The Year In Review

Welcome to the final TigerBlog of 2024. 

TigerBlog's tradition is, ahead of the counting down of the ball in Times Square, to count down the top moments in Princeton Athletics for the previous 12 months. 

It's always been a fun exercise. TB has prefaced each year's list by saying that these would be his opinion and his choosing — and not everyone has always agreed with him. 

Here is what TB has had as his No. 1 story dating back to 2012, the first year of his end-of-year list:

2012 - the NCAA field hockey championship
2013 - the Ivy League football championship
2014 - Julia Ratcliffe's NCAA hammer title
2015 - the women's basketball team goes 31-1
2016 - Ashleigh Johnson wins gold as an undergraduate
2017 - the women's soccer team defeats UNC to reach the NCAA quarterfinals
2018 - the men's hockey team wins the ECAC championship/the football team goes 10-0
2019 - the field hockey team reaches the NCAA final
2020 - the Covid pandemic
2021 - the women's lightweight rowing national championship
2022 - the death of Pete Carril
2023 - the men's basketball team reaches the Sweet 16

So what was the top story for 2024? Well, this year, TB is going to go in a slightly different direction. 

There is no No. 1 story for this year. Well, that's not exactly true. There is, though it's not like the others. 

This year, the No. 1 story is that, as 2025 arrives, there are 19 — nineteen — Princeton teams that have won their most recent conference championship. That number, by the way, does not include the Ivy tournament titles of two other teams (men's lacrosse, men's soccer) who did not in their regular season title.

That is a crazy stat. It's incredible on so many levels. 

Because of all of that success, TigerBlog will not be asking the question of what the top 10 moments were. Instead, he'll ask a different question: Was 2024 the greatest calendar year in Princeton Athletic history? 

You can certainly make a case for it. And this is only considering what was accomplished at Princeton, not on the professional or international levels (such as three Olympic gold medalists).

Which of these individual performances and achievements would you rank as the top of the year?:

* Ellie Mitchell becomes the leading rebounder in school history, men's or women's, smashing the old record that had stood since 1978
* Xaivian Lee had the first recorded triple-double in Princeton men's basketball history
* Lauren Sablone hit a walk-off home run to win the Ivy League softball championship
* Tristan Szapary won the NCAA epee title
* Kaitlyn Chen of the women's basketball team became the first three-time Most Outstanding Player of the Ivy League tournament in any sport
* Roko Pozaric became Princeton's all-time leader in goals scored in men's water polo
* Beth Yeager became the third Ivy League field hockey player ever to be a three-time first-team All-American (the other two were also Princeton players and Yeager could become the first four-time honoree next year)
* Paul Inchauspe knocked off the No. 1 seed in the NCAA men's tennis tournament
* Victoria Liu became the fourth women's golfer to win multiple Ivy League individual titles
* Riccardo Fantinelli became the first Princeton men's golfer in 30 years to be an All-American

As TB said, this is only what happens at Princeton. If it didn't, then there was the Olympic gold medal in fencing won by current junior Maia Weintraub. 

Team success? Which story is the best? 

* the men's squash team rallied from 4-1 down to beat Penn 5-4 for its first Ivy League championship since 2013 — in the final match ever played on the Jadwin courts
* the men's soccer team won the Ivy League tournament by taking down nationally ranked Cornell and Penn
* the women's lightweight rowing team won a fourth-straight IRA national title
* the men's lacrosse team won a second-straight Ivy tournament, defeating Yale and Penn by a combined 32-21
* the women's soccer team won the outright Ivy title and the Ivy tournament title
* the men's track and field team completed an 11th "triple-crown" with Heps titles indoors and outdoors
* the men's and women's cross country teams swept the Heps titles in the fall
* the field hockey team won the Ivy League championship by going 7-0 and then defeated Boston College in the opening round of the NCAA tournament
* the women's open rowing team finished fourth at the NCAA championships after winning another Ivy title
* the men's heavyweights first varsity and second varsity both had undefeated regular seasons for the first time in program history and the first varsity had its first perfect regular season since 2006
* the women's basketball team won another Ivy title and then won a fifth-straight Ivy tournament championship
* the women's swimming and diving team led wire-to-wire to win the Ivy title
* the men's and women's water polo teams both won league championships to reach the NCAA tournament

Again, that's a lot.

What was the best game? Was it ... :

* the men's basketball team's riveting 83-82 win over Rutgers, accomplished with Caden Pierce's game-winning bucket with four seconds to play?
* the field hockey team's 2-1 win over Harvard, when Ella Cashman scored the tying goal in the fourth quarter and the winning goal in OT to essentially give Princeton the Ivy championship?
* the men's soccer team's 3-2 overtime win over Cornell in the Ivy semifinal, after the Tigers had trailed 2-0 early and then rallied to tie it with Nico Nee's goal with seven minutes left and won it on Daniel Ittycheria's OT goal (his second of the night)?
* the softball team's 5-4 win over Cornell to clinch an Ivy championship and the host role in the Ivy tournament (which the Tigers also won), accomplished on Lauren Sablone's three-run walk-off blast?
* the women's water polo team's 10-9 win over Michigan in the CWPA championship game, after the Tigers trailed by three and won it on Ava Houlahan's goal with one minute to play?
* the men's lacrosse team's 18-11 win over Penn in the Ivy League tournament final in a game where the Tigers outscored the Quakers 10-4 after intermission? 

Is TB missing anything? He's sure he is. 

Putting together a top 10 for the year? That would have been impossible. 

Hopefully it is again next year, right? 

In the meantime, have a safe and happy New Year's Eve — and a great 2025.