The Top 25 Princeton Coaches Of All-Time

Okay, as promised, it's TigerBlog's list of the 25 greatest coaches in Princeton Athletics history. 

First, though, a few parameters and thoughts. 

TB thought about adding a minimum number of years to have been a head coach, because longevity does have to factor into this. Then as he wondered how long this minimum would have to be, he decided against it. 

He'll call this "the Eve Kraft/Butch van Breda Kolff rule."

Second, and this is very, very important — great coaches cannot be measured simply by championships won. There is a great difference between the challenges faced by coaches in various sports and ceilings that they can reach. 

This is called "the Chris Ayres rule."

Third, only what the coach did as Princeton's head coach counts. This is "the Chris Sailer rule."

Lastly, some coaches have walked into situations that seemed to be hopeless while others walked into situations that were much more promising. While the coaches who orchestrated the biggest turnarounds stand out, it's not fair to punish anyone because of the success that was already there.

This is "the Carla Berube rule."

Feel free to disagree, but if you say "so-and-so should be on the list, you have to tell him who should be removed. Like the project with the Top 25 Princeton athletes of all time, this was no easy — and some legendary coaches did not make the cut.

And with that, here is TB's list:

No. 25 - Bill Clarke, baseball (1900-17, 1919-27, 1936-44) 
Bill Clarke won nearly two-thirds of the 892 games he coached at Princeton, bouncing back and forth between his time as a Major League Baseball player (he won a World Series in 1905 with the Giants) to have three separate head coaching appearances. His record was 564-322-10, and the field on which the Tigers now play is named in his honor.

No. 24 - Glen Nelson, women's volleyball (1982-2008)/men's volleyball (1979-2008)
Glenn Nelson won more games than anyone else who ever coached at Princeton, with a total of 1,109 between the men's and women's teams. He coached the women to 11 Ivy League championships, and he became the first coach ever to take a school's men's and women's team to the NCAA tournament when he did so in 1998. The possessor of as large a personality as anyone who ever has represented the Tigers, a newspaper headline upon his retirement read: "Wacky Princeton Volleyball Coach To Retire."

No. 23 - Rob Orr, men's swimming and diving (1979-2019)
Rob Orr led Princeton to 330 dual meet victories, the third-most in Division I history when he retired. His teams won 23 Ivy titles with 38 individual All-Americans and 24 All-American relays. He led Princeton to five Top 20 finishes at the NCAA Championships, and his swimmers won two NCAA relay titles. His team never failed to finish first or second in the league in every season in which he coached at the Ivy event. 

No. 22 - Eve Kraft, women's tennis (1971-73)
Eve Kraft was the first coach ever of any Princeton women's team, and she put together a perfect 26-0 record in her three seasons with the Tigers. Princeton also won the Eastern Championship each of her seasons. Because there was no budget to pay women's coaches at the time, Kraft was a volunteer during her time as head coach.

No. 21 - Peter Farrell, women's track and field and cross country (1977-2016)
Peter Farrell was the only head coach the women's track and field and cross country programs knew for the first 39 years of the program. He led Princeton to 27 Ivy League Heptagonal championships and two "triple crowns," winning all three Heps titles in the same academic year in 1980-81 and 2010-11.

No. 20 - Jim Barlow, men's soccer (1996-present)
Jim Barlow has won more games than any other soccer coach in Princeton history, with a career record of 222-182-70. He has led Princeton to six Ivy League championships and eight NCAA tournaments, and he is the only coach to led the Tigers to a perfect 7-0-0 record in Ivy games. His most recent team won the first Ivy League tournament in program history.

No. 19 - Cindy Cohen, softball (1983-2000)
Cindy Cohen became the head coach of softball in the program's second season. She then went 559-278-3 in her 18 seasons, winning 12 Ivy League championships, including each of her first six. She also took her team to the NCAA tournament for the first three times in program history, including back-to-back trips to the Women's College World Series in 1995 and 1996.

No. 18 - Bob Callahan, men's squash (1981-2013)
Bob Callahan won better than 80 percent of his matches as Tiger head coach, going 316-68 with 11 Ivy League championships and three national championships, including an epic win in the 2012 national final to end Trinity's 13-year title run. Callahan, a member of the College Squash and U.S. Squash Halls of Fame, is perhaps the greatest gentleman and sportsman who ever represented Princeton.

No. 17 - Charles Caldwell, football (1945-56)
Charles Caldwell went 70-30-3 as the head coach of the Tigers in the post-war era. He also coached the team to its longest winning streak ever (24 games, between 1949-52), a record that still stands, as well as the team's most recent national championship (1950) and its only Heisman Trophy winner. He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.

No. 16 - Susan Teeter, women's swimming and diving (1994-2017)
Susan Teeter spent 33 seasons as head coach of the women's swimming and diving team, and she won the Ivy League championship more than half of those times — 17, including 12 in her final 18 seasons. Princeton's all-time leader in wins, she won 229 dual meet victories with only 62 losses (.788), and she led Princeton to two different winning streaks of at least 40 straight. She also coached 22 All-Americans.

No. 15 - Curtis Jordan, women's rowing (1984-90/men's heavyweight rowing 1991-2009)
Curtis Jordan is the only Princeton head coach who ever won a national championship with a women's team and a men's team (excluding co-ed fencing). Jordan's women's team won the 1990 IRA national championship with the women, after also leading the team to two Eastern Sprints titles, and he then won the 1996 and 1998 IRA national titles with the men's heavyweights, with whom he won the program's first five Eastern Sprints championships.

No. 14 - Julie Shackford, women's soccer (1995-2014)
Julie Shackford went 203-115-29 in her 20 seasons with the Tigers. She also coached the team to six Ivy League championships and eight NCAA tournament appearances, and she is the only Ivy women's soccer coach — and any Ivy coach in a 64-team field — to bring her team to the NCAA Final Four.

No. 13 - Betty Constable, women's squash (1971-91)
Betty Constable was the first head coach of the women's squash program, and she quickly built it into the standard of the college women's game. Her teams went 117-16 in dual matches, and she won 12 national championships (the Howe Cup is named for her family) and the first two Ivy titles. She is a member of the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame.

No. 12 - Kristen Holmes, field hockey (2003-15)
Kristen Holmes went 164-80 as Princeton's head coach, with 12 Ivy League championships in 13 seasons, including her final 11. The biggest item on her resume, though, is the 2012 NCAA championship, the only one any Ivy League field hockey team has ever won.

No. 11 - Butch van Breda Kolff, men's basketball (1962-67)
Burch van Breda Kolff, one of the founders of the Princeton men's basketball coaching tradition, had a short, but wildly successful tenure with the Tigers. His record in his five seasons was 103-31, with four Ivy titles and four NCAA appearances, including a run to the Final Four in 1965.

No. 10 - Bill Roper, football (1906-08, 10-11, 19-30)
Bill Roper, Princeton's first full-time football coach, still holds the record for most wins at Princeton with 89, along with 28 losses and 16 ties. He coached Princeton to four national championships, the last of which was the 1922 "Team of Destiny." The top senior male athlete award at Princeton is named for him.

No. 9 - Carla Berube, women's basketball (2019-present)
Carla Berube has won four Ivy League titles in four seasons, with three Ivy League tournament championships in three appearances in the event. Her overall record is 110-21, with an Ivy record of 54-3 before Saturday's game against Harvard, and she has coached her team to a pair of NCAA tournament wins, over Kentucky in 2022 and North Carolina State in 2023.

No. 8 - Zoltan Dudas, men's and women's fencing (2006-present)
Zoltan Dudas has taken Princeton to a top 10 national finish in every one of his seasons with the Tigers, with the ultimate accomplishment of an NCAA championship in 2013, with runner-up finishes in 2012 and 2014. He has also coached seven fencers to an NCAA individual championship while also winning 15 Ivy League titles between the two programs, with whom he has a combined record of 722-191.

No. 7 - Chris Ayres, wrestling (2006-23)
Chris Ayres had perhaps the most thankless task of any Princeton coach ever, taking over a program that had won only one Ivy League match in the previous five years. By the time he left in 2023, Ayres had turned Princeton into a perennial entry into the national Top 20, won the program's first Ivy League title in 34 years in 2022 and produced 14 All-American selections — as well as Princeton's second NCAA individual champion.

No. 6 - Lori Dauphiny, women's rowing (1997-present)
Lori Dauphiny is the only women's rowing coach to lead her program to every NCAA regatta since the event began in 1997. She's also won 13 Ivy League championships and three NCAA championships, with the first varsity 8 in 2006 and 2011 and the varsity 4 in 2022. She's won 257 dual races, the most by any Princeton rowing coach, and has been a two-time national Coach of the Year, as well as an inductee into the CRCA Hall of Fame.

No. 5 - Courtney Banghart, women's basketball (2007-19)
Courtney Banghart took over a program that had never been to an NCAA tournament before her arrival and then went to eight of them in her last 10 seasons, including a win over Wisconsin-Green Bay in 2015 for the first NCAA win in program history (as part of a 31-1 season). Banghart began her career going 23-37 in her first two years and then 231-66 in her final 10.

No. 4 - Chris Sailer, women's lacrosse (1987-2022)
Chris Sailer went 433-168 in 36 seasons as Princeton's head coach, giving her the second-highest win total in Division I history and the most by any Division I coach ever at one school. She also led Princeton to three NCAA championships in 27 NCAA appearances, with 16 Ivy League championships as well. She is a member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

No. 3 - Pete Carril, men's basketball (1967-96)
Pete Carril will forever be a part of the fabric of the entire University for his legendary career as a basketball coach, sociologist and educator. His Princeton resume included 13 Ivy League titles and 11 NCAA appearances, as well as the 1975 NIT championship. His 29-year record at Princeton was 514-261, with his final win the huge NCAA tournament victory of UCLA. Carril was elected to the Naismith Hall of Fame in 1998.

No. 2 - Fred Samara, men's track and field (1977-2023)
Fred Samara has won more Ivy League championships than any other coach in any sport at any school, a staggering total of 51 Heptagonal titles, including 10 "triple crowns." He also coached 502 individual Heps champions, had 10 of his athletes to NCAA championships and saw 101 of his athletes earn All-American honors. He was a 13-time Ivy League Coach of the Year and 18-time US Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Regional Coach of the Year, as well as a 2017 inductee into the USTFCCCA Hall of Fame.

No. 1 - Bill Tierney, men's lacrosse (1988-2009)
Bill Tierney came to Princeton to take over a program that had not won an Ivy League championship in more than 20 years and had never been to the NCAA tournament. A newspaper story announcing his hiring questioned why he would even want the job in the first place. In his 22 seasons, he put together a record of 238-86 while winning six NCAA championships and advancing to 10 NCAA Final Fours. He also won 14 Ivy League championships. His 1996-98 teams remain the most recent to win three straight NCAA championships, and his 1997 team was a perfect 15-0. He is a member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.