Shout-Outs

There is no time on the Princeton campus quite like the Wednesday after graduation. 

It is downright eerie. The only breaks in the silence yesterday came from trucks who were hauling away tents and chairs and any other remnants of Reunions and every other event that brought tens of thousands to the campus for the last week. 

The men's lacrosse team missed most of the festivities, of course. The Tigers were busy in Charlottesville, Va., taking the program's seventh NCAA championship with its 16-9 demolition of Notre Dame. 

TigerBlog has already given all of the credit where it belongs, to the coaches and the players who made it happen. Still, there are some other shout outs that need to be offered, and TB will do so for the rest of today — understanding that there were quite a few more people who contributed to the team succes and he's sorry to be leaving anyone out. 

SHOUT-OUT
There is absolutely no doubt that without the man holding the trophy, there would have been no NCAA championship. Don't believe TigerBlog? Ask any member of the team. 

That would be Drew Cottrell, the Director of Operations, a title that hardly describes everything he does. There is no detail in the program that doesn't have Cotts' fingerprints on it.  

Without him the team would have no food, no buses, no hotel rooms, no practice times, nothing. If you think all of that is easy, try it for a week. The extent to which he does this flawlessly is extraordinary to watch. 

Plus, he does it all with a constant smile and easy-going demeanor. It seems like nothing gets him flustered. 

The first shout-out has to go his way.  

SHOUT-OUT
The first one goes to these three — Derek Griesdorn, Pat Moran and Brian Ackerman. As TigerBlog mentioned the other day, Princeton midfielder Parker Reynolds had his No. 8 jersey get sliced up the side in the 14-7 semifinal win over Duke. 

Rather than tell Reynolds that he had to wear a different number (it would have been No. 30, the extra jersey), Griesdorn and Ackerman of the equipment staff decided to find a way to fix it. That involved a $25 portable sewing machine that they bought at Walmart Saturday night. Oh, it was batteries not included, so they need four AAs.

Moran is a writing professor at Princeton and one of the team's Athletic Fellows. He was supervising. As TB's friend and colleague Jon Kurian, who took the photo, said this: 

Fixing Parker Reynolds Jersey the night before the championship. With a sewing machine that takes four AA batteries. And a professor of writing from Princeton. 

It's funny, but it's also true. Whatever it takes. As head coach Matt Madalon says, "everything we achieve, we achieve together."

SHOUT-OUT
Tony Rosato, T-Ros as he is known to the men's lacrosse team, has been the team's strength and conditioning coach the last four years. The championship game was his final one at Princeton, as he is leaving college athletics to go into a different position in performance. 

T-Ros may be young, but everything he did with the team earned everyone's respect. He brings a big presence with him, and he is cutting edge in his physical and analytical approach to the job. 

Did you notice that the Princeton team is loaded with guys who are ripped? Did you notice that the Princeton team did not wilt when the temperature on the field at the 14-10 quarterfinal win over Penn State reached more than 110 degrees? Did you notice how fresh Princeton was when playing a second game in three days this year, something the Tigers did three times and won all three? 

Yeah, a lot of that credit goes to T-Ros. He will be hard to replace, though TB wishes him the best of luck. And it's great that he went out on a championship note. 

SHOUT-OUT
Then there's these three, pictured at the Ivy League opener at Yale back on March 14. That's Ben Heske, Nick Ierardi and Camryn Ley.

The last time Princeton had won an NCAA championship was in 2001. The biggest need was for some pictures, one for the webpage and then a bunch for the media guide. 

Now that it was 25 years later, the whole world had changed. Social media. Perhaps you've heard of it? Content creation? It's the name of the game. 

That's where these three came in. TB can't begin to calculate how many pictures Camryn and Nick have taken or how much video Ben has shot and edited. Whatever that number, it is wildly high, but there is more than quantity. 

If you followed the team on Instagram or X, you've seen their work. The 2026 championship will last forever, in memories but also in pictures and video, captured effortlessly (it seems) by these three. 

This is Becka Owens, the team's athletic trainer. That's one athletic trainer for 52 players. 

Her job isn't an easy one. Princeton played 19 games this season, the most it ever has. That's a very grueling path to the championship.

Much like T-Ros, Becka deserves credit for how fresh the Tigers were at the end of the season, how well they held up in the heat against Penn State, how well they played on the back end of three different two-game weekends. 

Beyond all that, Becka has had quite a year. In fact, she was unemployed 12 months ago, when he former employer, Limestone College, shut down. She had been the men's lacrosse athletic trainer at Limestone, a Division II powerhouse. 

And now here she was Monday, celebrating the Division I championship. No wonder she's smiling.  

SHOUT-OUT
Lastly, there is the matter of "The Shorts."

TigerBlog first wore these to the field hockey game at Northwestern last fall. Before the game, Tiger head coach Carla Tagliente commented that, quoting directly: "those are the ugliest shorts I've ever seen." 

Then Princeton won. Immediately, the mandate from Tagliente was to wear them until the Tigers lost. It would be until the second overtime of the NCAA championship game until that happened, by which time the team had won 11 straight. Of course, the temperature had gone down considerably in that time, especially at the Ivy League tournament at Harvard in early November, but there they were, the shorts.

Eventually this lacrosse season, TigerBlog decided to trot them out again, and again the Tigers won. Tagliente and Associate Head Coach Dina Rizzo again insisted he stay with them, as did any field hockey player he saw along the way. 

This led to Sunday night, when Princeton had reached the final against Notre Dame. The shorts had only one loss at that time, but it was in an NCAA final. Should he tempt fate and wear them again? Should he find something different to wear? He and Dina went back and forth. 

It wasn't until just before the game that he decided to stay with the shorts. Princeton 16, Notre Dame 9. 

The shorts? Well, is a record of 17-1 with one NCAA championship and another finals appearance good? 

Should he retire them? Frame them and hang them somewhere? Not be superstitious? 

To be determined.