A Day For Brycie

TigerBlog can guarantee you that Bryce Chase will laugh when he reads this. 

He can also guarantee you that Bryce will give TB a hard time next time he sees him. 

Having opened with that, when TigerBlog first saw the news that an endowment had been established to create the "Bryce Chase ’63 Offensive Coordinator" position with Princeton men's lacrosse, he wondered why the offensive coordinator and not the defensive coordinator.

Then it dawned on him: Bryce is offensive. 

Just kidding. Just kidding. Sort of. 

Here's the first paragraph of TB's feature story on Bryce from nearly 20 years ago: 

The curse words that fly from Bryce Chase's mouth at a rate of two or three per paragraph are there merely as punctuation marks, rather than subjects, verbs or even the more extreme modifiers. You can forgive him for this for a bunch of reasons. First, he's not using them to be offensive. Next, he'll be 68 on his next birthday, so who's going to teach him new tricks anyway? Lastly, who would expect any different after learning that he spent eight years in the United States Marine Corps? 

Yes, Bryce is famous for his, um, salty language. As TB wrote, though, they're punctuation marks. 

The truth is that Bryce is actually one of the most sincere, most tenderhearted, most caring, most genuine people TB has ever met. Actually, that'll probably annoy him more than when he was called "offensive," probably because Brycie knows it's true. 

If you don't believe TigerBlog, you can ask any of the Princeton men's lacrosse alums who flocked to Sherrerd Field Saturday. They came to see Princeton play Penn — a game the Tigers won 20-8 — but they also came back for Brycie, on the occasion of the formal dedication of that endowment.

TigerBlog has written that Bryce Chase is the backbone of the Princeton men's lacrosse program. He also wrote this, that Bryce was "a mentor and a friend, at times a calming presence and at others the voice of accountability, and always a fixture on the sideline for literally hundreds of young men who have played lacrosse at Princeton."

When you get to where Bryce is now, or, to a large extent, where TB is now, what you remember most are the people, the relationships you made, as much as any game or championship. One year turns into the next. One decade turns into the next. What year did that guy graduate? Which year was that game? 

Those specifics fade (well, not for TB, of course). What you're left with is what you saw if you were there Saturday — just a whole lot of love for someone who has been such a huge part of something that's special to you as well.  

It was everywhere Saturday. 

It was on buttons. It was on the players' shooting shirts, which were old-school white tops with Bryce's No. 31 on them. It was in Jim Mitchell's pregame speech in the team room. That's the same Jim Mitchell who is the first person to hold the title that now bears Brycie's name. 

It was in the stands, where the alums had gathered. It was on the field at halftime, where Bryce was joined by his family, as well as those who had made this endowment possible. It was afterwards, when the celebration continued. 

While that halftime ceremony was going on, the scoreboard said Princeton 8, Penn 6. This was a big game in terms of the Ivy League race and Princeton's place near the top of the national rankings. 

It was also a big game because of the man who was being honored. TigerBlog has to think that no Princeton player wanted to have to look Bryce in the eye if that game had gotten away, and so the Tigers went out and scored the first 12 goals after intermission. 

Princeton, Cornell and Harvard have all clinched Ivy tournament spots. Any of those three can host the upcoming tournament, as can Yale, who hasn't clinched a spot yet. 

With its early non-league season wins over Maryland, Syracuse, North Carolina and Rutgers, all of whom are in the RPI top 16, and with league wins over two other Top 20 teams (Yale and now Penn), Princeton is almost surely headed to the NCAA tournament for the fifth straight year. 

Next up is Harvard in Cambridge Saturday, which will be a big part of determining who the Ivy champ is and where the tournament will be. That's all for the future. 

No matter what happens the rest of the way, though, what happened this past Saturday will definitely be one of the 2026 highlights. And that's because of the man who was honored. 

Offensive? He likes to think he is. 

What he really is, though, is the guy who brought out all that love you saw Saturday at Sherrerd Field. 

Sorry Brycie. That's the truth.