From The Open

In which of these two pictures does Billie Jean King look happier? 

Is it the one with TigerBlog, or the one with the mystery woman on the left? Can anyone identify her? 

TB gives you a hint — She long ago went on record as saying she preferred Amtrak to airplanes. He'll give you a few paragraphs to figure it out. 

The picture of TB with Billie Jean King was taken when she attended a Princeton field hockey game a few years back. The one on the left was taken the other night at the U.S. Open, which is currently being played at the Billie Jean National Tennis Center in NewYork.

Here's the view that field hockey alums Gracie McGowan, Sam Davidson, Ellie Manriquez and Clare Brennan had Wednesday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium. It appears they were pretty far up there:

According to the TV broadcast, if you had a grounds pass, you could sit all the way up in the main stadium without paying extra. 

TigerBlog's U.S. Open tennis experience was back in 1984, when he covered the tournament for the Trenton Times. It remains one of his favorite experiences he's had in all his years in sportswriting. 

He stayed for two weeks at the apartment of his grandparents (may they rest in peace) in Kew Gardens, which is not very far from the tennis center. His seat in the main pressbox was next to a Detroit Free-Press writer named Mitch Albom. 

Meanwhile, the woman in the picture with Billie Jean King is Gladys Knight, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Along with her backup singers — known as the Pips — her biggest hit was "Midnight Train To Georgia." She also sang the great song "You're The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me" and a great rendition of "O Comes All Ye Faithful."

By the way, TB didn't know until yesterday that the three Pips were actually her brother and two of her cousins. 

TigerBlog has watched a lot the U.S. Open, which began a day earlier than ever before, back on Sunday. He continues to think that the best broadcaster of any sport is still John McEnroe. 

Oh, and anytime he hears Cliff Drysdale's Australian tones, it reminds of the time that TB gave Drysdale and Rod Laver a ride in his old VW Rabbit back to their hotel after they played an exhibition match at Jadwin Gym, back in the 1980s. 

This Open has already had a huge Princeton component to it as well. 

One of the bests matches of the tournament so far was the one between Coco Gauff and Ajla Tomljanovic, which Gauff won in three sets 6-4, 6-7, 7-5. It was preceded by a coin toss that featured Princeton Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack and head men's basketball coach Mitch Henderson. 

This is from the goprincetontigers.com story: 

Princeton was represented by men's tennis head coach Billy Pate, women's tennis head coach Elizabeth Johnson, Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack '00 and the University's vice president for capital projects Bill Kale at the awards reception. Later that evening, John Mack was joined by Princeton men's basketball head coach Mitch Henderson '98, a regular tennis player at Meadows, to participate in the official coin toss ahead at Arthur Ashe Stadium ahead of the evening's featured match in the U.S. Open between Coco Gauff and Ajla Tomljanovic. 

You can read the entire story HERE.

Henderson, by the way, is an avid tennis player. TigerBlog has played him in squash, tennis and ping pong, for that matter.

You already know he's competitive as anyone. What you forget until you see him on a court is how tall he is, which, along with his athleticism, gives him amazing court coverage.

TB has never played tennis with Bill Pate, but he has played squash against him. That's not a lot of fun either, since Billy's competitive side takes over and he plays somewhat like the Iroquois did when they invented lacrosse. 

The Open continues until a week from Sunday. TB continues to root for Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka. 

Oh, and remember, there is a women's soccer game Sunday at 11 am on Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium against Syracuse. And the women's rugby team opens its season tomorrow at 1 at LIU.

Goal Story

The Princeton women's soccer team has scored six goals in its history against its next two opponents, Ohio State and Syracuse. 

One of those goals was an own-goal. The remaining five goals belong to just two players. Can you name them? 

Now that's an obscure one. 

TigerBlog will give you a hint: This is from the story on goprincetontigers.com after the last meeting:

Princeton, now 3-0 against Big East teams this season, won its ninth straight game.

This tells you a few things. First, it had to be after the birth of the webpage in the late 1990s. Second, Syracuse was still in the Big East. 

Here's another hint: both players won the Ivy League Player of the Year Award. 

While you mull that over, TB will give you some specifics of the two upcoming games. Ohio State is here tonight at 7, while Syracuse will be here Sunday at 11 am.

Ohio State is ranked 25th nationally after last year's trip to the Sweet 16 and off to a 1-1-1 start, with a win over UNC Wilmington (1-0), a tie against Clemson (1-1) and a loss to South Carolina (1-0).

As for Syracuse, the Orange are 3-1, with wins over Charleston Southern, Niagara and Holy Cross and a loss to Canisius. 

Princeton is 0-1-1, with a 1-1 tie against Rutgers and a 2-1 loss to Loyola. It was a bit of a frustrating opening weekend for the Tigers, who outshot its two opponents by a combined 45-11. 

It is also possible that Princeton had its best goal it will have all year. That would be the one that Zoe Markesini scored against Loyola, a rocket from way outside the box. 

Here's a look at Zoe's goals from the award-winning week! pic.twitter.com/WEfoZ621jj

— Princeton WSoccer (@PrincetonWSoc) August 25, 2025

Could that have been any more impressive? It had everything — distance, power and perfect placement. When TB saw it live (on ESPN+ at least), he let out an audible "woa" at the shot. 

Markesini scored both Princeton goals last weekend, a performance that earned her Ivy League Offensive Defensive Player of the Week honors.  

Meanwhile, back at the two women who scored all five goals against this weekend's opponents, those two would be Emily Behncke and Esmeralda Negron, two names that should be familiar to even casual Princeton women's soccer fans. 

The game against Ohio State tonight will be the first ever between the two teams. The game Sunday against Syracuse will be the third in the series, with a pair of 3-1 wins, in 2003 and 2004. 

The own goal, plus single goals from Behncke and Negron, came in the 2003 game at Syracuse. The 2004 game, on old Lourie-Love Field, had two goals from Behncke and one from Negron. 

That 2004 Princeton team reached the NCAA Final Four, making it the only Ivy school ever to reach the Final Four in an NCAA tournament with at least 64 teams. That still stands. 

Those Tigers went 5-0 against Big East teams, with two of those wins against Villanova, in the second game of the season and then again in the NCAA second round. Villanova is still in the Big East.

The other three wins came against Syracuse, Rutgers and Boston College (Sweet 16). None of those three are still in the Big East, with 'Cuse and BC in the ACC and Rutgers in the Big Ten. 

Who would have foreseen any of that back when those games were played 21 years ago?  

That 2004 postseason run drew huge crowds to Lourie-Love, which was just a grass field with wooden stands, no restrooms, no team rooms, no press box and no concession stands. The success of that 2004 team led directly to the construction of the first Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium and, subsequently, its successor.

It's that new facility that will host the two games this weekend. Technically, Thursday isn't a weekend, but hey, close enough. 

Tonight it's Ohio State-Princeton at 7. Sunday it'll be Syracuse-Princeton at 11 am. Admission is free for all regular-season Princeton soccer games.

Photo Day

TigerBlog spent a little more than an hour yesterday in midday at the Jadwin Gym squash courts.

It was, for about 15 years, his normal spot around noon, pretty much every day. He'd go there and play his longtime colleague and friend Craig Sachson in their daily squash match, which, if he had to guess, Craig won probably 55 percent of the time.

It's been a long time since TB played squash — two knee surgeries worth. As TB wandered in and out of Courts 9 and 10, he couldn't help but think back to the glory days of lunchtime squash, often under the watchful eyes of Gail Ramsay and the late, great Bob Callahan. 

So what was the draw yesterday? 

Photo Day. 

It began at 7:30 in the morning with the football team and continued after that with cross country and then field hockey. When it was all over, TB asked photographer Greg Carroccio how many pictures he thought he and partner Ryan Samson took in all. 

His answer was 25,000.

And that doesn't count the number of pictures, probably an equal number or maybe even more, that were taken by the players themselves on their phones during the course of the day. 

For the freshmen, this was the first time they'd put on their game uniforms, which has to be quite a thrill for every one of them. For everyone else, it wasn't that same emotion, but it was a ton of fun for all of them.

There was this: 

And this:

 

And this:  

And this: 

 

And this:  

And, as TB mentioned, 24,996 or so others. 

Would you rather have the serious pose or the fun pose?  

TigerBlog contributed his own photos to the count while he was there with the field hockey team to get some behind-the-scenes content. The views that these photos get exceeds the number of pictures that were snapped.

If you have the chance to watch a team go through this, you'll see just how much joy it brings out. And there's always the "hey, can we come up with one more combination that we haven't had yet" feeling. 

When you think about college athletics from the outside, you think about the games, the championships. If you're like most fans, you probably think mostly about football and basketball, for that matter. 

When you've seen it from the inside, you know that the experience goes way beyond just that. The entirety of what being a college athlete is all about includes so many moments away from competitions, and it is those moments — such as a day like photo day — that elevates the overall experience to something incredibly special. 

And hey, even TB got into the mix yesterday.

From his place as an observer, he was invited into one of the shots with the field hockey team. He was told that he was needed for a video, after which there was a big group picture:

The field hockey team scrimmages today at 5 at home against Monmouth. Every athlete who had his or her picture taken yesterday will now get back to the more serious aspects of being on a college team. 

For 25,000 pictures worth yesterday? 

It was all smiles.  

Lagniappe

Lagniappe.

Did you know that this is a word? TigerBlog didn't. 

What does it mean? According to Mr. Webster: 

a small gift given to a customer by a merchant at the time of a purchase
broadly : something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure; i.e., The waiter added a cup of lobster bisque as a lagniappe to the meal.

Now if you were in a restaurant and a waiter said to you: "Please enjoy this lobster bisque as a lagniappe," what would your response be? Confusion? Would you get a food taster? 

If it sounds like a New York Times crossword puzzle word, it is. Said puzzle has become TB's new, well, he doesn't want to say obsession. It's more like his new hobby. 

He was never into the crossword puzzle until maybe two weeks ago. Two days ago he, for the first time ever, completed the entire Sunday puzzle. 

He does this online, and he has a few rules. First, if he answers a clue but isn't sure if he has it correct, he can look it up — but if he's wrong, that means he's lost. If he's right, he can continue on. Second, no collaboration. 

The Princeton honor code applies here as well. 

Once all the squares are filled in, it either tells you that you won or that you have at least one incorrect square. The problem is that it won't tell you which square or squares might be wrong. 

TigerBlog doesn't charge for this content, so he can't really offer you a Lagniappe. Just know that if he could, it probably wouldn't be the lobster bisque.

Meanwhile, did you see what happened in the football game between UC-Davis and Mercer the other day? And yes, TB realizes how insane it is to be talking about actual college football games already. 

Anyway, Mercer and UC-Davis played in the "11th Annual FCS Kickoff," held in Montgomery, Ala. It was a pretty high-stakes game, even for this time of year, as UC-Davis was ranked seventh and Mercer was ranked 11th in the preseason poll. 

UC-Davis ran out to a 23-3 lead. Mercer roared back, cutting it to 23-17 midway through the fourth quarter and having a first-and-10 at the UC-Davis 48 with 7:46 left.

How would it end?

It wouldn't.  

Instead, lightning and heavy rain decided to show up at that exact moment and then linger the rest of the night. The result was a game that was deemed a no-contest, without even the statistics to count. 

Here was the headline on Mercer's webpage: Weather Wins FCS Kickoff. That's pretty good stuff. 

The "C" in "UC-Davis" stands for California, by the way. How'd you like to have flown all the way to Alabama and play in a game that never finished? And will next year's edition still be the 11th, since this one never actually happened? 

TB brings all of this up because Mercer will be at Princeton to take on the Tigers on Oct. 11. The teams met in Macon, Ga., a year ago.

That game will be Princeton's fourth and Mercer's seventh sixth. Mercer's attempted season opener was on the day of Princeton's first practice.

As TigerBlog was walking into Jadwin yesterday morning, he saw the Tigers at it on Finney/Campbell practice fields. There is a precision to football practices that is almost like a military drill, much more so than other teams simply because of the number of athletes who participate. 

They move from station to station, individual to group, all under the direction of the officers, or, as they are known, coaches. Every play is rehearsed over and over for when it is needed in the season. Every defensive call is ingrained until it is all just muscle memory. 

It is a fascinating dynamic to watch, if you've never done so.

Princeton opens its season against San Diego three weeks from Saturday, with a noon kickoff on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium.  Ticket information is HERE. Remember — there is a new ticketing system this year, so you'll need to familiarize yourself with it. 

San Diego opens its season Saturday at home against Cal-Poly.  

Today is photo day for Princeton football, and a handful of other fall teams. It's part of the preseason, another step towards the opener, which will be here soon enough. 

And then those 10 weeks will fly by, like they always do.  

Mind The Gap

TigerBlog was walking along the other day when he came upon an interesting sight.

He was walking on a pathway. About 10 yards ahead of him stood a man and woman on one side of the path and another man and woman on the other side. 

They were both walking dogs, one small and one big. As TB approached, the dogs stood in the middle, nose to nose. That's not what dogs usually do, right?  

As TB kept walking towards this group, the dogs continued their stare-down. At that point, TB stopped and bent down, at which point the dogs looked at him. 

And this is what he said to them: 

"Okay, go to your neutral corners and at the bell, come out barking."

And this was the response from the four humans:

" ............ "

Nothing. Not even a smile. Oh well.

TB also saw a young man who was running while wearing a shirt that said: "Mind the Gap." TB laughed out loud at that. 

If you've ever been on a train in England, then you get it. TB stopped him to tell him how much he liked the shirt, and the young man, clearly English, asked if TB had a favorite Premier League team. 

TB said "Bournemouth." Then he realized he could have said "Waterdogs."

That would have confused the Brit. It also wouldn't have been completely true. TB roots for every Premier League team with Princeton alums on it. 

Clearly, the young bloke meant the soccer league in England. TB could have flipped it around to mean the Premier Lacrosse League, whose playoffs began Saturday in Minneapolis.

The Utah Archers feature three Princeton alums (Ryan Ambler, Beau Pederson and Tom Schreiber) and a former Princeton head coach (Chris Bates). The Archers won the PLL title in 2023 and 2024 but did not make the playoffs this year, meaning there will be a new champ.

Will there be Princetonians who win it all? That's to be determined. 

There will, though, be at least one Princeton alum in the final come Sept. 14, when the championship game is held at the home of the Red Bulls in Harrison, N.J. 

Will it be Jake Stevens, a member of the New York Atlas? Or will it be Zach Currier and Michael Sowers, along with Bill Tierney, and the Waterdogs? 

Those two will play in the semifinals this coming Saturday at 3 at Suburu Park in Chester, Pa. The first semifinal will match the California Redwoods (with injured Princeton alum Sam English) and the Denver Outlaws (with no Princetonians).

The Atlas won the Eastern Conference title and earned a first-round bye. The Waterdogs took down the Maryland Whipsnakes 14-12 Saturday to earn their spot int he semifinals. 

Dave Giancola, the ESPN+ announcer for Princeton Football and Princeton Men's Lacrosse, texted TB during the game to ask him if Currier was the only player who ever played for Tierney, Bates and current head coach Matt Madalon.

That's a great question. Currier played for both Bates and Madalon at Princeton and now plays for Tierney. TB can't think of anyone else who has done so. 

Sowers, a finalist for PLL MVP and Attackman of the Year, had four goals and four assists against the Whipsnakes, whom he tortured this season to the tune of 20 points in three games. Sowers now has played in seven career PLL playoff games, with these totals: 22 goals, 15 assists, 37 points. 

Is that good? 

The Waterdogs are 6-1 in playoff games in which he's played, by the way. He was the 2022 PLL Championship Game MVP as well. 

As for Currier, he doesn't have the points totals that Sowers does, but he does have an extraordinary number of groundballs, considering he's not a face-off specialist or a longstick. In eight PLL playoff games, He has 48 GBs, including seven Saturday night. 

He does have 13 points to go with that, on nine goals and four assists. He didn't score Saturday night, as the Waterdogs got all 14 of their goals from three players on attack: Sowers, Kieran McArdle (6) and C.J. Kirst (4).  

If you're looking for tickets for the semifinals, you can find them HERE. 

The Day Of "Excitingment"

Is "excitingment" a word? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is from his game preview on goprincetontigers.com:

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

You can read the rest of it HERE.

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

Another athletic year has arrived. Is there anything better?  

"When I'm 64"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 * 

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

Schenck had four goals in Paraguay.  

* 

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

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

 

One Month Out

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

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

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

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

Anyway, Princeton football ...

TigerBlog saw this post on X yesterday:

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

— Ross Tucker (@RossTuckerNFL) August 19, 2025 

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

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

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

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

— Ross Tucker (@RossTuckerNFL) August 14, 2025

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

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

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

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

Why is today a good day to talk Princeton Football? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. And Mrs. Diaz-Bonilla

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

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

He asks this question because he got this email yesterday:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good luck and congratulations to the newlyweds. 

TigerBlog wishes them only the best.  

Game Week

Welcome to Game Week No. 1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Dog Days Of Instagram

Say hi to these two. 

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

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

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

At least that's what it says on Wikipedia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

More Traveling

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

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

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

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

Safe travels, Bruce. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 1933 winner was Princeton's own George Dunlap.  

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

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

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

Fly High Big Fella

TigerBlog had to go to a funeral Monday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And there were speeches. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Traveling

TigerBlog has traveled to 37 states in this country. 

Trust him. He just double checked the list. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The tournament runs through the 19th. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Um

Remember TigerBlog's quiz from last week? 

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

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

Um….

— Stuart Schulman (@StuartMSchulman) August 8, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Um, what? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Each team also gets a weekend off. 

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

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

Um, isn't that right?  

Nice Car

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pool A has Argentina, Canada, Paraguay and Uruguay. 

You can watch all tournament games HERE.

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

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

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

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

Admission to all regular season soccer games is free.  

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Enjoy your summer weekend. 

Are there really people who like winter better than summer?  

Trivia Thursday

Who's ready for Trivia Thursday? 

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

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

And with that ... 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the answers ... 

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

Peripheral Vision

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now in his 90s, McPhee is still writing. 

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

You can read the entire original article HERE. 

 

The Football Poll

PRINCETON FOOTBALL 2025 TICKETS 

TigerBlog has a quiz for you today. 

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

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

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

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

Okay, ready for your quiz? 

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

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

And the answer is? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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