Hep Cats

TigerBlog sat in the football locker room at Delaware Stadium Sunday about an hour before the start of Princeton's men's lacrosse quarterfinal win over Penn State to send the Tigers to the Final Four. 

It'll be Princeton-Duke at noon in Charlottesville Saturday. You can get tickets HERE. 

(Note — this will be the final lacrosse mention of the day). 

TB had set his alarm for 11 to watch the women's 3,000-meter steeplechase from the Ivy League Heptagonal track and field championships at Weaver Stadium. He wanted to watch Pia Beaulieu run for Princeton, and he thought that's when the race was to begin. 

His interest stemmed from the feature story he wrote about Beaulieu prior to the start of Heps. If you haven't read it, you can do so HERE. 

TB knew nothing about Beaulieu prior to speaking with her for 20 minutes or so last week. He came away from the experience with a pretty good idea of what Princeton women's soccer coach meant about how, when he first began to recruit her, that "the performance matched the personality."

To say that Beaulieu has a big personality is quite the understatement. She overwhelms you with her energy and her somewhat unpredictable changes of direction in her conversations, and she balances that with depth in what she says. It's a good double. 

Beaulieu was an All-Ivy League soccer player this past fall. With the end of the season, she was able to join the track and field team, and she came in sixth in the Indoor Heps mile, earning Princeton a point along the way to the championship. She had been seeded 21st, by the way. 

The outdoor season has seen her introduced to TB's favorite track event, the steeplechase. She seems to have enjoyed the introduction, since she moved into the 13th spot in the NCAA East rankings after just three times having run it. That's three, as in one-two-three. She also cut 28 seconds off between her first and third attempts. 

Her fourth time came in outdoor Heps Sunday. TigerBlog was looking forward to watching it, only to turn on ESPN+ to see that she was being interviewed after her win. Oh well. He had the start time wrong. Beaulieu didn't. 

How she won was pretty impressive. TB learned a new term from women's coach Brad Hunt — negative split — which is to say your second half is faster than your first. Beaulieu's first full lap in the seven-plus lap race was in 1:20.04. Her final lap was in 1:13.27. She won the race by nearly two seconds; there was another 10-second drop from second to third. 

Now that's impressive stuff. 

You know what else is impressive? How about the men's steeplechase? In that race, Princeton had five runners in the final and they only went 1-2-3-4-5. What? How is that even possible? 

Brian Boler won the event, followed in order by Jackson Shorten, Marcelo Parra Ramon, Sebastian Martinez and Franco Parra Ramon. And then? There was a nearly 10-second drop down to the first non-Tiger across the line. 

Even with Beaulieu's win, Brown actually got more team points (12-10) from the women's race. On the men's side, there were 31 points awarded in all for the steeple — and Princeton got 30 of them. TB wonders if a team has ever taken the top five spots in a Heps race before. 

As for the overall, Princeton's men and women destroyed the field, both winning easily. In fact, they won by a combined 135 points. 

In doing so, both teams completed yet another "Triple Crown" of Heps titles in cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field. The last time both Princeton teams did so in the same year was ... last year. 

The women won nine individual events in becoming the first women's program to win back-to-back Triple Crowns. The men? They won eight individual titles and have now won three straight triple crowns and 13 all time. 

If you'd like to see all the winners, the final results are HERE.