The Day Of "Excitingment"

Is "excitingment" a word? 

TigerBlog is pretty sure it isn't, though it also didn't come up with the red line underneath to suggest that there was some error there when he accidentally typed it. That can't be right, he thought, and so he deleted it and wrote it again and — voila — the red line underneath magically appeared. 

If ever there is  day each year for "excitingment," it's this day, the first day with an athletic event on the Princeton calendar. The 2025-26 athletic year kicks off at 5 this afternoon on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium with a women's soccer game between the Tigers and Rutgers.

The game today begins a nine-plus month journey that holds with it unpredictable storylines, from teams that will be heavily favored to win championships and play in the postseason to others for whom their preseasons will bring hope for taking the next step.  

There will be honors and awards, injuries and heartbreaks. What new names will pop up to become instant fan favorites? What returnees are ready for a big jump this time around? 

TB has told you this every year, and he'll repeat it now:

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

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

Princeton has 38 varsity teams with approximately 1,000 athletes. Together, they'll compete in approximately 700 events between now and early June, when it all ends with the NCAA track and field outdoor championships. 

What will be the best moment? What will be the top highlight, or the best photo taken?  

There are no answers to any of these questions. You just have to enjoy the ride and see where it takes the Tigers. 

And that ride begins tonight. Like most Princeton sporting events, this one does not require a ticket to ride. 

Rutgers has already played twice this young season and has yet to allow a goal, with a 3-0 win over NJIT and a 2-0 win over Fairfield. The Scarlet Knights have gotten one goal each from five different players so far, and two different goalkeepers have started and played all 90 minutes of their game. 

Their roster also includes 17 players from New Jersey, many from the general Princeton area. There figures to be a good amount of Scarlet in the Roberts Stadium stands. 

As for Princeton, the Tigers are the reigning Ivy League champion and Ivy League tournament champion, as well as the preseason pick to repeat this year. 

TigerBlog saw his colleague Andrew Borders earlier this week. Andrew has been the Office of Athletic Communications contact for women's soccer since 2006 or so, and TB didn't even have to ask him if he happened to be feeling the "excitingment" for the start of the new season. He is. 

This is from his game preview on goprincetontigers.com:

Princeton had seven athletic All-Ivy League honorees last season, but graduation and the pros took five of them. Pietra Tordin, the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year in 2024, opted to forgo her senior year and head to the NWSL's Portland Thorns while fellow first-teamers Lily Bryant, Heather MacNab and Tyler McCamey graduated. From the second team, Ryann Brown and Kate Toomey graduated, leaving Drew Coomans and Zoe Markesini as the Tigers' lone 2024 All-Ivy returners. Despite the losses to graduation and the pros, Princeton still returns nine of the 14 players who scored a goal last season, a group that accounted for 23 of the team's 40 goals, led by Alexandra Barry, Brooke Dawahare and Isabella Garces with four each.

You can read the rest of it HERE.

And you can see it for yourself at 5, at Roberts Stadium or on ESPN+.

Another athletic year has arrived. Is there anything better?  

"When I'm 64"

The Beatles released the song "When I'm 64" on the "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album in 1967. 

The song itself was written more than a decade earlier, when Paul McCartney was 14 and the band had not yet formed. TigerBlog first heard it only a few years after it was released, and he can remember two things: 1) liking it and 2) thinking 64 was really, really old. 

To be 64? It seemed so far in the future as to be unthinkable. 

Why bring this up now? Well, it's because today, BrotherBlog turns 64.  

Happy birthday BB. Have a great one. Oh, and your brother didn't send you a card again, so he'll have to hope you see this. Ah, he'll call, just to be safe. 

BrotherBlog is a law professor at the University of Washington. He'll probably be at Husky Stadium in nine days for the Washington football opener against Colorado State. 

He's also likely to continue his decades-long tradition of pretending to care when his brother talks about Princeton sports. That's always been pretty nice of him to do. 

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TigerBlog read the story about the football team's incoming class, which you can see HERE. That group will join the returnees as the team begins practice Saturday. 

TB learned some interesting things by reading through the bios, including:

• there is a placekicker from Florida named Vaughn Lennon who set his county record in the 400 hurdles

• there is a linebacker from California named John Teti who comes from a family with a serious rowing connection, with a mother who won two Olympic gold medals and a father who won one Olympic broze. There's also a Princeton connection, as his father Mike Teti coached here and his uncle Paul, a three-time Olympian, won a national championship at Princeton in the heavyweight boat in 1998

• there is a defensive lineman named Konstantin Paschos whose hometown is Dusseldorf, Germany

• there is a linebacker named DJ Walker, whose father Darwin won a national championship at Tennessee and then played eight years in the NFL, including on the 2004 Eagles team that won the NFC title

• there is a defensive lineman named Ethan Brown whose cousin Carlos Basham Jr. current plays for the Carolina Panthers and whose other cousin Tarell Basham played for the Colts, Jets, Cowboys and Titans

•  there is an offensive lineman named Jayden Hadzovic who has five sisters, and the first name of all five starts with an "A" — Alyssa, Aliza, Ariya, Arijana and Alana

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Being in your 60s is no longer old, by the way. There are times, though, when the generation gap can become glaringly obvious to TigerBlog, and this week has provided further proof of that. 

TB has been at field hockey practice this week in advance of the coming season, and he learned something extraordinary there. None of the players he spoke to knew who ... get ready ... Barry Manilow was. 

How in the world is that possible? He even sang a few bars of "I Write The Songs," and ... nothing. 

Oh well. Sometimes you do feel old, and not physically. 

After each practice, the team will gather in a circle to stretch. On game days, when they do this, they go around the circle and talk about what their favorite part of the game had been. 

Yesterday, the question was "what is your favorite kind of music." There seems to be a lot of love these days among the current college generation for country, the Zach Bryan kind, with some other interesting answers mixed in, including "Yacht Rock" and "Show Tunes."

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One player who wasn't there at practice yesterday was Talia Schenck, who was flying back from Paraguay, and the Junior Pan Am Games. Schenck's travels took her from Asuncion to Lima (the one in Peru) and then back to Newark. 

That's nearly 14 hours of flying time, if you're keeping score. 

Perhaps she kept her silver medal with her, instead of checking it. Schenck, with her United States U21 teammates, won the first four games of the tournament before falling 3-0 to Argentina in the final. 

Schenck had four goals in Paraguay.  

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Tomorrow is Opening Day for Princeton Athletics for 2024-25, as the women's soccer team hosts Rutgers at 5 on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. Admission is free.

Princeton was picked to finish first in the Ivy League's preseason poll, with nine of the 16 first-place votes. The Tigers won the league championship and then the tournament championship last season.  

 

One Month Out

There is a spot on the road that leads to TigerBlog's house where the speed limit dips from 40 to 25. 

There's also one of those electronic signs that flashes your speed at you. This one also comes with a little message for you.

For instance, if you pass the sign at 25 or lower, the messages says "Thank You!!" If you go past at 26-35, it says "Slow Down." If you go faster than 35, then it says "Too Fast." 

This has all led TigerBlog to wonder if there's another message that would come up if he passed the sign at 46 or higher. He'd try it and see, except for the small matter of the curve in the road that would make it not really worth finding out the answer. 

Anyway, Princeton football ...

TigerBlog saw this post on X yesterday:

“Siri, what’s the scariest thing a Pop Warner football player could imagine in 1991?” pic.twitter.com/Lg8Cm7aITe

— Ross Tucker (@RossTuckerNFL) August 19, 2025 

At that point, Ross Tucker was a Reading boy, a decade away from becoming an All-Ivy League lineman at Princeton and then an NFL offensive lineman for nearly 10 more years. Tucker was on the field blocking for the Dallas Cowboys on the play where Emmitt Smith broke the NFL record for career rushing yards. 

Ross is a big man with a big heart, a big smile and a big personality. If you've been paying attention, you know that he has gone on from his playing days to become one of football's best media figures, for both the NFL and college football. 

And also for his "Tuckspreads" videos, the ones where he showcases for his nearly 300,000 X followers what his press box food options are on his gamedays. 

What letter grade do you think my first Tuckspreads video of the season should get? pic.twitter.com/9EK99ynu5M

— Ross Tucker (@RossTuckerNFL) August 14, 2025

By the way, while Ross was busy making the Heisman pose as a Pop Warner player, TigerBlog was covering Princeton football during his newspaper days. He remembers the 1991 season for the big season that the very underrated quarterback Chad Roghair had, including when he became the second Princeton QB ever to throw a touchdown pass of at least 90 yards. 

Quick trivia break: That list has now grown to four Princeton quarterbacks with a 90-plus yard TD pass. Can you name the other three? TB will give you until the end for that. 

TB's biggest memory of that year, though, was Princeton's 59-37 win at Brown. In that game, Tiger wide receiver Michael Lerch caught nine passes from Roghair for 370 yards and four touchdowns (one was the 90-yarder).  

You can read those numbers again if you like. No other Princeton player has ever come close to matching that number of receiving yards in a game, with Derek Graham's 278 yards against Yale in 1981 in second and then Jesper Horsted's 246 against Harvard in 2017 third.  

Why is today a good day to talk Princeton Football? 

That's because it's Aug. 20, and opening day is Sept. 20, when San Diego will be at Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. Kickoff is at noon.

That's one month away. You can get ticket information HERE.

Bob Surace enters the 2025 season with 81 career wins as Tiger head coach. The record is 89, held by Bill Roper for only the last 95 years. 

Roper coached at Princeton in three different stints, from 1906-08, 1910-11 and then again 1919-30. In all the years since, no other Princeton head coach had reached 80 until Surace. 

The San Diego game will be followed by a short trip to Lafayette and then the Ivy opener against Columbia. By then, the season will be off and running. 

For now, there is exactly one month until it begins. Practice will be starting soon. Summer will be winding down.  

Trivia answer: The first to do so was Doug Butler, whose 95-yard pass to Derek Graham (most of those 95 came after the catch) came against Penn in the classic 28-27 Quaker win in 1983. Since Roghair's toss to Lerch, there has also been another 95-yarder, from John Lovett to Isaiah Barnes in 2016 against Cornell and the one that will never be broken, the 99-yard Matt Verbit-to-Clinton Wu connection in 2003, also against Brown.

Mr. And Mrs. Diaz-Bonilla

So yesterday TigerBlog referred to the "American goal" as the one that the American field hockey team at the Junior Am Games was defending. 

Is that not correct? Should he have said that it was the "Uruguayan goal," the one the Uruguayans were trying desperately to reach for the tying goal that would not come in what ended as a 2-1 USA win in the semifinals. 

He asks this question because he got this email yesterday:

"The team that is attempting to score should have its name attached to that goal. The team that is defending should not."

TB still thinks he's right. He even asked his colleague Andrew Borders, whose opinion he will definitely trust, and he agrees with TB.  

Anyway, the Junior Pan Am final will be held tonight in Asuncion, Paraguay, where the U.S. U21 team will take on its counterpart from Argentina at 6:45 Eastern for the gold medal. The loser is already assured silver. 

Neither team has ever won gold at the Junior Pan Am Games. For that matter, no team ever has, since this is only the second edition of the Junior Pan Am Games and the first that has included field hockey.  

Argentina, by the way, is an international field hockey powerhouse, with gold medals in eight of the 10 Pan Am Games tournaments and three silver and three bronze in the Olympic Games. 

The U.S. U21 women's team includes Princeton's Talia Schenck, who has scored four goals in four games to date in Paraguay, leaving her tied for fourth overall in the tournament. Schenck will fly back home after the final and be back at practice at Bedford Field in advance of the Sept. 5 opener at home against Old Dominion.

Schenck will be a senior at Princeton, which means she was a freshman in 2022. One of her teammates on that team was Sammy Popper, a member of the Class of 2022. 

Popper was two-time first-team All-Ivy League selection at Princeton, as well as the Ivy Rookie of the Year in 2019, when she helped the Tigers to the NCAA finals. 

She then spent a graduate season at Maryland, where she was a second-team All-Big Ten selection. 

If you've been paying attention, you know that TigerBlog has dipped into Instagram for some ideas of what to write about during this summer. He spent some time on the field hockey team Instagram this weekend because of Schenck's play in Paraguay.

Oh, and he'd like to thank Teryn Brill Galloway from USA Field Hockey for all of her help with photos and videos during this tournament and any others where Princeton has had players on the national teams. It's made it much easier to bring content to the Tiger field hockey fan base. 

TB won't be devoting all of today to what he saw on the app this weekend — only to Sammy Popper, who is no longer Sammy Popper. 

This past weekend, Popper became Sammy Diaz-Bonilla, in real life and on her Instagram page. This happened with her marriage to Daniel Diaz-Bonilla. 

If the groom's name is familiar, that's because he was also an All-Ivy League athlete at Princeton, on the men's soccer team. 

Mrs. Diaz-Bonilla outscored Mr. Diaz-Bonilla 29-11 during their Princeton careers, and that doesn't even count the 10 goals she scored at Maryland. It's not exactly like the marriage of Kat Sharkey, another former Princeton field hockey player, to Tom Schreiber, a soon-to-be lacrosse Hall of Famer. 

In that case, the bride outscored the groom 107-106 while Tigers.  

The wedding this past weekend certainly looked like a blast from the dozens and dozens of pictures that came across Princeton field hockey Instagram. There was certainly a large turnout of former teammates of both. Considering they were field hockey teammates, that meant flying in from all corners of the world. And there they were, all together again.

That part is always great to see. It's the next step in the lifelong friendships that are made at Princeton, a joyous, festive step at that.

Good luck and congratulations to the newlyweds. 

TigerBlog wishes them only the best.  

Game Week

Welcome to Game Week No. 1.

In case you haven't been paying attention, the first athletic event of the 2025-26 academic year is Friday at 5, when the women's soccer team hosts Rutgers. The second will be Sunday, when the women are at Loyola.  

In a normal year of athletic scheduling, there will only be two or three more weeks between now and June without a Princeton athletic event. There won't be any between now and December. 

The easiest way to know if you're cut out for working in college athletics is to ask yourself if you are excited at this time of year or dreading it. This will be TigerBlog's 37th season covering Princeton (five at the newspaper and now his 32nd here), and this time of year is still exciting. 

TigerBlog has no idea how it works in other professions. Do the workload and the subject matter change as the seasons change like they do in college athletics? 

TB has always been part of a world where the time of year dictates where he is focused. Even when he was really young, beginning when he six years old, his world was school, school, school and then eight weeks of sleepaway camp. 

While he's on the subject, the camp he attended from when he was six until he was 10 was called Camp Toledo, in High Falls, N.Y. He wrote about Camp Toledo here six years ago, including this sentence: 

"TigerBlog has a lot of fond, idyllic, Wonder Years-type memories of his summer camp days."

That entry drew 20 comments, almost all of which were the same. The poster went to Camp Toledo and talked about being there 50, 60 or 70 years ago. One commenter even said that the songs from Color War are forever stuck in his or her brain, just like they are for TB. 

Did they include their names? Nope. They were all anonymous. If you post about Toledo, leave your name. 

That rant over, this is around the time of the summer when the eight weeks would be ending and it would be time to head home, in advance of another school year. Late August has always been a time for gearing up to start the cycle all over again. 

For a few Princetonians, the late summer (is it late summer?) has meant continuing to compete internationally, even as the first game week has arrived. 

Ben Syer, the head coach of the men's hockey team, served as the associate head coach for the United States U18 team that won the Hlinka Gretzky Cup. Where was the tournament held? That would be Trencin, Slovakia.

The U.S. team went 2-1 in its group, with only a loss to Sweden. The Americans then took down Canada 4-3 in a shootout in the semifinal and then Sweden 5-3 in the gold medal game. 

It was the second win for Team USA in the 34 years of the tournament. The other was in 2003. 

The Junior Pan Am Games field hockey tournaments have reached the medal round in Asuncion, Paraguay, a mere 6,922 miles away from Trencin. The U.S. men's team is coached by Princeton assistant Pat Harris, and his team will play in the bronze medal game today at 4:30 this afternoon against Chile after a tough 1-0 loss to Canada in the semifinals.

Talia Schenck, a rising senior on the Princeton women's team, is part of the USA U21 national team, that one who is also competing in Asuncion. The Americans defeated Uruguay 2-1 last night in Semifinal No. 2, advancing to the championship game against Argentina (tomorrow at 6:45 pm Eastern).

The picture above, by the way, is of Harris and Schenck. With her four goals, Schenck is tied for the fourth leading goal scorer in the tournament. 

That the final matches these two teams is hardly a surprise. Between them, they have won all four of their games and outscored their opponents by a combined 50-2, with the lone goals yesterday, with the U.S. win over Uruguay and when Argentina defeated Chile 4-1 in the other semifinal.  

It wasn't exactly smooth last night for the Americans, who went up 2-0, had a goal early in the fourth disallowed to keep it 2-0 and then had Uruguay quickly counter, turning a 3-0 game into a 2-1 game with 12 minutes left. From there the ball was in the U.S. end pretty much the rest of the time, but Uruguay couldn't tie it — despite outshooting the Americans 11-7. 

The win last night guaranteed Schenck and the Americans no worse than a silver medal. 

When the game ends tomorrow, she'll be flying home to join her Princeton teammates, who are early on in practice ahead of their Sept. 5 opener. 

For this week, it's women's soccer only. It's Game Week, and those are exciting words to type.  

The Dog Days Of Instagram

Say hi to these two. 

TigerBlog saw them on a sidewalk as he was stopped at a red light. A split second before he could snap their picture, the doggo on the right was staring right at him. 

This actually makes a better picture, though. The Dog Days and all, right? 

They were historically the period following the heliacal rising of the star system Sirius (known colloquially as the "Dog Star"), which Hellenistic astrology connected with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs and bad luck. They are now taken to be the hottest, most uncomfortable part of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

At least that's what it says on Wikipedia.

Those two? They hardly look like mad dogs. They look more like delightful dogs. 

Now of course, there is the question of what is cuter, a picture of two dogs who are hanging out in the summer or two little kids whose father is a Princeton broadcaster? Judge for yourself:

Those two belong to Dave Giancola, who asked if he could be part of TigerBlog's second "Things Learned On Instagram" entry. 

Since this is the final Friday of the summer before the opener of the 2025-26 athletic year seven days from now — with the women's soccer game at home against Rutgers at 5 — why not take another look around Princeton Athletics and Instagram? 

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The United States U21 field hockey team plays Guyana today (8:30 am) in its final game in Pool B at the Junior Pan Am Games in Asuncion, Paraguay. Princeton's Talia Schenck has scored twice so far for the Americans, who have beaten Mexico 8-0 and Chile 4-0 so far. 

Next up after the game against Guyana will be Sunday's semifinals, against either Canada, Paraguay or Uruguay. 

Yesterday was an off day for the team, and Talia checked in with the view:

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As hard as it this might be to believe, the women's college soccer season actually began last night. Princeton's first opponent, Rutgers, played at home against NJIT.

That's a real game, one that actually counts. There's another one for Rutgers Sunday, at home against Fairfield.

Princeton is, as you know, a week away from its opener. The Tigers have been practicing in advance, and also doing some team bonding.

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The men's soccer team doesn't have its opener until Sept. 5, which is three weeks out. That game is also at home, also against Rutgers, though with a 7 pm start time. 

Still, there are still some things to be gleaned from the team's Insta account. For instance:

That's former Roper Trophy winner Kevin O'Toole, by the way. The big guy next to him? He never won a Roper Trophy.   

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You already know that Kaitlyn Chen is a great shooter and is probably the best mid-range shooter Princeton has had, male or female, in a long time. If you didn't know she could shoot, here's proof.

Perhaps when Chen's playing career ends, she'd want to join on with the Princeton multimedia team. You can read HERE about the four Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award nominations that have come Princeton's way, with winners to be announced Sept. 20. 

Also, that's first-team All-Ivy selection Ashley Chea with another guy who was first-team All-Ivy and who went on to score nearly 6,000 career points in the NBA.  

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And lastly, there is always Clara Roth, the von Kienbusch-winning field hockey player whose recent move started this whole thing. 

This week? She's hanging out with these guys: 

 

 

More Traveling

How about some more travels for this week, after TigerBlog wrote about field hockey in Paraguay and rowing in Lithuania the other day? 

This time, TB starts with his old friend Bruce Wood, whom you may know as the Big Green Alert Guy. Before he can dive into another season of Dartmouth football, Bruce and his wife are traveling across the country, following the legendary Route 66, a 2,488-mile stretch of highway that long ago was a major pop culture sensation. 

Today, it's not as traveled as the major interstates, which is probably the appeal for Mr. and Mrs. BGA. Here are some highlights from along the way that he has posted:

And yes, children, that's a rotary phone. You can try all day and night to push the buttons, but you'll get nowhere. 

Safe travels, Bruce. 

Meanwhile, back in Paraguay, rising Tiger senior Talia Schenck and the U.S. U21 field hockey team defeated Chile 4-0 in the second game of group play at the Junior Pan Am Games. TigerBlog watched the game on the Pan Am Games stream, which featured a Spanish announcer. Even though TB doesn't speak Spanish, he still enjoyed the commentary. 

The game was actually way closer than a typical 4-0 game. Chile, in fact, had 11 penalty corners but couldn't score. The U.S. jumped out quickly, with two goals in the first five minutes.  

The win essentially wraps up Group B for the Americans, who will  play Friday against Guyana, who is 0-2 with losses to Chile (12-1) and yesterday to Mexico (9-1; the USA beat Mexico 8-0 in its first game, with two goals from Schenck).

Argentina is the big  favorite in Group A, and it's possible that it will be a US-Argentina final come Tuesday, after Sunday's semifinals. 

It's only 1,850 miles from Asuncion, the site of the Junior Pan Am Games, and Salvador, Brazil, where the U20 World Aquatic Championships are being held. You can drive pretty much directly northeast from Asuncion and be there in 41 hours.

Princeton's representative there is Emese Batizi, a rising sophomore who is a member of the Hungarian team. She is no stranger to international competition (and lots of travel), since she has played on the Hungarian U14, U15, U17 and U19 teams prior to this. 

Hungary defeated Australia 17-12 yesterday to advance to a quarterfinal matchup against Spain this afternoon. The win yesterday was the first for the Hungarians, who lost all three group matches, by one-goal each against the U.S. and Italy and then 15-11 loss to Greece. 

It's a 12-hour flight from Asuncion to San Francisco. From Salvador to San Francisco is about a 21-hour trip, since there are no direct flights apparently. 

The next stop on the Princeton summer travel tour is San Francisco, where rising sophomore Reed Gresyerman is competing in the 125th U.S. Amateur golf championship at the Olympic Club. The oldest golfer in the field is 61 years old. The youngest is 15. 

The history of this event is extraordinary, and the list of winners reads like a Who's Who of golfing greats. If you go back 10 years, the winner was Bryson DeChambeau. If you go back 100 years, the winner was Bobby Jones — who won a record five times. 

Tiger Woods has won it three times. Arnold Palmer is on the winner's list. So are Phil Mickelson, Craig Stadler, Jerry Pate, Lanny Wadkins and so many others. 

The 1933 winner was Princeton's own George Dunlap.  

Gresyerman finished tied for fifth in the two-round stroke play, which put him into the round of 64 for match play, which began yesterday. His first match was against German Tim Wiedemeyer, who also plays at Texas Tech. 

Gresyerman ran out to a quick lead before Wiedemeyer rallied to eventually win 2 and 1. TigerBlog got to watch the last four holes on the Golf Channel, and he saw Wiedemeyer hit a nearly perfect shot on 17 to close it out. 

Not all of the summer travels result in wins. They do, though, result in amazing experiences.  

Fly High Big Fella

TigerBlog had to go to a funeral Monday.

When he says "had to," he doesn't mean in the "obligated to" sense. No, in this case he had to, because to not have gone would have been unthinkable given, sadly, whose it was. 

Kevin Kehs was only 67 when he passed away last week. TigerBlog was part of his extended family, which, he supposes, pretty much means anyone he ever came into contact with in his travels. 

Who was Kevin Kehs? He was a heavyweight wrestler at Duke, an ACC runner-up for that matter. He was a family man. A businessman. A coach. 

More than that, he was the life of every party. He loved the beach. He loved to imitate Rodney Dangerfield. He loved to play classic rock music really loudly. 

Put simply, he loved to have fun. He probably never went more than 30 minutes of those 67 years without laughing — and maybe less than that without making fun of someone, or himself, all with his huge smile, an enveloping hug and another laugh that let you know that he was doing this from a place of love. 

Of course, there was the other side of him, the part that showed that his strength of character matched his physical strength. Someone in need? He was there. Sick family member? He was there. Again, it didn't matter how he knew them. Old teammates. Players he coached. He was a rock. 

His favorite day was the Fourth of July. He would have anyone and everyone over to spend time in his pool, eat from his BBQ, play volleyball on his court and basically just be happy to be together. 

Every speaker at his funeral Monday said the same thing about him: He was "larger than life." Oh boy, was that ever true. 

How was TB related to him? It doesn't matter. TigerBlog Jr. and Miss TigerBlog called him "Uncle Kevin," though he was technically their second cousin. 

It really was unimportant how he knew you. Once he did, you couldn't help but love the guy. 

It was at one of those Fourth of July picnics where an uninvited visitor strolled by — a raccoon that appeared to possibly be rabid. While someone called animal control, Kevin gathered the large group of kids who were there, none of whom had yet become teenagers, and attempted to comfort them as the racoon was being euthanized about 100 yards away. 

"It's a raccoon. He's sick. This is the nice thing to do so he doesn't have to suffer anymore. And he doesn't have a soul. He's like your aunt."

All of those kids are now adults, some of them with kids of their own. They were all there at the funeral. Like TB, they had to be there. 

TBJ and MTB drove up from Washington, D.C., for the day. Others flew in from Georgia, Utah, Ohio – wherever they were, they knew they'd be there. 

It wasn't the kind of funeral you normally attend. There was no formal service, just a gathering with his family and friends, with a slideshow of pretty much all of them mixed together. 

And there were speeches. 

His three kids talked about what he meant to them and how much he'll be missed. One of his friends said that he was the kind of guy who would call up and say "what are you doing?" and when you said "nothing," he replied "good, because I'm pulling into your driveway."

What really stood out to TB, though, were the three Duke wrestling teammates who were there. They each spoke, telling stories about how Kevin ripped a UNC football picture off the wall in a Chapel Hill bar, what kind of fraternity brother he'd been, how much they'd relied on his strength through the years. 

At Princeton, the talk is always about the 40-year commitment, which TB has always thought should be called a "lifetime commitment." The friends that are made with Princeton Athletics last forever.

Some of those friendships are being built right now, with fall practices that are beginning and newcomers who are just now starting to get to know each other. They'll do what the Duke wrestlers did, and what so many Princeton athletes have done. 

They'll do what MTB did. She recently spent a beach week with her former women's lacrosse teammates. 

They'll go to each other's weddings. They'll buy each other baby gifts. They'll see each other at their 25th, 40th, 50th reunions, and even beyond. They'll see each other all the way down the different paths that life holds for them. 

And then, sadly, they'll stand up at the funeral for the first one of them who goes. And they'll laugh at the same stories that were told about Kevin – like the one about the time they all went to a concert in Philly and Kevin had to somehow had to wedge himself into the back of a compact car. And they'll try really, really hard to forget, if briefly, that the subject of those stories is no longer going to be there, that the stories they're telling will have no further ones moving forward. 

And then they'll just be left with the memory of who that person was. 

The last time TB saw Kevin Kehs was at a tailgate party in the old Lot 21 outside Princeton Stadium before a football game. If ever anyone was in his element, it was Kevin at a football tailgate. 

The thought of seeing him there in his mind's eye is making TB smile.

The thought that he'll never see him again is not — though, like everyone who knew him, TB was lucky to have spent time in his orbit.  

Traveling

TigerBlog has traveled to 37 states in this country. 

Trust him. He just double checked the list. 

Of those 37 states, he's seen a Princeton team play in 26 of them. That's like, what, a little more half of all the states, right? 

And that doesn't take into account one Canadian province and five other countries that he's traveled to with Princeton teams.  

Of those 26 states, by the way, he's been to 12 of them solely while traveling to see a Princeton team play. 

The opportunity to see so much of this country and a few other parts of the world has been one of the best parts of all his time that he's been here. He's gotten to see some places he otherwise never would have, and those experiences have been amazing. 

TB thought of those trips as some current or about-to-be Princeton athletes have been competing internationally in the days before school starts up again. 

For instance, there is Talia Schenck of the field hockey team, who is currently with the United States U21 team at the Junior Pan Am Games in Asuncion, Paraguay. You think she'll ever forget her time there? 

And is it a destination she might otherwise want to go on vacation? Perhaps, but unlikely. And now she has been able to see a part of the world that she might never have been. 

She certainly made the most of Day 1 yesterday, by the way. The United States team opened the tournament with an 8-0 win over Mexico, and Schenck — a rising senior at Princeton — scored twice. 

27' Schenck's finish on the penalty corner to put USA up 5-0 pic.twitter.com/rdX5v5l1hM

— USA Field Hockey (@USAFieldHockey) August 11, 2025

Next up for the Americans will be Wednesday against Chile, who defeated Guyana 11-0 in its first game yesterday. Those are the four teams in Group B. The Group A teams — Argentina, Canada, Uruguay and Paraguay — have their openers tomorrow. 

The tournament runs through the 19th. 

The U.S. men's national team is also competing at the Junior Pan Am Games, which are in their second edition and first with field hockey included. The American men are being coach by Princeton assistant coach Pat Harris, who recently won silver with the men's full national team at the Pan Am Cup in Uruguay. 

By the way, it's winter in South America. All of the pictures that TB saw from the Pan Am Cup showed winter coats and hats. It appears that winters in Asuncion are much more mild.  

Meanwhile, a mere 7,345 miles away, over in Trakai, Lithuania, the World U19 rowing championships recently concluded with a haul of gold for the Princetonians. 

Lauren DuBois, an incoming freshman, won gold in the women's fours with the United States team, who edged out Great Britain for first after trailing after 1,500 meters. Her soon-to-be classmates Ed Galer (men's fours) and Ivo Monaghan (men's eights) won gold with Great Britain. 

What is there to do in Trakia? It sits 17 miles from the Lithuanian capital city of Vilnuius and is considered a lake resort. It certainly looks beautiful, at least from the pictures that TB could find. 

Hey, for $240 you can have a four-hour hot air balloon ride over the city and its lakes and castles. Interested? Click HERE and read the reviews, including the one from two weeks ago that says "this is the most amazing thing I've ever done."

Asuncion, by the way, is the capital of Paraguay and its largest city, with a population of 460,000. It is known for its Seven Hills and its long history as one of the major points in the evolution of South America. 

TB would probably prefer the hot air balloon ride over the more urban setting, but either way, it's amazing where athletic pursuits can take you. 

Win or lose, it's an experience to cherish for those who have the opportunity. 

 

Um

Remember TigerBlog's quiz from last week? 

Well, there was a mistake in it that loyal reader Stuart Schulman pointed out in an X repost:

“14) Bill Carmody, who went to Union, is the only non-Princeton grad to be the men's basketball team head coach since 1961.”

Um….

— Stuart Schulman (@StuartMSchulman) August 8, 2025

It took TB a few seconds to realize what the "um" was all about. Then it hit him: Um, Pete Carril went to Lafayette, not Princeton.

What's incredible is that only Stuart pointed it out. Not even Gary Walters, who played for Carril at Reading High School and whose connection to Carril was as strong as anyone's, pointed it out. 

It dawned on TigerBlog that the reason that he made the mistake originally was that Carril was so affiliated with Princeton that the idea that he went to a different college faded to the back. That's sort of like TB, by the way, who often forgets he went to a different college as well.

Anyway, thanks to Stuart for the heads up. It's a Top 10 all-time TB mistake, he'd have to say. 

Meanwhile, since TB last spoke to you, all sorts of wild things have happened in the world of sports. There has been, for instance:

* a 70-yard field goal in an NFL preseason game
* the first woman to umpire in the Major Leagues
* a torn Achilles suffered by a Hall of Famer baseball player at an Old-Timers Game
* a broken collarbone suffered by a 19-year old champion NASCAR driver

Oh, and there was also a game between two teams where both won. 

Um, what? 

This past weekend was the final weekend of the Premier Lacrosse League regular season, with three of the six playoff spots still up for grabs. The Philadelphia Waterdogs went into their game against the New York Atlas knowing that they'd clinch a spot in the playoffs with a win or a loss by one or two goals, since goal differential is a tiebreaker. 

As it turned out, the game became the highest scoring in the history of the league, as the Atlas won 20-19. Both teams were happy and playoff bound (the Atlas had already clinched the top seed in the East).

In fact, the Atlas had the ball with the shot clock off and a one-goal lead. In any other game, the defense would have pressed out, left the goal open and done everything it could to cause a turnover. This time, the Waterdogs sat back and let time run out. 

A similar situation would be a basketball team that is down by one while the other team had possession with the shot clock off and simply allowed the team that was ahead to dribble out the clock. 

The Waterdogs, by the way, are coached by Princeton Hall of Fame head coach Bill Tierney and feature Tiger alums Zach Currier and Michael Sowers. Currier once again led all non-face-off shortsticks in groundballs in the league, while Sowers tied for the league lead in assists with 23 and became the eight player in PLL history to reach at least 40 points in a season (he had 18 goals for 41 points).

The conference semifinals will be held on the 23rd in Minneapolis, with the Waterdogs against the Whipsnakes in the East and the Chaos and Redwoods in the West. Denver has the Western by into the conference finals the following weekend in Philadelphia and then the final Sept. 14 at the Red Bull Arena in Harrison.

The PLL continues to play a rotating schedule, with one site each weekend that hosts four games. Each of the eight league teams gets one "home" weekend, which isn't exactly a huge advantage in that during that weekend it has to play twice, on consecutive days. 

Each team also gets a weekend off. 

How do the home teams do? In the 16 games they played, they went 5-11 overall. No team swept its two games. Three teams went 0-2, including the Cannons this weekend, who needed one win to get into the Eastern playoffs (and got a four-goal effort from Princeton's Coulter Mackesy in a one-goal loss Friday night; Mackesy finished his rookie season with 15 goals and five assists for 20 points). 

The home teams went 2-6 on Day 2, by the way. Isn't playing at home supposed to be an advantage? 

Um, isn't that right?  

Nice Car

Say hello to the new Nissan 370Z belonging to loyal TigerBlog reader and friend Duncan Yin, Class of 1982. 

Pretty nice, right? It also ties directly into a special bonus trivia question after yesterday's quiz. 

Duncan bought his car in the hometown of Princeton legend Dick Kazmaier. In what town did Duncan buy his car? 

You can think about that for a few paragraphs. In the meantime ...

*

The Premier Lacrosse League has reached the final weekend of its regular season. There will be Princeton alums in the playoffs, which will start in two weeks, though which ones remains to be seen. 

This weekend's stop is in Boston, where the host Cannons will play tonight at 6:30 against California and then tomorrow at 7 against Maryland. The other two games this weekend have Carolina and Utah at 9 tonight and then New York and Philadelphia tomorrow at 1. 

New York, with Tiger grad Jake Stevens, is already in the postseason, as are Denver and Carolina. It's likely that Boston (with Coulter Mackesy and Alexander Vardaro) and Philadelphia (with Michael Sowers and Zach Currier) will also be in, and it'll be tough for Utah (with Ryan Ambler, Beau Pederson and the injured Tom Schreiber) to gain a spot. 

Utah, of course, has won the last two PLL titles. 

Meanwhile, there are some individual subplots that will be sorted out this weekend as well. 

Sowers, for instance, currently leads the league in assists (22) and is second in points (38), one behind Connor Shellenberger of the Atlas. Sowers leads Shellenberger, Jeff Teat (also of the Atlas) and Asher Nolting by two assists each. 

Currier enters the weekend as one of two players in the league with at least 10 points and 33 groundballs. The other is longstick midfielder Jake Piseno of the Outlaws.

Currier is tied for 10th in the league in groundballs. The other 10 players with whom he is either tied or behind are all either face-off specialists (seven of those) or longstick midfielders (three of those).

In other words, Currier continues to do what he does better than anyone.  

* 

Duncan bought his car in Maumee, Ohio, which was Kazmaier's hometown. As you know, Kazmaier won the 1952 Heisman Trophy after coming to Princeton from Maumee High School. 

TigerBlog, by the way, has never been a huge car guy. He is on his second straight Honda CR-V, the first of which he bought in 2008. In 17 years, that's two cars, with a combined 420,000 miles on them. They do lack in the frills department, but that's okay.  

*

Talia Schenck of the field hockey team will make her United States U21 debut Monday in Game 1 of the Junior Pan Am Games, which will be held in Asunción, Paraguay, running through Aug. 23.

This is the second edition of the Junior Pan Am Games but the first time field hockey is being included. 

The U.S. is in Pool B for the tournament, along with Guyana, Mexico and Chile. The Americans play Mexico in Game 1 Monday at 6:30 Eastern time.

Pool A has Argentina, Canada, Paraguay and Uruguay. 

You can watch all tournament games HERE.

*

There is already one team back on campus, with more to follow in the coming days. The women's soccer team has started practicing in advance of its season opener, which is — GULP — two weeks from today. 

Princeton will host Rutgers on Aug. 22 (that really is 14 days away?) at 5 pm on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium. In all, the Tigers will play four games in the month of August, three of which will be at home. 

Game 2 will be Sunday the 24th at Loyola, with home games the following Friday and Sunday against Ohio State and Syracuse. Ohio State reached the Sweet 16 a year ago at the NCAA tournament, while Rutgers fell in the first round. 

Princeton was 14-5 a year ago, winning the Ivy championship and Ivy tournament championship and then falling to UVa in the NCAA opening round. 

Admission to all regular season soccer games is free.  

*

Enjoy your summer weekend. 

Are there really people who like winter better than summer?  

Trivia Thursday

Who's ready for Trivia Thursday? 

They'll all be multiple choice questions, and the answers will be at the end. You'll have to keep your own score, which you can email to TigerBlog at jprice@princeton.edu if you like. 

The Princeton University Honor Code applies here, by the way. 

And with that ... 

1. Which former Princeton quarterback holds the Ivy League record for passing yards in a season with 3,474? 
A) Doug Butler
B) Jason Garrett
C) Chad Kanoff
D) John Lovett

2. The Princeton women's lacrosse record for career goals has been broken three times in the last eight years, by Olivia Hompe and Kyla Sears and then last year by McKenzie Blake. Prior to that, the record had stood since before the Year 2000. Who held it? 
A) Crista Samaras
B) Lisa Rebane
C) Natalie Bocock
D) Emily Goodfellow 

3. Princeton has won a total of 36 Olympic gold medals. Which sport has accounted for the most? 
A) Rowing
B) Swimming
C) Track and Field
D) Fencing

4. Who is the only head coach to be the Ivy League Rookie of the Year, Player of the Year and Coach of the Year, all at Princeton? 
A) Sabrina King
B) Mitch Henderson
C) Jim Barlow
D) Maureen Davies

5) Which of the following players did not score an overtime goal in an NCAA men's lacrosse championship game?
A) Andy Moe
B) Kevin Lowe
C) Jesse Hubbard
D) Ryan Boyle

6) Which current Princeton athlete is NOT the child of a former Ivy League athlete? 
A) Beth Yeager
B) Peter Buonanno
C) Jake Koonin
D) Maia Weintraub

7) Princeton has had five players win Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year in basketball. Of these five, who had the most career points scored?
A) Ellie Mitchell
B) Myles Stephens
C) Lauren Polansky
D) Kareem Maddox
C) Amir Bell

8) When Pat Glory won the 2013 NCAA wrestling championship at 125 pounds, from which Big Ten school was his opponent in the final? 
A) Ohio State
B) Iowa
C) Penn State
D) Purdue 

9) Kenneth Fairman was the first official Director of Athletics at Princeton (and later mayor of Princeton). What did Fairman do during World War II?
A) Tank Commander
B) War Correspondent 
C) Tail Gunner 
D) Infantry

10) Which of the following athletes did NOT win the Roper Trophy as the top senior male athlete? 
A) Bill Bradley
B) Dick Kazmaier
C) Cosmo Iacavazzi
D) Craig Masback

11) While Princeton Stadium was under construction in 1997, Princeton played eight road games and two neutral site games. Which two of these facilities hosted a 1997 Princeton football game?
A) Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.
B) Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia
C) Lions Stadium at the College of New Jersey 
D) Yankee Stadium
E) Kean Alumni Stadium at Kean University

12) Which of the following movies/shows does NOT feature a main character who is referred to as a Princeton athlete? 
A) Meet Me In St. Louis
B) This Side Of Paradise
C) South Pacific
D) The Caine Mutiny

13) Which of the following women was NOT a three-sport letterwinner at Princeton? 
A) Amanda Pfeiffer
B) Amie Knox
C) Karen Konigsberg
D) Demer Holleran

14) Bill Carmody, who went to Union, is the only non-Princeton grad to be the men's basketball team head coach since 1961. Which Princeton alum coached Carmody at Union? 
A) Butch van Breda Kolff
B) Jake McCandless
C) Gary Walters
D) Eddie Donovan

15) Princeton played in the first college football game, against Rutgers in 1869. Football, though, was actually the second varsity sport at Princeton. Which was first? 
A) Rowing
B) Track and Field
C) Tennis
D) Baseball 

And the answers ... 

1. Chad Kanoff (he's also Princeton's career leader and fifth in Ivy history with 7,514)
2. Crista Samaras (who graduated in 1999 with 189 goals)
3. Rowing (6)
4. Jim Barlow (Sabrina was Player of the Year and Coach of the Year)
5. Ryan Boyle (though he did assist on one)
6. Maia Weintraub
7. Myles Stephens (1,346)
8. Purdue (Matt Ramos)
9. Tank Commander (impressive)
10. Dick Kazmaier (though he did win the Heisman Trophy)
11. Giants Stadium and Lions Stadium (Yale at Giants Stadium, Fordham at Lions Stadium)
12. This Side of Paradise (which was never made into a movie)
13. Amanda Pfeiffer (though she was great at two of them — softball and hockey)
14. Gary Walters (who also hired Carmody 20 years later to replace Pete Carril)
15. Baseball (dating to Nov. 22, 1864, when Princeton defeated Williams 27-16)

Peripheral Vision

So this is the "Doonesbury" cartoon that TigerBlog stumbled on in the same issue of the Daily Princetonian in which current Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wrote a story about the 1978 Princeton-Penn football game. 

It's hardly the funniest entry in the history of the strip. It was the words "peripheral vision" that, well, caught TB's eye (that's not bad, actually).  

If you're a Princeton basketball fan and John McPhee fan, then the term "peripheral vision" conjures up one specific person. 

In fact, in his 1965 classic "A Sense Of Where You Are," McPhee wrote this about Bradley's eyesight:

With both eyes open and looking straight ahead, Bradley sees a hundred and ninety-five degrees on the horizontal and about seventy degrees straight down, or about fifteen and five degrees more, respectively, than what is officially considered perfection. Most surprising, however, is what he can see above him. Focussed horizontally, the typical perfect eye, according to the chart, can see about forty-seven degrees upward. Bradley can see seventy degrees upward.  

Earlier in the story, when he first brought up the subject of peripheral vision, McPhee also wrote this:

People used to say that Bob Cousy, the immortal back-court man of the Boston Celtics, could look due east and enjoy a sunset.  

The original article appeared on Jan. 23, 1965, in the New Yorker and was McPhee's big break with magazine. It was always McPhee's dream to write for the magazine, but his submissions had been rejected consistently in the years since he'd graduated from Princeton (in 1953), a time during which he wrote for, well, Time (the "caught TB's eye" thing was better). 

Back in December of 1964, Princeton and Michigan played each other in the first game of the ECAC Holiday Festival in Madison Square Garden. Michigan was the No. 1-ranked team in the country at the time, and the teams would meet again a few months later in the NCAA Final Four. 

In that game, held in Portland, Ore., Bradley would score 29 points in a loss but come back to score 58 against Wichita State in the third-place game for a Final Four record that stands to this day. The first game, the one in the Garden, saw Bradley score 41 but foul out with four minutes to go as Michigan rallied from 12 down to win 80-78.

That Michigan team was led by Cazzie Russell, with whom Bradley would win the first of his two NBA championships (in 1969-70) with the New York Knicks. The first meeting was well-hyped to say the least, as McPhee wrote about in his article: 

For a couple of days before the game, the sports pages of the New York newspapers were crammed with headlines, articles, and even cartoons comparing Bradley and Russell, asking which was the better player, and looking toward what one paper called the most momentous individual confrontation in ten years of basketball. One additional factor—something that meant relatively little to Bradley—was that the game was to be played in Madison Square Garden. Bradley had never played in the Garden, but, because he mistrusts metropolitan standards, he refused to concede that the mere location of the coming test meant anything at all. When a reporter asked him how he felt about appearing there, he replied, “It’s just like any other place. The baskets are ten feet high.” 

Hey, is there a chance that the writers of the movie "Hoosiers" came up with their iconic scene about how the height of the basket at the state finals was the same as the height of the basket back at Hickory High School? 

The original version of "A Sense Of Where You Are" was a magazine article, as TB said. The extended version became the first of McPhee's more than 30 books. The project was the professional turning point of is career, one that went on to include a Pulitzer Prize and a reputation as one of the greatest American writers ever. 

Now in his 90s, McPhee is still writing. 

As for Bradley, he turned 82 a week ago. The two have stayed very close in the decades since McPhee first wrote about Bradley (TB's classmate). 

You can read the entire original article HERE. 

 

The Football Poll

PRINCETON FOOTBALL 2025 TICKETS 

TigerBlog has a quiz for you today. 

First, though, this weekend marks the first full weekend of the NFL preseason. There are three games Thursday, one of which is Cincinnati at Philadelphia. 

As far as preseason games go, that's not a bad one. Philadelphia is the defending Super Bowl champion, while Cincinnati has a reasonable chance to make that claim a year from now. If nothing else, Cincinnati features former Princeton wide receiver Andrei Iosivas, who enters Year 3 in the NFL with 51 career receptions with 10 career touchdown catches. 

Also speaking of the NFL, Princeton will have a big connection to one of the CBS broadcast teams, as Tom McCarthy and Ross Tucker will be together again on TV. TigerBlog is pretty sure he doesn't have to remind you of their Princeton roots. 

Tracy Wolfson and Amanda Balionis will be CBS sideline reporters (Wolfson is part of the No. 1 team), and both of them got their start covering Princeton games. 

Okay, ready for your quiz? 

TigerBlog will give you a year and a number and you have to tell him what those numbers represent. Here you go:

2006 - six
2013 - five
2016 - five
2018 - two
2021 - one

And the answer is? 

Well, in the last 20 years, Princeton has won five Ivy League football championships. Those years are the ones listed. 

The numbers next to them? That's where Princeton was picked to finish in the league's preseason media poll. 

The league championships Princeton won before that came before the league had official preseason predictions. 

This year's poll was released yesterday, and Princeton was chosen to finish fifth. As you can tell, in three of the last five years that Princeton has won the football title, it was chosen to finish fifth or lower. 

In other words? The poll is fun, and it's always good to be picked high — but it doesn't really matter in the end. 

There was a tie way back when that one of the best days of each year was Ivy League football media day. Each of the eight coaches and the media would gather in Connecticut, either at Lyman Orchards Golf Club or at Yale's golf club. 

Ah, the pressure that came along with that media day. There was no choice but to get the football media guide in time, and oh did you not want to be the only league school that failed in that mission. 

Fortunately, TigerBlog never did, though he cut it close pretty much every year. He'd usually have to detour to the printer to pick up the first few cartons of books.

Once in Connecticut, there were usually Ivy League athletic communications meetings the day before and then the media day. After that was the highlight: a round of golf. 

Or most of a round anyway. The last time TB played at one of the media days, he had his 8-iron slip out of his hands on a follow through off the tee of an elevated par 3 and then watched as it majestically helicoptered into the water trap. That was his club, not the ball, which landed on the green. 

TB just picked it up and never putted. He next played golf 20 or so years later.  

These days, the in-person media day and the media guide are relics, memories of an obsolete time. They might be memories, but they are great memories.  

Media day was also a sure sign that football season might not be right around the corner but that it was certainly on the horizon. In its place now comes the release of the poll, which conjures up some of those same feelings of the coming fall. 

Opening Day for Princeton Football 2025 is Sept. 20, when San Diego comes to Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. The Tigers are at Lafayette the next Saturday, Sept. 27, and then home the following Friday for the Ivy opener against Columbia. 

From there, the sprint through the season will be well underway.  

"Stomp On Heads"

TigerBlog went to the movies yesterday and had a first-time experience.

He now, apparently, qualifies as a senior citizen. How did that happen? 

By the way, the movie he saw was "Bad Shabbos," which was silly but not too silly, though it came really close to being too silly. Had it crossed over the "too silly" line, then it wouldn't have been funny.

How's that for a movie review?

Elsewhere, the news broke last night that Loni Anderson had passed away. 

TigerBlog isn't sure what the cutoff point is age-wise for people to be aware of just how big a star Loni Anderson was at one point. He'd guess it's those who were born at a time that doesn't yet make them eligible for the senior citizen ticket at the movie theater but has them coming close to that day. 

To the rest of you, there was a time when Anderson was as much of a star as anyone. She was married to Burt Reynolds, who was an even bigger star, and they were as big as Hollywood glamour couple as there was. 

Anderson's biggest role was on the woefully underrated TV sitcom "WKRP In Cincinnati," which ran from 1978-82 and was simply hilarious. TigerBlog once wrote this about it:

If you've never seen the show itself, it's hysterical, with a hint of touching on some pretty big issues every now and then, much more so than would have been expected from what sort of billed itself as a campy sitcom. It had great characters - Les Nessman, Johnny Fever, Mr. Carlson, Venus Flytrap, Herb - and it took the whole "Ginger/Mary Ann" concept to another level with Jennifer and Bailey.

Back on Oct. 30, 1978, the show had an episode in which the station manager (Mr. Carlson) plans an elaborate promotion for Thanksgiving, which turns out to be a drop of live turkeys from a helicopter, not realizing that turkeys aren't quite like other birds.

TV Guide ranked the episodes as the 40th funniest episode in history. To show you what a great show "WKRP" was, TB doesn't even have that one in the top five in the show's history, though it is considered an all-time TV classic. 

The Thanksgiving episode of "WKRP" ran during fall break at Princeton in 1978. The Daily Princetonian didn't publish that week, but the next episode ran two separate stories on the football games that Princeton had played in between issues. 

The first was a 24-24 tie against Harvard in which the Crimson had the ball on the Tiger 5 with 30 seconds to go before fumbling and having Princeton's Steve Hart recover it. Ties, by the way, were something that football teams in college could have until 1996. 

If you recall the end of the 1995 season, Princeton won an outright Ivy League title with a 10-10 tie at Dartmouth.  That was the last game played before the introduction of overtime, and Princeton's first game the next season, at Cornell, went to overtime in Ithaca (Cornell won 33-27). 

The second game over break in 1978 was a 21-0 win over Penn. Here is how the Prince story on that game started: 

Last week, newspaper clippings appeared on the Princeton football team's bulletin board which quoted Penn coach Harry Gamble as saying that the Tigers were "pussycats" and star fullback Denis Grosvenor as saying that he looked forward to Saturday's game since he liked to "stomp on heads." Stung by those comments, the Tigers destroyed a flat Quaker squad, 21-0.

Gamble, by the way, was running the wishbone offense at Penn in those years, without a great deal of success. 

The story ended this way:

Middle guard Pete Funke summed up both the defensive and offensive efforts by using Grosvenor's own words. "We stomped on heads," he said. 

Ah, but the writer decided not to pursue a career in sportswriting. Instead, she went in a totally different direction. 

Her name? Elena Kagan.  

"Haaland Has A Cow-Heart Guy"

Welcome to August. 

You know what that means, right? It means that Princeton Athletics begins its 2025-26 later this month. 

To be exact, that would be three weeks from today, when the women's soccer team hosts Rutgers at 5. 

The rest of the fall teams will also be back on campus to begin practices this month. Yes, it's still summer, and yes, the Princeton campus is still very quiet — but that will all be changing very soon. 

And for Friday, Aug. 1? TigerBlog stays with soccer for today. And some more great writing from longtime friend Sean Gregory. 

You want to read a great paragraph? 

How's this: 

For Ake and others, Haaland’s oddball biohacking habits serve as fodder. He cherishes ice baths. He wears glasses that filter out blue light, which can disrupt sleep, before bed. He sometimes eats cow heart. “For me, to eat as natural and as clean as possible is an important thing,” Haaland says. He gets it from a farm near his home in England. Haaland has a cow-heart guy. 

TigerBlog has read that three times and laughed at the last sentence there. It's probably because when he got to "He sometimes eats cow heart," TB's first thought was "where in the world does he get those?" 

And then there it was: "Haaland has a cow-heart guy." 

If you don't know who Haaland is, he would be Erling Haarland, one of the best soccer players in the world and the subject of a current cover story in Time Magazine, written by Sean Gregory. 

 Known as "Bones" during his Princeton playing days, Gregory was part of the great Class of 1998, which won Ivy League titles its last three years and was part of some of the watershed moments in program history. That five-member class included Gregory, along with Steve Goodrich (who played in the NBA), Mitch Henderson (perhaps his name is familiar still), Darren Hite and the late (and very much missed) James Mastaglio. 

That class played a huge role (along with players like Chris Doyal, Sydney Johnson, Brian Earl and Gabe Lewullis) in winning NCAA games against UCLA and UNLV, moving into the national Top 25 multiple times, beating Penn in the epic Ivy League playoff game and bridging the end of the Pete Carril era and the start of the Bill Carmody era. 

Gregory has gone on to a long career at Time, telling stories about some of the biggest names in sports. His pieces are long and involved, diving deeply into the subject and going way beyond "he scores a lot of goals," as Haaland does. 

Maybe that's why TB likes them so much? They're the kinds of stories he does at Princeton.

Meanwhile, TigerBlog was in an airport in Europe a few years ago and saw a giant poster of Haarland in an apparel store. The poster was probably three times bigger than the one of Julia Roberts at the makeup place next door. 

When he saw the picture, his first thought was "hey, that guy looks like someone else."

Here is Sean's post on X about the story: 

Two of the most valuable feet on the planet are burning. 🔥 Latest @TIME cover is @ErlingHaaland In-depth profile here .. https://t.co/dyEnHOyxT2 pic.twitter.com/WdAMgvD3FJ

— Sean Gregory (@seanmgregory) July 31, 2025

And here is the person TB thinks Haaland resembles:

He does, right? That's former Princeton men's lacrosse All-American defenseman Colin Mulshine, by the way. He's missing the bun, of course. 

TigerBlog ran this comparison by Gregory, and he agreed that there is a resemblance. 

As for the rest of the story, it talks about Haaland's intro to the sport in Norway, his hopes of leading his country to its first World Cup appearance this century, his impact on the fans worldwide and so much more. 

It also mentions how he played Jesse Marsch, a Princeton soccer alum who has coached all over the world, including with Haaland at Red Bull Salzburg. Marsch, by the way, is the head coach of Team Canada now. 

As with every other story Gregory writes, you will come away with a very clear picture of the subject. And you'll be entertained. 

In the meantime, enjoy your summer weekend. 

They are starting to dwindle for this go-round.  

Managing Just Fine

Judging by the responses TigerBlog has received the last two days, he can conclude the following: 

* people who watch WNBA games are also bothered by the number and length of replay reviews and
* the Instagram idea was a good one
* TigerBlog should post more pictures of dogs, cats and Wyatt Madalon

TB will take all that under advisement. 

For today, he asks you this question: Who is the only Princeton athlete ever to reach double figures in career home runs, bat at least .333 for a career and score more than 1,000 career points? 

Clearly, the answer is Will Venable. 

He is not the only player in double figures in home runs for his Princeton career who was a first-team All-Ivy League selection in another sport though. Can you think of another Tiger who did so? 

TB will give you a few paragraphs on that one. 

In the meantime, Venable was a great two-sport star at Princeton before graduating in 2005. He and Chris Young both went from playing basketball and baseball at Princeton to long careers in the Major Leagues, though they just missed out on being teammates at Princeton in either sport, as Young lost his remaining eligibility when he signed a pro baseball contract after his sophomore year of 1999-2000.

As has been the case with Young, TB has always wondered what kind of NBA player Venable would have made. He was a great defender who had decent size for a guard, and he could handle the ball and create his own shot. 

He was also at his best against the best teams, in the toughest spots, most notably at Duke or in the NCAA tournament against Texas. Could he have made it in the NBA? TB isn't sure, but he also knows that it's hard to fault Venable or Young for their decisions to focus on pro baseball. 

Venable hit 81 career home runs, drove in 307 runs and stole 135 bases as a player for the Padres, Rangers and Dodgers. Once he retired, he went into coaching, and he teamed with Young, the Texas general manager, to win the 2023 World Series. 

The other "double figure home runs, first-team All-Ivy selection in another sport" whom TB mentioned? That's Matt Evans, who was a three-time first-team All-Ivy League punter. 

As for Venable, he is now in his first season as the  manager of the Chicago White Sox. It's not an easy spot for your first Major League head man position. 

A year ago, the White Sox went 41-121, which was the fifth worst record in Major League Baseball since 1901. That's a long time ago. 

The 2024 White Sox reached the end of July with 27 wins against 84 losses. Now that it's the end of July a year later, Venable's team has 40 wins against 69 losses. In other words, with no game today, Venable has led the Sox to within one win of last year's total by the end of July. 

Is 40-69 a great record? No, but it's a definite improvement. It's certainly a sign of a young manager who is making an impact.  

The White Sox justed finished hosting the Phillies, which means that it's been manager Venable against play-by-play man Tom McCarthy. This is not their first meeting, since McCarthy was the Princeton men's basketball radio play-by-play man when Venable played. 

TB reached out to McCarthy yesterday to ask him if he'd had a chance to catch up with Venable, and he said yes, he had, and that it had been great to catch up. 

Meanwhile, Venable's task is challenging. TB hopes that the White Sox have patience with him, and he has to imagine they will, especially with the way the team is getting better. 

Step 1 is to show improvement, and that's certainly the case. TB would assume the goal is to avoid 100 losses, which would be an incredible improvement from a year ago. 

To do so, Chicago would need to go 23-30 the rest of the way (if TB's math is correct). That's doable, especially since the White Sox are 7-4 since the All-Star break. And yes, the team did trade away some of its assets to get back prospects, but hey, it's certainly worth keeping an eye on. 

Like so many other former Tigers, Venable is another one who is definitely worth rooting for, as are, now, the White Sox — especially now that the Phillies have left town. 

Things Learned From Instagram

TigerBlog offered a picture of a dog in the driver's seat last week. 

This week, he gives equal time to a cat.  Ah, the things you see on Instagram.

In the case of the cat, that's the feed of Clara Roth from this past weekend, when she apparently moved from Chicago to New Jersey. It's a long drive, so it's not surprising that Roth would want to sit in the passenger seat for part of the ride. 

Roth, if you don't know, was the 2020 winner of the von Kienbusch Award as Princeton's top senior female athlete. She finished her career with 101 points, tied for 10th all-time in program history, despite the fact that she was only able to play as a freshman, sophomore and junior due to the pandemic. 

She led the field hockey team to the 2019 NCAA final while being named a first-team All-American and a Honda Award finalist. She then spent a graduate season at Northwestern, where she won the NCAA title in 2021.

This does beg the question of how many college athletes have ever reached the NCAA championship game with two different schools? TB can think of a few, and he's guessing there will be more and more with all the player movement in college sports going forward. 

And now, TB leaves the rest of your Wednesday to some other things he learned recently simply on Instagram. 

Getting back to Roth and her trip over the weekend, she offered these two:

Okay, if that had been TigerBlog, the entire tray of brownies would have been gone by, oh, 10:30. He would have tried his best, but he would have had no chance of not eating them all. 

As for Ohio, TB has driven across that start several times and Roth's post literally made him laugh out loud. Truer words have never been written, or at least posted on Instagram.

Next up there is former men's lacrosse player Austin deButts, someone TB hasn't spoken to in a few years. Ah, but he feels like knows a bit more about what's going on with Austin these days: 

Apparently congratulations are in order. 

Now over to the football team and to senior defensive back Solomon Williams, who has played in every game the last two years. Williams is doing work on his senior thesis in the Dominican Republic this summer.

And the subject? 

Hmmm. Do individual birds cooperate and respond to other birds with whom they are closely associated? 

TB guesses he'll have to wait until Williams' thesis is done. Or at least until football practice starts, when he can ask him. 

Speaking of summer research and academic work, the next stop on this Instagram tour is Ecuador, where rising junior men's lacrosse player Colin Vickrey is working for a hospital. Vickrey is, not surprisingly,  a pre-med student. 

Earlier this summer Colin posted a picture with a random dog behind him. This past weekend he posted another one, this time facing out at the mountains while he holds a lacrosse stick. 

And the dog is a different one.  

TB texted Colin to find out what he was doing there and who the dogs were. This was his response: 

Yes I am in Ecuador right now working for a hospital. It’s one of the IIP’s that Princeton has to offer. It’s been an unreal experience. The dog I posted a couple weeks ago was a stray but the recent one was a dog that stays at the conservatory refuge that I stayed at over the weekend.  I’m doing a couple things. Firstly is that I’ve gone to 12 remote community’s to provide healthcare. These communities have been anywhere from deep in the Amazon to indigenous communities 13,000 feet up. Another thing is my project which has been about two things, the caravanas and the hospital. I’ve spent a lot of time in the hospital shadowing doctors and surgeons and now will be presenting ways to improve/increase efficiency in the hospital and caravanas. Currently sitting in on an eye surgery as we speak. The dog’s name is Suca, she is a beautiful dog.

That's a summer well spent. 

TB could keep going all day with this. There's certainly no shortage of Instagram feeds to choose from, right? 

He'll close with this gem of Whitney and Wyatt Madalon, the two youngest of men's head lacrosse coach Matt Madalon (along with older daughter Waverly). If you ever need to be cheered up, check out the videos that Madalon's wife Ashley posts. 

To The Video Review

How long did the last 2.3 seconds of the first half of Sunday's WNBA game between Golden State and Connecticut take? 

Hint - it was longer than 2.3 seconds. 

If you said five minutes, you'd be wrong. If you said seven minutes, eight minutes, even nine minutes, you'd be wrong. No, the correct answer is 10 minutes. 

And that's just ridiculous. 

Why? Because the officials were reviewing whether or not there had been a foul on a three-point attempt by Golden State's Kate Martin. It was a judgement call by the refs, like a million others through the decades in which the sport of basketball has been played. 

In the new world of video review, in the name of "getting it right," this led to a huge delay as the officials poured over the replay to determine if there had been a foul. Keep in mind that the Sun were up by 16 at the time. 

TigerBlog has watched a great deal of the WNBA this summer. He enjoys the games more than he does the NBA games, which have become mostly three-point contests. He especially like the more, if you'll forgive him for using this term, "Princetonian" aspects of the women's game, with its emphasis on moving without the ball and finding the open person. 

He was one of the many who started to watch the league last year, when Caitlin Clark arrived. Now he has continued to watch, even with Clark hurt — partly because of Kaitlyn Chen and partly because of the games themselves. 

Chen is a Princeton alum who is the only three-time Ivy tournament Most Outstanding Player in any sport who went on to win an NCAA title last year with UConn as a grad student. She's now in the WNBA on the Valkyries, and you can see through the TV just how much joy she has to be around the game still. It's the same joy she brought every night as a Tiger. 

Because he's watched so many WNBA games, TB can tell you that the use of replay in the WNBA has gone way off the rails. Earlier in the game — or it might have been the Indiana-Chicago game that followed; there have been so many TB has lost track — there was a long review to see if the shot clock had expired before a foul was committed. 

It's a tough situation, with the idea of, yes, getting calls correct versus the way these replays completely destroy the rhythm of the game. There are too many of them and they take too long. 

And, perhaps worst of all, these long delays often happen on the kinds of plays that have little to no impact on the outcome of the game. The game has endured just fine with a missed call here and there. All games have.  

TigerBlog sees this through the eyes of a fan and through his role on the NCAA men's lacrosse rules committee. He was part of the committee when it first brought review to men's lacrosse, and he can say that there has been as much discussion about video review the last three years than any other subject (other than the face-off).

TB's approach during his time on the committee has always been to consider what rule you'd want in place in overtime of the NCAA championship game and work from there. So yes, you want to be able to use video to make sure that there is no asterisk next to the winner. 

The trickle down, though, is always inevitable. It goes from that — wanting to avoid any illegitimacy to your national champ — to looking for tiny microscopic evidence of something in the middle of the second quarter of a WNBA regular season game. 

Different sports have different challenges, of course. In sports where scoring is at a premium, such as hockey, soccer, and field hockey, calls at any time can be game-changing. 

That's why it doesn't bother TB as much to see delays in those sports, because of how big the impact of adding or deleting one scoring chance can be. In a perfect world, these reviews would be pretty quick, even though that's not usually the case. 

The other issue is judgement calls, like the foul at the end of the first half Sunday. It was a judgement call by the refs. Should that be reviewable? 

That opens a huge can of worms. You don't want to expand the number of replays there are, since they do shut down the game.

On the other hand, what are you supposed to tell the officials? You can see if the ball went out off of Team A but not call the foul that Team B obviously committed in the process? 

TB is sure he'll be having further conversations this coming year as replay in men's college lacrosse continues to evolve. 

As for the WNBA? 

More Kaitlyn Chen. Fewer replays.