Four Titles

Well, that was depressing.

No, not all the Ivy League championships Princeton won Saturday. TigerBlog is talking about the fact that it was pretty much dark by 5 yesterday. Why in the world can't there be Daylight Savings Time all year? 

Oh well.

Those Ivy championships? That was not depressing. How could it be when this past Saturday Princeton teams won three Ivy League championships and finished off an outright championship in a fourth.

Before he gets into that, though, he does want to mention that tonight is opening night for Princeton men's and women's basketball. The men are home against Iona, with tip-off in Jadwin Gym at 7. The women open their season at Duquesne at 5, also on ESPN+.

Basketball season already? 

Meanwhile, back at the Ivy championships on Saturday, it was quite a few hours there for the Tigers.

Pretty Nice Little Saturday.

🧡🖤🏆#BackToTheBest pic.twitter.com/I89mEAl0oT

— Princeton Tigers (@PUTIGERS) November 3, 2024

It started at 11 am with a win by the women's cross country team at the Ivy League Heps on the new course at Princeton Meadows. It ended five hours later when the women's soccer team closed out its own outright championship at Columbia. 

In between, the men's cross country also won at Heps and the field hockey team, who had already clinched at least a tie for its Ivy League championship last weekend, finished its regular season at a perfect 7-0 with a 1-0 win over Yale. 

The women's cross country team ended Harvard's streak of four straight championships and in the process won for the first time since 2015. How did the Tigers do it? With four runners in the top 8.

Mena Scatchard, from North Yorkshire, finished second overall and first among the Tigers. North Yorkshire is about three hours north of Shrewsbury, where competitive cross-country running originated in the early 1800s.

Scatchard's time of 20:04.7 was the third-fastest 6K time in women's Heps history. It also left her as the only runner to cross the finish line in a span of 25 seconds, after Columbia's Phoebe Anderson ran the second-fastest Heps time ever (the great Abbey D'Agostino of Dartmouth holds the record).

Anna McNatt was third overall in 20:17.1, followed by teammates Alexis Allen and Meg Madison in seventh and eighth. Princeton's championship was wrapped up when Emma De Jong finished 20th. Princeton had a score of 40; Harvard was in second with 53.

Next up where the men, who finished off their fourth-straight Heps championship with five runners who came in between fifth and 14th: Myles Hogan (fifth), Nicholas Bendtsen (eighth), Connor McCormick (11th), Jackson Shorten (13th) and Harrison Witt (14th). 

Team-wise, that added up to 51 points, 11 better than the Crimson.

The field hockey game started on Bedford Field at the same time as the men's cross country race. Princeton had clinched no worse than a share of the championship a week earlier with a win over Dartmouth, and with that win the Ivy League tournament was headed to Princeton this coming weekend.

At stake Saturday, though, was an outright title for Princeton versus a spot in the Ivy tournament for Yale, who battled all the way before Beth Yeager's penalty stroke goal with 3:14 to go gave the Tigers a 1-0 win.

The rest of the results of the weekend finally sorted out the crowded field, and so here are your field hockey matchups for the tournament: No. 1 Princeton vs. No. 4 Columbia Friday at 11:30, followed by No. 2 Harvard and No. 3 Brown at 2:30. The winners will meet Sunday at noon, with an automatic NCAA bid for the winner.

And that left women's soccer. 

Princeton went to New York City knowing that a win would mean an outright championship, while a tie or Columbia win would mean an outright championship for the Lions. Pietra Tordin's goal off a free kick was all Princeton needed, winning 1-0 and earning the big prizes: Ivy title and Ivy host. 

The women's soccer tournament will also be held this Friday and Sunday, also with the same four teams. The semifinals Friday will have No. 1 Princeton against No. 4 Harvard at 4:30, after the game between No. 2 Columbia and No. 3 Brown. The winners will play at 1 Sunday for the automatic bid. 

Oh, and the men's soccer team? It got two goals from Nico Nee to win at Dartmouth 2-1, forcing its own showdown Saturday at 2 on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium, which would host the Ivy tournament the following weekend with a Princeton win. A tie or a Penn win sends the tournament to Philadelphia.