"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.  

Kerry Grundlingh, 2004-25

TigerBlog woke up yesterday to gray skies — only he didn't realize how gray they actually were. 

That didn't come into focus until the text message from his colleague Chas Dorman. A member of the women's open rowing team had been killed in a cycling accident, with more information to follow.

What? How? And more importantly, why? 

As he thinks about it, the answers to the first two don't really matter, as he thinks about it. The third one? There is no answer, not one that would make any sense anyway.  

Kerry Grundlingh was killed in an accident near her hometown of Johannesburg, South Africa. The rising Princeton junior was just short of two weeks past her 21st birthday. 

Grundlingh was a member of the first varsity 8 that won the Ivy League championship this past spring. She also represented South Africa on its national age-group teams several times. 

"The world has lost an amazing young woman with the passing of Kerry Grundlingh," said head coach Lori Dauphiny. "She was an exceptional rower and student-athlete, and that is just the beginning of who Kerry was as a person. She leaves a legacy of her life lived as a tremendous daughter, sister, friend and teammate who constantly gave the best of herself for the betterment of others in each and every daily interaction. All of us in the Princeton Rowing community send our deepest and heartfelt sympathies to Kerry's parents, Debbie and Francois, as well as her brother, James, and all of her family and friends around the globe." 

There will be a memorial for her on campus this coming fall. 

"This is a shocking tragedy for the Grundlingh family, our Princeton Rowing community and all at Princeton University," said Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack '00. "Kerry embraced everything that being a Princeton student-athlete entails as she competed on the water and thrived in the classroom. Most importantly, Kerry developed impactful relationships with friends and teammates across campus and around the world. The hearts of everyone associated with Princeton Athletics are with Kerry's family and friends, her teammates and coaches, and everyone who had the honor of knowing Kerry as we all grieve together." 

TigerBlog wrote only last week, with the hiring of Matt Smith as the head men's lightweight coach, about the togetherness and closeness of the rowing programs at the boathouse. That culture has sustained Princeton Rowing for decades, through wins and championships and medals on the intercollegiate and international levels. 

Now it will have to sustain those who knew Kerry, who competed with her, who loved her. It won't be easy, but at least they will have each other. 

TigerBlog never had a chance to meet Kerry. He's read quite a bit about her since he got the news, and he's looked at the photos of her that were posted with the story on goprincetontigers.com (which you can read HERE).

What do they show? 

There are only two kinds of faces that she makes. One is the intensity of competition. The other is smiling. 

This isn't the first time that Princeton has lost a current athlete. Mercifully, the number is quite low. 

Of course, whenever it happens, it's a gut punch. Or whatever is beyond a gut punch. 

TB remembers being called into then Director of Athletics Gary Walters' office in 2004 when Walters told him about the death of swimmer Alan Ebersole. As Gary said the words, TB was struck in a state of disbelief and horror, with a great emptiness that was punctured only by the idea that no, this couldn't be true, not with a young athlete and student in the prime of life. 

It's the same feeling that TB had yesterday when he saw the news about Kerry. 

And that's nothing compared to what her parents and brother and teammates must be going through right now. It's unimaginable. 

What? How? It doesn't matter. 

Why? 

There is no way to even begin to understand. 

Rest in peace Kerry. 

A Summer Friday, With A New Head Coach

Today's "Friday in the summer" entry begins with some reckless driving. 

C'mon pup. Two paws on the wheel. 

She might not be a great driver, though she does crush it when it comes to parallel barking. 

And with that ... 

*

Congratulations go out to Matt Smith, who has been named the new head lightweight men's rowing coach at Princeton. 

Want to be impressed? Read this excerpt from the story about his hiring (you can read all of it HERE):

Following his graduation from Wisconsin in 2000, Smith was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army where he continued his elite rowing career in the Army’s World Class Athlete Program.

During his time in the military, Smith was promoted twice, eventually earning the rank of Captain, and was awarded the Bronze Star and Meritorious Service Medals for exceptional duty in combat and peacetime operations. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Ranger School and Airborne School.

A seven-time member of the U.S national rowing team, Smith has won medals at the Pan-American Games, World Championships, and National Championships, while also representing the U.S. in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

That checks off a lot of boxes, doesn't it? 

Smith replaces Marty Crotty, a legendary figure in Princeton rowing history as an athlete and coach. Smith, though, is no stranger to the Shea Rowing Center, of course.

Over his 11 seasons coaching heavyweight boats at Princeton, Smith has helped guide the Tigers to 27 medals at Sprints and 13 medals at the IRA national championship regatta. Since 2021, 24 of Smith’s rowers have gone on to earn All-America honors.  

The rowing program at Princeton is unlike any of the others. Between the four varsity teams there are more than 200 athletes, a history of intercollegiate and international success and a close-knit culture that feeds all of the success. 

Smith is already an established part of that success. Whenever you're around him, you can't help but be impressed with his passion for the Tiger rowing program and its athletes. He's a perfect fit for his new position, something that Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack mentioned in the story. 

*

Speaking of Princeton rowing and international success, it's been a great start to the World U23 championships in Poznan, Poland. 

There are no fewer than 10 Princeton men's heavyweight rowers who have advanced to the semifinals after Day 1. Those 10 rowers represent five different countries: the USA, Great Britain, Canada, France and Australia. 

You can read more about them HERE. 

There are also three Princeton women who are rowing there who have advanced to the grand finals. HERE is their update. 

*

The Pan American Cup field hockey tournament is currently underway in Uruguay and runs through August 3. 

Princeton is represented by three athletes — two Americans and one Canadian. 

Team Canada began the competition yesterday with a 7-0 win over Paraguay. The Canadian captain is Elise Wong, Princeton Class of 2019 and a key member of the 2018 NCAA runner-up. 

As for the Americans, Beth Yeager is now a veteran of the national team, including starting every game in the Olympics a year ago. Team USA opens tonight at 5:30 Eastern against Mexico. 

The other American is Tiger assistant coach Pat Harris, who has been a member of the men's national two for two decades. While men's field hockey is much bigger in Europe and the Far East than it is in America, the team is still looking to make its name on the international stage. 

Game 1 for Harris and the United States is at 7:30 tonight against the host Uruguayans. 

For more information on the tournament, click HERE.  

*

Updates from the last two Fridays: the shoe is gone, but the road is still open.  

Opening day for 2025-26? It's four weeks from today, with the women's soccer team home against Rutgers at 5. 

Four weeks? That's only 28 days. Yikes. Where does the summer go? 

In the meantime, have a great weekend. Get outside. Go to the beach. Jump in a pool. Go for a long walk. 

It'll soon be too cold for all of those.  

 

Good Luck, But Not Too Much Good Luck

TigerBlog was walking inside a deli yesterday to get a sandwich for lunch when he noticed a very, very familiar t-shirt out front. 

It was being worn by a young woman who was at a table that faced the front door, which means TB saw it right away. Which t-shirt? It was the Ivy League's "8 Against Hate" t-shirt. 

Of course TB explained that he worked at Princeton and then asked her which Ivy school she attended and what sport she played. It turned out that she and her friend opposite are current Yale women's lacrosse players. 

At that point, TB congratulated them on having a great season and, when they said they were rising juniors, he said "good luck next year — but not too much good luck, especially against Princeton."

They laughed and thanked him for his good wishes.  

Then he went inside and ordered a Thanksgiving sandwich, with turkey and stuffing. It also would have had cranberry sauce, only TB doesn't like cranberry sauce, so he asked for it without. 

The owner of the deli then informed him that their cranberry sauce was homemade, which was nice to know. It doesn't mean TB would like it any more, though, so he stuck with his original order. 

He's glad he did. It was a great sandwich. The cranberry sauce would have ruined it.  

Meanwhile, back at the Yale women's lacrosse players, they could have been any other Ivy League athletes. They could have been Dartmouth tennis players or Brown baseball players or Penn soccer players or anything else, male or female.

The Ivy League office makes a considerable effort to talk about the commonalities of the league and its athletes. Yes, there is great competition within the league, but it has also always stood for more than just wins and losses. 

To state the obvious, it's always been a league that's stressed the value of athletics as an extension of the academic experience. That remains unchanged, even as Ivy teams have so successfully competed on a national level (especially Princeton, of course).  

Take the Yale women's lacrosse players. Princeton defeated Yale in the regular season and won the Ivy championship. Yale defeated Princeton in the Ivy tournament final. Both teams made it to the NCAA quarterfinals. 

That's an intensely competitive rivalry, played out over the course of one season.  

And yet, on a sunny July afternoon outside of a deli, they didn't seem like rivals. They seemed like athletes who were part of the same eight-member club as those who compete for Princeton and the other league schools. 

It made TB wonder if this same feeling exists among other leagues. Maybe it does. Who knows? 

When it comes time to play Yale in any sport this coming athletic year, make no mistake. Both sides will be all in on winning.

But is there a camaraderie among Ivy athletes that is different than other leagues? Maybe TB has just spent so many years in the Ivy League that it's all he really knows. 

Maybe there is something to the fact that as the world of intercollegiate athletics has seen massive conference realignment in recent years, resulting in four superconferences with no regard for traditional rivalries or, for that matter, geography. And then there is everyone else — hoping to find the right seat when the music stops. 

The Ivy League stands as the lone exception. From its inception in the mid-1950s, there have been eight teams, the same eight teams. Nobody has left. Nobody has come in. 

Maybe that explains why there is so much pride in being an "Ivy League" athlete. TigerBlog at least would like to think that's the case. 

Could it be that in a different league, one the Power Four perhaps, the two women's lacrosse players would have simply sneered at TB? 

Right now there are hundreds, thousands actually, of Ivy League athletes who are preparing for whatever the 2025-26 academic year brings. TigerBlog would say the same thing to all of them, from all eight schools. 

It's the same thing he said to the two women yesterday.

Good luck, but not too much good luck — especially when you play Princeton.  

Small World

This is a story about three seemingly unrelated people — with the emphasis on the "seemingly."

At least to TigerBlog, they had absolutely no connection at all, until he recently learned differently. He's since told this story to maybe five people, and they've all had the exact same reaction: "Wow. Crazy."

Okay, back to the three main characters.

The one that you probably already know is named Spencer Weisz. Yes, that Spencer Weisz, the former Princeton basketball player. 

He's actually more than just a former Princeton basketball player. He is, in fact, one of only eight players in Ivy men's basketball history to win the league Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year awards. 

Weisz ranks second all-time at Princeton with 383 career assists and 14th all-time at Princeton with 1,241 career points. He's one of seven Princeton players who have made at least 200 career three-pointers and is the only Princeton player ever with at least 1,000 points, 500 rebounds, 300 assists and 200 threes. You can take away the 200 three pointers from the criteria and only Kit Mueller would then join him with the other three.

As a senior, Weisz was part of the great Princeton team that went 14-0 in the league and then won the first Ivy tournament, going a perfect 16-0 against league opponents. The Tigers then lost 60-58 to Notre Dame in the opening round of the NCAA tournament in a game in which Weisz went all 40 minutes and had 15 points, five rebounds, four assists, two blocked shots, one steal — and zero turnovers. 

He was awarded the 2017 Roper Trophy as the top senior male athlete in his class. That year's banquet also featured a video in which Weisz competed against other Princeton athletes in their sports, with a final product that showcased him as a tremendous all-around athlete and also as having a great personality and sense of humor.  

TigerBlog worked on that video with Weisz. He'd written extensively about him by the time he graduated, and he's followed Weisz during his professional career in Israel. TB got to spend some time with Weisz when he was in Israel in late May for a wedding and was reminded of what a great young man Weisz is — friendly, outgoing, funny, warm, welcoming. You can't say enough good things about him. 

Here is what TB wrote about Weisz after the banquet in 2017: 

He talked about coming to Princeton with doubts. He talked about the honor of wearing "Princeton" across his chest. He talked about how his coach, Mitch Henderson, pushed him to get the very best of him. He talked about his teammates and the other coaches and how much they meant to him. He talked about his parents and all of their support, saying he could literally count on one hand the number of games of his that they'd missed. 

Okay, so Weisz is one of the three people in this story. 

The second person in the story is named Charlie. He was TigerBlog's roommate his senior year at Penn, and the two have stayed great friends for all of the years since. 

TigerBlog doubts that Charlie has ever stepped foot in Jadwin Gym. For that matter, he probably didn't spend too much time in the Palestra either when he was a Penn student. There's no chance he's ever heard of Spencer Weisz. 

Charlie has always been very into Facebook. Last week Charlie decided to start a group of Penn alums and he wanted TB to join, knowing full well that TB didn't have and has never had a Facebook account. Charlie, being the persuasive person he is, managed to convince TB to create one, and so TB did, leaving him 1) in Charlie's new group and 2) with a Facebook page for the first time in his life. 

And what do you do with your new Facebook page? Right, you look up all the people you knew in high school and college. It entertained TB for most of an afternoon, as he checked on friends he hadn't seen (or even thought of) in decades. Then he decided that was enough and deactivated his page. 

This brings the story to its third character, a woman named Genie Prell. Like TB and Charlie, Genie is also a Penn alum. She and TB were friends in college, though TB can't remember exactly where he met her. A class maybe? 

Genie also lived in the same town as TB's aunt and uncle, and he does remember giving her a ride home one holiday. And, she gave him some boxes that he used to store a bunch of books in his aunt and uncle's basement. Years later, when he finally retrieved the books, they were in a box that had "GENIE PRELL" written across the top in black marker. 

TB hadn't seen or thought of Genie in a very, very long time. And then, while he was wasting his time on Facebook, he decided that she would be one of the old friends he'd look up. 

And that's when he found out the truly shocking part of the story:

Genie Prell is now Genie Weisz and ... GENIE PRELL WEISZ IS SPENCER WEISZ' MOTHER.

What? That's crazy, right? 

Yes, it is. TB was certainly stunned. 

TB reached out to Genie on Facebook and sent her a picture of him and Spencer from Israel. She got back to him quickly and was just as stunned. 

TB did ask Genie — whose husband Andy is a Montclair State grad — if she had any trouble rooting against Penn, something TB of course long ago learned how to do. Her response was:

"Once Spencer chose to go to Princeton over UPenn, I only rooted for him and the Tigers! For me it was my kids first! We bleed Blue and Maize [Spencer's older sister Becca went to Michigan] and Orange and Black in our family."

Genie mentioned that she'd read everything TB wrote about her son and never realized it was being written by a friend of hers from her son's biggest rival, someone she herself had been friends with all those years ago. 

Remember what Weisz said at the banquet his senior year? He said he could count on one hand how many games his parents had missed in his years as a Tiger.

How many times did TB walk past his old college friend in Jadwin and not realize who she was? How did he not make that connection? 

What a small world. It was nice to catch up with her. She has certainly raised a great son.

Hey, TB told you it was a great story.  

More Than Half

TigerBlog was walking on the towpath the other day when he heard a familiar sound coming up behind him. 

It was a man on a bicycle. TB could sort of hear the sound of the wheels on the gravel, though it's not always clear at first if it's a bike on the path or a car on the road.

This time, he heard "on your left," which is the heads up call to move to the right. When TB heard it, he turned around, at which point the cyclist again yelled "on your left," to which TB pointed out that, as they were now facing each other, he was technically on his right. 

The man on the bike either didn't hear TB or didn't think it was funny. Either way, he just pedaled by. He could have at least chuckled. 

TB has no reason to share that story with you other than it's just a random Tuesday in late July. What else can he talk about? 

Oh wait. It's not a random Tuesday. It's a significant Tuesday. 

Want to hear something crazy? The first Princeton athletic event of the 2025-26 academic year is one month from today. 

How about that? 

It'll be a women's soccer game, Rutgers at Princeton, at 5. That'll be August 22. It'll be the start of somewhere around 700 events that will last all the way into June of 2026. 

For TigerBlog, this will be the start of his 37th year around Princeton Athletics and 32nd as an official Princeton employee. His first five years covering the Tigers were while he was at the Trenton Times, and that's when he first began to build relationships with the people in the Department of Athletics.

It dawned on him last week that he has now actually spent more than half of his life as a Princeton employee, and that's without counting the time at the newspaper. More than half his life. 

He's had 11 different titles in that time, starting with "Manager of Sports Media Relations" and working his way to "Senior Writer/Historian." When he officially interviewed at Princeton, one of the questions was "where do you see yourself in five years or 10 years?"

TB remembers how he answered: "Here." Yes, it's a standard question on interviews, but TB meant it. 

You know how many other places TB has interviewed since then? Zero, as you might have guessed.  

He was pretty sure that he'd found the right home for him even back then. Nothing that's happened since has changed his mind. 

Do most people spend more than half their life at the same company? It's an interesting question. 

TB knows a handful of people who have but way more who haven't. Moving around often equals moving up. For TB, he couldn't imagine having done anything else than writing about Princeton and its athletes and coaches. 

There are those whom he wrote about when they were at Princeton who have had kids who followed in their footsteps. TB always said that when that happened he'd actually start to feel old, but that really hasn't been the case. 

In fact, being on a college campus all these years has kept him young. He has no doubt about that. 

In some ways, he was very lucky to get the job in the first place. He had no experience in working for a school, only for a newspaper. He didn't know how to use a computer at all. 

He'll always be grateful to American Athletic Conference assistant commissioner Chuck Sullivan, then a Princeton intern, for teaching TB the basics of using a Mac. Included in the tutorial was the lesson of "Command-Z," which erases the most recent entry. 

These days, you can use "Command-Z" multiple times. Back then, on those tiny Macs, it only worked if you went to erase what you had just done, and Chuck said that it "like an appeal play in baseball. It has to be done before anything else."

Then there was the whole no-AD at the time piece. Bob Myslik had left Princeton. Gary Walters had been hired as his replacement but hadn't started yet. As such, there was no AD to sign off on TB's hire, which was made by then Director of Athletic Communications Kurt Kehl. 

It took a few years before Gary came around. At first, he was adamant that he'd never hire a "Penn guy" to work at Princeton.  

And now, as Princeton is one month away from the start of another athletic year, TB is still excited for what is to come. He has Sept. 5 circled as his own opening day, when the field hockey season begins. 

That excitement has never gone away. That's how he's known he's been in the right place. 

You don't spend more than half your life doing something otherwise. 

Silver Times Two

It'll be just past noon today Eastern time when the 56th anniversary of the moment that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin returned to the Command Module Columbia after becoming the first two people to walk on the moon. 

And who was waiting for them there? That would be Michael Collins, the third member of the crew who never considered himself the third member, even if the other two were the ones who actually stepped out onto the lunar surface. 

While they did that, Collins spent a little more than 24 hours all by himself in the Command Module, orbiting the moon 30 times in the process. TigerBlog has read quite a bit about Collins (who passed away four years ago at the age of 90), including the fact that during his time alone in space he had to prepare for the contingency that Armstrong and Aldrin might not have made it off the moon alive and that he'd have to return home by himself. 

Can you imagine what that experience was like? Collins was alone in the space capsule and even more alone every time he passed to the far side of the moon, where he was completely out of radio contact. 

TB can't help but wonder what the two returnees said to Collins after they were reunited. You should have been there? Anything new? We brought you a present?

What did Collins say to them? Can you guys drive this thing while I go take a few steps down there as well?  

For everything that's ever happened in the history of everything, it's hard to imagine that anything has ever surpassed the idea that flight originated in 1903 with the Wright Brothers and then a mere 66 years later ended up on the moon. Each year on the anniversary, TB once again marvels at what all of those people accomplished. 

And that's today's edition of "This Day In History." 

As for current events, Princeton earned its first two medals — both silver — of the current World University Games this past weekend. 

The first came in men's 3x3 basketball, where rising junior Jackson Hicke and his all-Ivy League team of four players reached the final by defeating Chile, Italy, Poland in the quarterfinals and then Czechia in the semifinals. 

The championship game featured the Ivy Leaguers against Lithuania, where the Americans fell 21-16. Still, silver at the World University Games, along with the experience that has come with it, is an amazing accomplishment.

Why has Princeton men's basketball had so much success in 3x3? Kareem Maddox played on the U.S. team a year ago in the Olympic Games. There has been an army of former Tigers who excelled in the game long before it was in the Olympics. 

The answer is that the 3x3 game requires players who can dribble, pass, shoot, play defense and move without the ball. Those are the cornerstones of what Princeton has always espoused.  

The other players on the U.S. team were, by the way, Avery Brown (Columbia), Chandler Piggé (Harvard) and Nick Townsend (Yale). 

The other silver medal came in the pool, where Mitchell Schott came in second in the men's 200 individual medley. Schott won his heat and then his semifinal before finishing a second behind Japan's Takumi Mori, whose 1:57.24 was a meet record. 

TigerBlog went to the stats from the most recent NCAA championships to see how those times compared, only to learn that the American collegiate races are in yards and the World University Games are in meters. As such, TB will say that he's simply impressed with Schott's finish. 

Princeton's Patrick Dinu will swim today in the final of the men's 100 freestyle after also having the fastest times in his heat and semifinal as well. 

Dakota Tucker will swim in the women's 200 IM heats today, while Casey Helm will compete in the men's discus today as well. 

For the complete schedule and results of Princeton's athletes at the event in Germany, click HERE. 

When Is Next Week?

It's a Friday in July. 

Where does the blog content come from on such a day? Well, sometimes you just have to look at the side of the road. 

Last week, it was the shoe at the end of the road, which, by the way, is still there, though the heavy rains of the week actually washed it from one side to the other. This week? It's a street sign about which you could write a philosophy thesis. 

Here is the sign that TigerBlog drives past on a regular basis:

What does this mean? First of all, TB has been driving on this road for more than a week and nothing has changed. It's still open. 

The philosophy part asks the question of whether or not the street will ever be closed. Will it ever be next week? Is it next week now? It can't be. The road is still open. 

And with that:

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Jackson Hicke's start at the World University Games 3x3 event yesterday went perfectly fine, with the emphasis on the "perfectly."

Hicke, playing on the all-Ivy League USA entry, went 2-0 yesterday in Group A, defeating Chile 21-9 and Italy 19-12. As a result, the U.S. team earned a bye into tomorrow's quarterfinal round, bypassing the play-in round. 

A rising junior on the Princeton men's basketball team, Hicke had six points and eight rebounds between the two games.  

Princeton will have three swimmers in the pool today, with Mitchell Schott in the 200 free, Patrick Dinu in the 200 IM and Dakota Tucker in the 400 IM (an event in which she earned second-team All-American honors at the NCAA championships last winter). 

Schott was named the High Point Swimmer of the Meet after winning the 200 IM, 200 butterfly and 200 freestyle and being on the winning 800 freestyle relay to lead Princeton to the Ivy League title this past season. Dinu was also on that winning relay while also taking the 100 freestyle. 

Tucker was the 200 breaststroke champ as the women also won the 2025 Ivy title. 

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The 2025-26 men's hockey schedule was released earlier this week (much more tangible than the hypothetical "next week"), and opening day for the Tigers will be Halloween. 

If you want to come dressed as the mascot of the opponent for that night (and the next night), you'll have to come as a Nanook. In Intuit mythology, a "nanook" is considered "the master of bears." 

These Nanooks will come all the way from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks to Baker Rink. It'll be the first time the Nanooks play in Princeton and the first time the teams play since 1985, when they met in Alaska. 

Of course, there is a connection between Alaska-Fairbanks and Princeton men's hockey: Guy Gadowsky coached the Nanooks from 1999-2004 before he took over the Tigers.

By the way, it is 4,246 miles from the campus of Alaska-Fairbanks to the campus of Princeton and, according to google maps, a 68-hour drive. Be forewarned though: the directions say the route does have tolls. 

For the full Princeton schedule, click HERE. Season tickets go on sale Monday. 

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Much, much closer to this area is Fairfield, Conn., which is the host this weekend for the Premier Lacrosse League. 

There are four games this weekend, and all four have Princeton alums. Here's your schedule:

* tonight at 6:30 — New York Atlas (Jake Stevens) vs. California Redwoods (Sam English)
* tonight at 9 — Utah Archers (Ryan Ambler, Beau Pederson, Tom Schreiber) vs. Carolina Chaos
* tomorrow at 3 — Boston Cannons (Coulter Mackesy, Alexander Vardaro) vs. Denver Outlaws
* tomorrow at 8 — Maryland Whipsnakes vs. Philadelphia Waterdogs (Zach Currier, Michael Sowers)

Sowers continues to lead the league in points (28) and assists (19). 

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The first athletic event of the 2025-26 athletic year is now only five weeks away, with opening night for the women's soccer team against Rutgers on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium set for August 22 at 5 pm.

In the meantime, have a great weekend. TigerBlog will be back next week — whatever that means.  

 

 

Princeton At The World University Games

The Opening Ceremonies and first events of the 2028 Summer Olympic Games will begin three years from this week in Los Angeles. 

Did you hear the big news about Los Angeles ’28? No, it's not that the track and field competition will be held the first week of the Games and the swimming competition will be held the second.

The swimming events, by the way, will be held in a pool that will be constructed in SoFi Stadium, the home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers. This is similar to the 2024 Olympic Trials, which were held inside Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

The biggest story is, of course, the return of lacrosse to the Games as a medal sport. This will be the first time ever for women and the first time for men since 1908.

It won't be the full-field lacrosse that you see in college. This will be the Sixes version, which is pretty much what it sounds like — smaller sides, smaller field, faster pace, higher scoring. 

The final will be July 29, 2028. It will match the United States and Canada (there are few predictions of which TigerBlog is more certain). 

Will there be Princeton representation? TB isn't as sure about that as he is about the teams who will be in the final, but he'll go with "yes" on that one.  

Squash will also be a medal sport in 2028. Princeton alum Olivia Fiechter Weaver (who is married to former Tiger men's lacrosse player Bobby Weaver) is currently the No. 4 ranked player in the world. 

If you have a great memory, you might remember back to Oct. 19, 2012. What were you doing that day? If you were reading TigerBlog, you saw a guest entry from Julie Cerullo, then a senior on the Princeton women's squash team. 

What did she write about? You guessed — that squash should be an Olympic sport. You can read it HERE. This is part of her story:

On paper, squash meets all the criteria required of an Olympic sport in terms of its history, universality and popularity. It’s good for athletes’ health and would be relatively cheap to integrate. But squash will be competing against five other sports for one open berth in the 2020 games. The other aspirant sports are Karate, wushu (a martial art), roller sports, sport climbing and wake boarding, and it won’t get any easier beyond 2020 as lacrosse and mixed martial arts have announced their plans to seek Olympic status in the future. A possible bid by softball and baseball for reinstatement in 2020 further complicates the decision. 

Princeton figures to be well-represented in Los Angeles, as it seems to be in every Summer Olympic Games. If you recall a year ago from Paris, Princeton athletes won three gold medals (Hannah Scott in rowing, Maia Weintraub in fencing, Nice Mead in rowing) and had 16 competitors in all. 

The World University Games aren't quite the Olympics, but they do provide some pretty diverse competition. They have been contested every other year since 1959 (the winter version began in 1960 and continues to the present), or pretty much every other year since 1959. For some reason, they were held in 1967, 1970 and then 1973 but have been back on the every-other-year schedule since, though the 2023 edition was cancelled after the host country, Russia, invaded Ukraine. 

The Games were held in Moscow in the Soviet Union in 1973. Princeton women's athletic pioneer Cathy Corcione won a gold and a silver there. 

The 2029 version will be held in North Carolina, after a stop in South Korea in 2027. The only time to date that the United States has been the host nation for the summer Games was in 1993, when they were held in Buffalo.  

The current World University Games began yesterday with 12 Tigers from five countries and four sports who are currently competing.

You can see the schedule for the Tigers HERE. 

The first Princetonians to kick things off will probably have already done so by the time you read this. They would be Chloe Fox-Gitomer in women's team saber fencing and Jackson Hicke in men's 3x3 basketball.

Hicke is part of an all-Ivy League team, as Hicke will be joined by Avery Brown (Columbia), Chandler Piggé (Harvard) and Nick Townsend (Yale).

Now That's A Database

It's possible, though unlikely, that the good people who run the ncaa.com website sat around and said "how can we keep TigerBlog busy for a few hours?"

It is one explanation for the genesis of a new feature from the national office of intercollegiate athletics in Indianapolis. What feature? 

It's a database of all-time NCAA champions. You can access it by clicking HERE and scrolling down.

TB already has it bookmarked.  

As you probably know, TigerBlog is fascinated by historical information, especially as it relates to Princeton Athletics. It's in his title, after all — historian. 

This from the introduction: "This interactive database provides a visual overview of high-level information on every NCAA team and individual since 1921. Users can explore details including winners, runners-up, game and event scores, head coaches, season records and site/host information."

How cool is that? 

What's the first thing TB did? He looked up Princeton's NCAA champions, of course. 

You do need to keep in mind that this database only covers officially NCAA-recognized sports and events since 1921. Among the sports where Princeton has won many national championships are men's and women's squash, men's heavyweight and lightweight rowing and women's lightweight rowing, as well as football in the pre-FCS era.

Also, the NCAA list only recognizes men's golf champions from 1939 on. Princeton won national titles in men's golf in 11 times prior to that (and in 1940). 

To that end, Princeton has won 13 NCAA team championships and produced 54 individual NCAA champions. Interestingly, Princeton has four NCAA women's rowing championships, all for winning gold in specific races, and they're all counted under the individual wins. That's one championship per boat, not one for every individual in the boat.

Can you name Princeton's 13 NCAA team titles? TB will give you a few paragraphs to think about it. 

Princeton's 13 team titles ranks second in the Ivy League. First? That would be Columbia with 16 — all in fencing, half of which were from 1951-1971.

The 54 individual champions come from eight different sports. The breakdown is: men's swimming and diving (22), mixed fencing (11), men's indoor track and field (6), men's outdoor track and field (4), women's rowing (4), men's fencing (4), wrestling (2), women's outdoor track and field (1).

Which schools have won the most NCAA titles? How about the top five? It's likely that you will get four of them easily. 

In first place? Stanford, with 136. The next two? UCLA with 123 and USC (the one in Southern California) with 114. TB's colleague Andrew Borders, a UCLA grad, would not be okay if USC was ahead of his Bruins. 

The fifth-place team is Texas, with 60. What school has 62 and is in fourth place? 

Hint — There is a current Princeton head coach who contributed to the total. Hint 2 — That school also has the record for individual champions. Hint 3 — It's a bit of a trick question.

TB will get back to that shortly. First, there's the matter of Princeton's 13 NCAA team championships: 

* six men's lacrosse (1992, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001)
* three women's lacrosse (1994, 2002, 2003)
* one field hockey (2012)
* two fencing (1964, when it was men only, and 2013, when it was mixed)
* men's golf (1940) 

The answer to the other question? That would be Kenyon College. 

The Division III Owls have produced 597 individual NCAA champs. The breakdown by sport? It's one in women's tennis, two in women's track and field, three in men's tennis — and 593 in swimming and diving. 

Princeton head women's swimming and diving coach Abby Brethauer was on three of Kenyon's NCAA championship teams before graduating in 2002. She was also a 13-time All-American. 

Anyway, TigerBlog would like to thank whoever it was who did all the work to put this all together. If there's a way for the NCAA office to monitor who is spending the most time on this site, it's likely that someone there will, in a few weeks, say something like "hey, it's that guy from Princeton again."  

Episcope To The Brewers

As a follow-up to yesterday's chat about Wimbledon, TigerBlog wants to make one more point about tennis. 

If you're the 10th-20th best player in the world in pretty much any other sport, then you have quite likely been an indispensable part of a championship — or several. In tennis? You have almost no chance of ever reaching past, say, the quarterfinals of a major tournament. If you're lucky and things break your way, maybe you get a little further. 

The current 15th-ranked men's player in the world is Arthur Fils. He has never made it past the fourth round of a major. The current 15th-ranked women's player in the world is Diana Schnaider. She, too, has never made it past the fourth round at a major.

The NFL Network annually polls the league's players and then comes out with its top 100 each year. This year's countdown has just started, but would you like to guess who was the No. 15 player in last year's top 100? 

That would be Jalen Hurts, who when last seen was winning the MVP award at the most recent Super Bowl as quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles. 

Want to try another individual sport? How about men's golf? Who's the current World No. 15? That would be Bryson DeChambeau, a two-time U.S. Open champion and a two-time PGA Championship runner-up. 

What does this all mean? Nothing. It's just interesting. 

As another follow-up to yesterday, TigerBlog mentioned that women's runner-up Amanda Aminosova was born in Freehold and had a sister Maria who played at Penn. TB's Office of Athletic Communications colleague Chas Dorman pointed out that Maria Aminosova was a former student worker of his when he worked at Penn. 

She also is married to former Penn basketball player Kevin Egee.  

Shifting from tennis to baseball, the Major League draft is ongoing. If you paid attention to the first round, you saw that 12 of the first 26 picks were high school infielders, including 10 shortstops. 

Of the remaining 14 of those picks, there were six college pitchers who went. Of that group, there were two that TB followed closely in the recent Men's College World Series — Kade Anderson of the champion LSU Tigers, who went No. 3 to the Mariners, and Gage Wood of Arkansas, who went No. 26 to the Phillies. 

Wood, you may recall, was the pitcher who threw a no-hitter against Murray State in the MCWS, losing a perfect game when he hit a batter in the eighth inning. TB watched that entire game and is of the belief that Wood still would not have allowed a hit if the game continued to today. 

Speaking of college pitchers who were drafted, Princeton's Sean Episcope was chosen in the fifth round by the Milwaukee Brewers. The 6-0, 210-pounder Chicago native was the 155th overall selection. 

Episcope was a two-time Ivy Pitcher of the Week this past season. In his two seasons as a Tiger, he has struck out 70 batters in 66 innings, and he allowed just seven hits in 20 innings this season, with 26 strikeouts. 

He allowed only two runs on three hits with no walks and six strikeouts in five innings against Miami and one run each in five-inning starts against both Wake Forest and Liberty, with a combined 14 strikeouts and two walks in those two outings. 

Episcope becomes the 54th Princeton baseball player to be chosen in the Major League draft and the highest chosen Princeton player since Ross Ohlendorf went in the fourth round in 2004. Ohlendorf went on to pitch for 10 seasons in the Majors.

It'll be interesting to see how long it takes any of the players drafted this week to make the Majors. that's especially true of pitchers, where you're torn between rushing them and having them throw too many innings and pitches in the minors.  

Staying healthy is a big part of it. Episcope has battled injuries, but hopefully he can get (and stay) healthy and reach his fullest potential. 

The Brewers certainly think he will. 

Congratulations to Sean Episcope. That's quite an accomplishment.  

 

Getting To Know Hilary Bartlett

Well, Wimbledon is over. 

None of TigerBlog's favorite players — Aryna Sabalenka, Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, Novak Djokovic — reached the final. Oh well. There's always the U.S. Open. 

John McEnroe, by the way, should announce the biggest events in every sport. It would make listening to anything more enjoyable. 

On the men's side, Jannik Sinner won in four sets over Carlos Alacaraz, winning his first Wimbledon title and in doing so disproving TB's theory that he would be racked with guilt over the way he won his Round of 16 match after being down 2-0 in sets only to have his opponent get hurt. 

Also, the end of the men's match saw Alcaraz thank the King of Spain for attending. When the camera found the King, who was behind him? Margie Gengler, the 1973 von Kienbusch Award winner, and her husband, tennis Hall-of-Famer Stan Smith.  

On the women's side, Iga Swiatek defeated Amanda Anisomova 6-0, 6-0 in the final. It was Anisomova who outlasted No. 1 seed Sabalenka in the semifinls, and she clearly had zero left in the tank for the final. It was like a team that had a big upset in the opening round of an NCAA basketball tournament and then couldn't pump the balloon back up two days later in the next round. 

TB wonders if Sabalenka watched the match and if so what she was thinking. For that matter, what did Swiatek think when she saw that she'd be playing Anisomova and not Sabalenka. 

Here are two fun facts about Anisomova: 1) she was born in Freehold, which is about 20 minutes east of Princeton and 2) her sister Maria played at Penn before graduating in 2010.  

Maria went 1-1 in singles matches in her career against Princeton. Hilary Bartlett defeated her 6-4, 6-4 in the No. 2 match in 2009, Bartlett's freshman year. 

Bartlett went on to the be the Ivy League Player of the Year. If you click on her bio on the women's tennis roster from those years, you'll see the following in the "Getting To Know Hilary Bartlett" section: 

Place I’d most like to play tennis: Wherever the NCAA team championship is!
My ultimate doubles partner would be: Marat Safin
Favorite spot on campus; Murray-Dodge Hall
Place I’d most like to visit: Vietnam
Most enjoyable class at Princeton: Freshman Seminar 135 “Good to Be Shifty:
American Swindlers and Imposters”
An adjective often used to describe me: Happy
Favorite activity, other than tennis: Skiing
How do I describe my hometown?: Bustling
If I could have any job, it would be: Something in science or public policy 

TigerBlog reached out to Bartlett yesterday via email to ask her if she'd ever been to Vietnam and if she worked in science of public policy. He wasn't quite expecting a quick reply, but that's what he got. 

As it turns out, Bartlett is married to Kiel Zsitvay, and they are the parents of identical twin boys Arthur and Henry, who are two years and three months old. 

She also had some pretty interesting things to say. For instance, there was this about having played Anisomova's sister: 

I did watch the final and somehow didn’t put two and two together… thank you for alerting me to this - I’m proud to know this fact. 

And this:

I actually made it to Vietnam the summer after my freshman year, and am now Chief Product Officer at Carrot Fertility, a small B2B startup when I joined that’s now a 500+ person company, focused on administering family forming benefits (including egg preservation and IVF) for employers and health plans.  I could argue it’s tangentially science and tangentially public policy! 

TigerBlog couldn't let all this go at that, so he responded and asked if she'd change anything from her "getting to know" list and if she'd also let him know how her Princeton Athletics experience continues to impact her. 

Here is what she said on those subjects:

Other than Kiel, I’d probably say Jannik Sinner is my ultimate doubles partner among current players.

And in terms of how my experience as a Princeton athlete continues to impact my life —my time at Princeton taught me how to strike the right balance between tennis and everything else that life as a student at Princeton has to offer.  Finding success in that juggle as a young person has given me immense confidence as an adult, as I try to manage a new mix of competing priorities across career and motherhood.

That last sentence says a lot. 

"Finding success in that juggle as a young person has given me immense confidence as an adult, as I try to manage a new mix of competing priorities across career and motherhood."

If you're Princeton Athletics, you can't really ask for a better answer.  

The Shoe At The End Of The Road

Where to start on a Friday in July? 

Well, how about the shoe at the end of the road? 

If you turn left out of TigerBlog's driveway and follow his street for about a quarter mile, it reaches a T intersection with something of a main road. Right where the two streets come together has sat a shoe, one single solitary shoe. 

It appears to be a flip-flop. How did one shoe get there? And more importantly, how long will it be there? 

You can't really stop your car on the main road to get it. You possibly could walk from the end of TB's road onto the main one, though there is a bit of a blind corner not far from that spot, so it would be risky.

The big storms of this past week haven't blown the shoe one inch in any direction. TigerBlog is officially fascinated by "The Shoe At The End Of The Road." 

Meanwhile ... 

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Tosan Evbuomwan made his NBA 2K26 Summer League debut yesterday with the Brooklyn Nets against Oklahoma City. If you're in Las Vegas, you can go the games. If you're not, you can see them on an ESPN network or the NBA Network.

Brooklyn lost the game 90-81, but Evbuomwan did what he always does: fill the stat sheet. In fact, he finished with 13 points, four rebounds, three assists, one steal and one blocked shot in his 24 minutes. Given that it was Game 1 of the summer league, you can't really ask for much more than those numbers. 

Evbuomwan was the 2022 Ivy League Player of the Year and then a first-team All-Ivy League selection a year later, when he led the Tigers to the NCAA Sweet 16. His NBA career started with Detroit and Memphis before he played in 28 games for the Nets a year ago, averaging 9.5 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game. 

Your next chance to see him this summer is Sunday at 8 Eastern against the Washington Wizards. That game will be on ESPN2. 

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Whenever an athlete is officially added to a Princeton Athletics roster, an email is sent out from the compliance office to all of the various offices that need to have that information. Communications, obviously, is one of them. 

This week saw a flood of emails as members of the Class of 2029 have been steadily added onto rosters. They're all just names in an email now, albeit names with their own backstories on how they have come to this moment in their lives. 

Each email that comes in lists the newcomers name and sport. It gets TB wondering, as he often does, about how these athletes end up in the sport they'll compete in at Princeton. 

He's certainly talked to enough athletes to find out that there is a certain amount of randomness to how. Some of it is location. Some of it is what their parents played. Some of it is what they saw on TV when they were just starting out. 

And is athletic ability transferable? What skills transfer from sport to sport and what skills don't? 

Can somebody do a thesis on this? Hey, maybe one of the names on one of this week's emails will end up doing just that in 2029.

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The picture that accompanied yesterday's entry is one of TB's favorite Princeton photos ever. If you don't remember, here it is again:

That's Pete Carril and Kit Mueller, from a press conference prior to an NCAA tournament game. If TB had to guess, it would be the 1990 game against Arkansas at the University of Texas. 

TB also wishes he could remember the context of the moment. Oh well.  

Who would have guessed at the time that Mueller would have two kids who would go on to play lacrosse at Princeton (Ellie, Class of 2024, with the women, and Cooper, a rising junior with the men)? 

And to those who reached out yesterday to ask for another Coach Carril quote, there is this one:

Princeton was in an airport getting ready to fly back from one of those December tournaments, one in which the Tigers had, in Carril's words, "given a good account of ourselves." As the team waited at the gate, a fan of the home team came up to him, shook his hand and said "Coach, it was a real honor to have you here and to see how your team plays the game. But you must hear that everywhere you go."

Carril then said this to the man: "I get that everywhere I go — except for Princeton."  

*

The Premier Lacrosse League is back this weekend after last weekend's All-Star Game. This week's stop is in Chicago, with two games tonight and two games tomorrow. 

It's a Princeton-heavy Friday night in the PLL. It starts with Boston (Coulter Mackesy, Alexander Vardaro) against New York (Jake Stevens) at 7, followed by Utah (Ryan Ambler, Beau Pederson, Tom Schreiber) against Philadelphia (Zach Currier, Michael Sowers) at 9:30. That second game is also a matchup of former Princeton head coaches Chris Bates and Bill Tierney.  

*

There are six weeks remaining until the first athletic event of 2025-26, which will be a women's soccer game at home against Rutgers on Friday, Aug. 22. 

Will The Shoe At The End Of The Road still be there?  

In the meantime, have a great summer weekend.  

Happy 95th

Tom McCarthy, one of the top sportscasters in the business, celebrated a birthday a few days ago. 

He's also a new grandfather, by the way. His son Patrick, also a sportscaster, recently became a dad. 

In fact, everybody say hello to Quinley Grace McCarthy:

The names "Tom McCarthy" and "Patrick McCarthy" should be quite familiar to any Princeton fan. Tom is the longtime television play-by-play man for the Philadelphia Phillies, as well as a mainstay on the NFL and college basketball. 

Patrick is behind the mic for the New York Mets. He's also, for some reason, a huge Winnipeg Jets fan, and he actually got TigerBlog to root for the team in the NHL playoffs this past spring. It didn't quite work out well. 

Both father and son can trace their current successes back to Jadwin Gym and Powers Field at Princeton Stadium, where they both spent time on the radio for Princeton football and men's basketball. If you ask either of them, they will tell you that they cherish their time at Princeton. 

When TB spoke to Tom on his birthday, he asked him if he had any idea how many baseball games he's broadcasted in his life, going all the way back to his time with the then-brand new Trenton Thunder. His estimate? 

It would be between five and six thousand. That's a lot of baseball games. And that doesn't count any other broadcasting.

TigerBlog asked him if he still gets excited for gamedays, which of course he does. 

As TB said those words, it reminded him of this quote: 

"The hardest thing in the world to do is to do one thing particularly well for a long period of time at whatever standards you establish. Take the doctor who delivers his first baby. That's a huge thrill. Does he, 30 years later, get the same thrill. Or did Rex Harrison after 1,000 performances of My Fair Lady?" 

That's a pretty good one, no? 

You probably, without much difficulty, guessed whose quote that is.  

Of course. The answer is obviously Pete Carril. It was one of many great quotes that Princeton's former men's basketball coach uttered in his 29 years on the Tiger bench, before he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.  

If you want to hear something really wild, Carril spent 29 years at Princeton — and it's now been 29 years since he left. Wild, right? 

Pete Carril passed away in 2022, shortly after his 92nd birthday. He would have turned 95 today, July 10. 

There has never been anyone else like Pete Carril at Princeton, and there never will be anyone else like him. His personality, his backstory, his humor, his competitiveness, his appearance — they were all unique. 

He wore a pained expression on his face almost all the time, except for when he showed that wide grin that could take over his face. His voice was low and gravelly. He gave it to you straight, no matter who "you" were. When he wanted your attention, he certainly got it. 

His public speaking ability was off the charts. TB once collected the 21 best quotes from Pete Carril. That list didn't include the away-from-the-public ones that he couldn't repeat, the ones that are etched in TB's memory, most of which he has never mentioned publicly.  

Here's one that TB has shared before. After one of the in-season tournaments that Princeton played, a reporter asked Carril his thoughts on one of his players who had made the all-tournament team. Without flinching — almost as it he had it scripted — he simply said "so did the guy he was guarding." 

Pete almost never prepared any remarks. He simply took the microphone and said what was on his mind and what was in his heart. He was intimidating and engaging at the same time, in a way that TigerBlog means as positively as he can. 

If you were in his orbit, you didn't want to let him down. You wanted him to respect your contributions, and you knew it when he did.  

TigerBlog had a front row seat for most of the last seven years Carril spent at Princeton. He was also the last men's basketball sports information director to work with Carril, something that earned TB a lot of free soup on Fridays. 

His style wasn't for everyone, and he recognized that too, which is why he left Princeton after the 1996 season, which ended famously with the Ivy League playoff win over Penn and then NCAA tournament win over UCLA. It's not easy for TB to keep in mind that the number of people at Princeton who knew Carril well has dwindled down to a very small number. 

Ah, but those people cherish that they had the chance know him. TigerBlog certainly does. 

Happy 95th Coach.  

That's The Ticket

Well that's a big fish. 

To be exact, it's a 40-pound yellowtail amberjack. He's the only one in the picture who isn't smiling, as you might have noticed. 

The fisherman would be Matthew Anderson, who definitely is smiling. Matthew and TigerBlog Jr. grew up together, they both spent quite a few years working together as ballboys for Princeton basketball. 

Oh, those were the days. When there was a home game during the week, TB would leave Princeton in the afternoon, drive about 30 minutes to pick them up, drive them back to Princeton and then drive them home after the game.  

Matthew went on to play lacrosse at Chestnut Hill College, and he's also helped coach the junior varsity team at his old high school, Pennsbury, whose colors just happen to be orange and black and who gets a lot of use out of an orange "P" as a logo. 

If you're wondering, that fish was caught somewhere off the California coast the other day. For his part, TB can take no credit for helping, as he was 3,000 miles away at the time, though he did give Matthew that "Princeton Lacrosse" pullover. 

TigerBlog has never caught a fish anywhere near that large. He has caught a bunch of small ones, mostly shad in the Delaware River with John McPhee. 

In fact, the first time he caught a shad, he fought it all the way onto the boat and figured it had to weigh at least 40 pounds. Actually, it was two pounds, but hey, fish tails, right? That's the ticket.

And speaking of tickets (how's that for a segue)?

If you've been on goprincetontigers.com in the last two days, you might have noticed that there has been a story about Princeton (the University as a whole, including Athletics) and its new ticketing system. It's called "vivenu," and you can read about it HERE.

This is from the story:

Princeton University and Princeton Athletics have announced a partnership with vivenu, a leading technology provider in global event ticketing, to further modernize and create a simplified ticket purchasing process for Tiger fans and supporters. Through new technological advancements including a fully-refreshed ticketing website and purchase flow at goprincetotigers.com/tickets, streamlined mobile ticket downloads with season ticket passes, and easier venue entry, vivenu will assist Princeton fans in experiencing a more intuitive and efficient process during their customer journey with the Tigers. 

If you have an account on file, you're going to need to follow the steps to create a new one in the new system. It's very easy to do. 

Right now, football season tickets are available. Opening day? That would be Sept. 20, when San Diego will be at Powers Field at Princeton Stadium for the first of five home games, along with Columbia (Oct. 3), Mercer (Oct. 11),  Harvard (Oct. 25) and Yale (Nov. 15).

If you're planning ahead, Princeton is also at Lafayette (Sept. 27), Brown (Oct. 18), Cornell (Nov. 1), Dartmouth (Nov. 8) and Penn (Nov. 15).  

Next up will be men's and women's hockey season tickets, which go on sale July 21. Beyond that will be tickets for men's and women's basketball and wrestling, with men's lacrosse tickets still to come beyond that. 

The new ticketing system makes it easy to transfer tickets from one person to another or to donate tickets to non-profit groups. If you're ticket is saved to your device will automatically update if the start time changes.

There was a time when collecting ticket stubs was something pretty much everyone did, especially for big games and concerts. When TB first started working at Princeton, designing Princeton's tickets was a big thing, with an emphasis on making them look as artistic as possible. 

Those days are gone. Now it's about convenience and the ability to simply download them to your device. 

Princeton's new "vivenu" system does all of that and more. 

 

Thanks Allen

TigerBlog has been watching a great deal of the Wimbledon tennis tournament. 

His favorite player now is Ben Shelton, who plays with an unmistakable joy that makes him impossible to root against, at least for TB. His post-match on-court interviews have been pure gold, like the one the other day about how he needs someone at Goldman Sachs to give his sister Emma an additional week off so she could stay and watch him.

Emma was still there yesterday as her brother rolled into the quarterfinals. His opponent will be the top seed, Jannik Sinner, who advanced despite being down two sets to none and tied 2-2 in the third when his opponent, Grigor Sinner, couldn't continue due to a pectoral injury. Sinner showed great sportsmanship in the moment and in his on-court interview, and it was clearly not the way the No. 1 seed wanted to move on. 

Also, it was over the weekend that Chris Evert said that the women's No. 1 seed, Aryna Sabalenka, plays better when she's "pissed off."

TigerBlog took that as a validation of something he said on the radio during a Princeton men's basketball game many years ago, like 35 or so years ago. He's told you this before, but here goes again: 

Back in the early 1990s, TB was often part of a three-man radio crew with David Brody and Rich Simkus. One night, as halftime came, TigerBlog said that Pete Carril looked "pissed off" as he left the court.

Brody and Simkus then looked at him without speaking, at which TB said "what, you can't say 'pissed off' on the radio?"

At that point, Brody said: "I guess you can, because you just did. Twice." 

If it's good enough for Chris Evert, it's good enough for TigerBlog, no? 

Meanwhile, Wimbledon sits about an hour down the M25 from Henley-on-Thames, which is where the recently concluded regatta for 2025 took place. If you recall, TB yesterday wrote about the representatives of the Princeton heavyweight men's program who had competed there this past week so successfully. 

And thanks to a heads up from loyal reader Allen Scheuch, Class of 1976, TB has learned there is more to be told from Henley. 

Claire Collins, the 2019 von Kienbusch Award winner as the top Princeton female senior athlete, has had quite a post-Princeton career in rowing. She was especially impressive at this year's Henley.

First of all, she is a two-time U.S. Olympian, having finished seventh in the women's fours in Tokyo in 2021 and then fifth in the women's eights in Paris last summer. She also won a bronze medal at the 2022 World Rowing Championships in women's pairs. 

She has also been rowing at Cambridge University and was part of this year's winning crew in the famed Boat Race between Cambridge and Oxford. 

This past week at Henley she rowed in not one but two separate events. 

First, she was with the Cambridge boat that lost to Oxford Brookes in the semifinals of the highly competitive Island Challenge Cup. As TB learned when he was at Henley a few years ago, "Oxford University" and "Oxford Brookes" are not the same institutions. 

Collins also teamed with Wisconsin alum Maddie Wanamaker, a fellow 2024 Olympian, to win the Hambleden Pairs Challenge Cup. The two Americans covered the 2,112 meters in 7:53, winning the final by more than four lengths. 

Rowing in one event at Henley is tough. Rowing in two? The physical drain has to be ridiculous. 

Each day brings another race. If you win, you advance. If you don't, you're done. Collins put in a lot of effort at this year's Henley.  

In addition to Collins, the Princeton women's lightweight boat also rowed in the Island Challenge Cup, getting a first-round bye, winning its second race against Bristol and then falling to Durham. 

There are no separate divisions for lightweights, so the Tigers were racing against the open weight boats of both of the English powerhouses.