visit https://t.co/uwVJsBGIf8 to secure your front-row seat to the action.#GetIn #WhateverItTakes #PrincetonWrestling pic.twitter.com/6Dtxq9Uukd

— Princeton Wrestling (@tigerwrestling) September 17, 2024

TigerBlog has been around Princeton Athletics for a long time. He is pretty sure he hasn't met anyone here who has the energy of Princeton head wrestling coach Joe Dubuque. 

The 2024-25 season begins for the wrestling team Nov. 3 in Jadwin Gym for the Princeton Open. Once again, Dubuque's team will take on all comers, anywhere, anytime. 

For essentially everything you need to know about the coming Princeton Wrestling season, including season ticket information, click HERE.

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This week has been National Equipment Managers Week. If you work in the equipment office, then you know everybody always needs something from you, at all times, and they need it, like, yesterday.

Here's a look at Princeton's group, which is 1) unsung, 2) hard-working, 3) central to the Department of Athletics and 4) worthy of public acknowledgement:

The faces of @PUequipment @T_Bow83 #Brendan #Brian#Nicole @Cliftoncp @EquipGuyD11 #EQWeek2024 #SafetyServiceSwag @PUTIGERS @AEMA_74 @AEMA_District1 #EquipmentFam pic.twitter.com/PsILU5vEKX

— Princeton Equipment (@PUequipment) September 16, 2024

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The first official Ivy League matchup of the 2024-25 academic year takes place tomorrow in Philadelphia, where the field hockey team will take on Penn at 3.

This will be the second time this season that the teams cross paths, since they were both in Louisville two weeks ago for the ACC/Ivy Crossover Challenge. 

Princeton is 2-2 on the young season, with wins over Louisville and Miami (Ohio) and losses to North Carolina and, most recently, Penn State this past Sunday. Penn, who was swept in Kentucky by Louisville and North Carolina and then defeated Temple before losing to St. Joe's, knocked off Princeton 3-2 in two overtimes last year, ending a 17-game losing streak to the Tigers.

Princeton features a dynamic freshman class, with six different newcomers who have played considerable minutes. One of those freshmen, Molly Nye, had a brilliant goal just before halftime, after she took a long pass from Ottilie Sykes, dribbled into the circle, cut back to her left, made one more move and then reversed it into the top corner of the cage.

So this was the first career goal for Molly Nye.

It's definitely worthy of the #NFHCAPlay @NFHCA pic.twitter.com/1iBPgA3tyJ

— Princeton FH (@TigerFH) September 16, 2024

Princeton has started either three or four freshmen in each of the four games to date. There have been at least two freshmen on the field at all times so far. 

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The women's hockey team has added Cierra San Roman to its staff as Director of Video and Analytics. 

When TB saw that, he immediately thought back to the earliest days of women's athletics at Princeton, when positions with titles like that would have seemed ridiculous. Hey, the field hockey and women's lacrosse teams in the 1970s shared jerseys, with a field hockey stick and lacrosse stick crossed on the front. 

San Roman comes to Princeton from a year in the Professional Women's Hockey League, where she worked in a similar role. 

She's a 2021 graduate of Colby College. This is from the goprincetontigers.com story: 

San Roman played for the Colby College Women's Ice Hockey team (2017-21) and was named the Team Rookie of the Year and Team MVP during her collegiate career. As a senior, she was awarded the Colby College Athletics Patty Valavanis Award, given to a female student-athlete who exhibits academic and athletic excellence and personal leadership and sportsmanship.

Speaking of Colby College, congratulations go out to Amanda DeMartino, who is leaving her role as the Director of Athletics at the College of New Jersey to become the new AD at Colby.

The Comeback

TigerBlog said yesterday that he was going to come back to the USA-Germany quarterfinal game at the Women's U20 World Cup in Colombia.

Now, 24 hours after he first saw the result, it's even more ridiculous that the U.S. won that game. 

If you didn't see yet, Germany led 1-0 on a penalty kick in the 61st minute, and things stayed that way until the beginning of what was to be eight minutes of stoppage time. After two minutes, Germany scored again, making it a 2-0 game.

Nobody comes back from two goals down in stoppage time, right? And it's even less likely when seven full minutes of stoppage time have come and gone and it's still 2-0, right? 

Somehow, shockingly, the U.S. scored ... and then scored again, all in 90 seconds. Suddenly, it was a 2-2 game.

The equalizer from Sentnor!! #U20WYNT

🎥 » @TelemundoSports

pic.twitter.com/g0RjyH1Da5

— U.S. Soccer YNT (@USYNT) September 16, 2024

Who looks more shocked here? The German goalkeeper? The U.S. players? Anyone in the stands? 

The teams then played two scoreless 15 minute overtime periods before the Americans won in penalty kicks. Had this happened in the full men's or women's World Cup, or in the Champions League, it would be considered without question the greatest comeback in soccer history.

Hey, TigerBlog thinks it has to be up there with any comeback anyway. Of course, he measures all comebacks by Princeton's rally from 27 down with 15 minutes to play to beat Penn in men's basketball at the Palestra in 1999, but in the soccer game in Colombia, the United States team didn't have 15 minutes to do it. 

In fact, the Americans didn't know how long they had period. Only the ref knew, and the whistle could have been blown at any time. That's why after the first U.S. goal, there was a bit of a scuffle between the American players and the German goalkeeper to get the ball out of the net and back to midfield as quickly as possible.

The goal that got us on the board! #U20WYNT

🎥 » @TelemundoSports

pic.twitter.com/NMIoHbbYil

— U.S. Soccer YNT (@USYNT) September 16, 2024

By the way, this is the 11th U-20 Women's World Cup. Of the first 10, three have been won by the U.S. and three have been won by Germany. 

The only other country to have won more than one is North Korea, who will be the U.S. opponent in tonight's semifinal. The other semifinal matches Japan and the Netherlands, with the winners to meet for the championship Sunday.

Despite the three titles, the United States hasn't reached the final at the event since 2012, when it defeated Germany 1-0 in the final. Since then, there have been four U20 Women's World Cups, and the best the U.S. has done is one fourth place finish. 

Also, interestingly, the U.S. has never hosted the event — and it won't be hosting the next one either, which will be in two years in Poland.

And who is the leading scorer for this U.S. team to date? That would be Princeton's own Pietra Tordin, who has four goals so far in the tournament.

The fact that the U.S. has gotten this far guarantees that the team has two games left, since there is still a consolation game for third place as well. For Tordin, that means she'll have these two games in Colombia and then a one-week break before Princeton's next game.

The Tigers are at Fairfield tonight in the team's final game prior to the Ivy League opener. After tonight, Princeton won't play again for 10 days, with its next game at Ithaca.

Princeton leads the series with Fairfield 5-0, and the Stags have never even scored a goal against the Tigers. Could that change this year? Fairfield is 6-1 on the season, and the team is ranked sixth in Division I in scoring offense, with 3.43 goals per game, including 21 in the last four games. 

Fairfield's lone loss is against No. 24 Texas A&M.

Kickoff tonight for the United States-North Korea game is 5:30 in Cali, Colombia, which is 6:30 Eastern time. That game is on FS2.

The Princeton-Fairfield game starts at 7 Eastern. That game is on ESPN+.

Tiger Pros

TigerBlog will spend a bit more time tomorrow on the Women's U20 World Cup and the ridiculous ending to the United States-Germany quarterfinal Sunday night.

In short, the United States won a game (2-2, 3-1 in penalty kicks) after trailing 2-0 through eight minutes of second half stoppage time. Think about that. Eight minutes into stoppage time, needing two goals — and the U.S. got them. 

Keep in mind, Princeton's Pietra Tordin is on the United States team, which has now advanced to the semifinals. Again, TB will have more on that tomorrow. 

For today, it's a focus on a few of the professional Tigers, beginning in the NFL.

Andrei Iosivas has 20 career NFL receptions, of which six have gone for touchdowns.

Jerry Rice had 1,549 career NFL receptions, of which 197 went for touchdowns.

That's one touchdown for every 3.3 receptions for Iosivas and one touchdown every 7.9 receptions for Rice. Just saying. 

Okay, maybe that's not a fair comparison. Still, Iosivas has definitely shown an affinity for being able to get open in the end zone and make difficult catches there if necessary in the early stages of his Cincinnati Bengals career.

He did both of those Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs, in a game that KC eventually won 26-25 on a last second field goal. Iosivas caught two touchdown passes from Joe Burrow in the game, the first with a great toe drag to stay inbounds and the second when he managed to lose his defender to get wide open.

TOE DRAG SWAG @AndreiIosivas! Bengals lead in KC

📺: #CINvsKC on CBS/Paramount
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/0PTHjFaWue

— NFL (@NFL) September 15, 2024

Iosivas' TD receptions were on catches of three and four yards. It's much harder to do that than to run a deep pattern, by the way. 

Oh, and there are only 11 players in the NFL with two TD receptions this season. Nobody has more than two, so Iosivas is now tied for the league lead. 

Iosivas wasn't the only Princetonian to have a big Sunday in professional sports. Princeton men's lacrosse also had itself a pretty newsworthy weekend.

The National Lacrosse League held its annual draft Sunday night, and Princeton had two recent alums selected. The first was Sam English, who went No. 2 overall, chosen by the Toronto Rock. The other was Marquez White, who went 35th overall to the Buffalo Bandits. Hopefully White, who will be Dr. Marquez White in the near future, can find time to play in the NLL.

Also, Princeton had four representatives on the Utah Archers, who defeated the Maryland Whipsnakes 12-8 Sunday in Philadelphia to win a second-straight Premier Lacrosse League title. This added to the championship total for three of them, while a fourth won for the first time.

TigerBlog will start with Beau Pederson, who won his first PLL title in his rookie season. Pederson had a caused turnover and four groundballs in the final, and he continued to be a freakish physical presence at the shortstick defensive midfielder position. 

There is also the head coach of the Archers, former Princeton head coach Chris Bates. That's two straight PLL titles now for Bates as the team leader. 

Lastly, there are the two veterans, Ryan Ambler and Tom Schreiber. Ambler had an assist in the final, and it came at a huge moment, with less than one second to go in the third quarter and the Archers up by one. His pass to teammate Dyson Williams was ridiculous.

Now, that's beautiful lacrosse. 😍

📺 https://t.co/MG04yHMNMm pic.twitter.com/fgApIry4sJ

— Premier Lacrosse League (@PremierLacrosse) September 15, 2024

Schreiber missed the final with a broken collarbone, but his impact on the league is without peer. Actually, the same is true of Ambler.

Even more than their on-field success (which adds up to two PLL titles for both plus a Major League Lacrosse title for Schreiber), there was what happened Saturday at the PLL awards banquet.

First, Schreiber won the Gait Brothers Midfielder of the Year Award. Is this news? Well, the league has been around for six years, and Schreiber has now won five of them. The other? That was another Princeton alum, Zach Currier.

It was the other award Schreiber won, as well as the award that Ambler won, that really stands out from the weekend. 

Ambler won the Jimmy Regan Teammate Award. Schreiber won the Brendan Looney Leadership Award.

Regan (Duke) and Looney (Navy) were both college lacrosse players. They were also both killed in action (Regan in Iraq, Looney in Afghanistan) before they ever got to see their 30th birthdays. They are true heroes, true larger-than-life figures who represented the very best of what lacrosse has ever produced.

To win awards in their name is quite a special achievement.

To do so speaks volumes about who Ambler and Schreiber are and what they are all about.

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.