Final Jeopardy, Opening Day

Okay, here is your Princeton Athletics "Final Jeopardy" category: 

"No. 42"

And the Final Jeopardy answer is: 

"He was the last Princeton athlete to wear the No. 42 in any sport."

Cue the music. 

Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah. Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah, Dit, Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah. 

While that is stuck in your head, consider what today is: OPENING DAY!!!!

The women's soccer team will be home tonight at 7 against Loyola. That's a real game, by the way, not a scrimmage. 

TigerBlog wrote this back on July 9, when he mentioned that it was six weeks out from the first Princeton Athletic event of the 2026-27 year: 

Enjoy the rest of the summer. It'll be six weeks from now in no time.  

He was right. And here you are, on Opening Day.

The women's soccer season will get off to a flying start, with four games between now and the end of August alone. The Tigers will be at Syracuse Sunday and then home again a week from today against West Virginia and a week from Sunday against James Madison. There are three more games in the first 10 days of September. 

To give you a sense of how the college athletic calendar gradually shifts, the first women's soccer game 10 years ago was on Aug. 26. If you go back 20 years, it was on Sept. 2. 

And keep in mind, the rest of Division I starts a week earlier than the Ivy League. They've been practicing since July, hoping to play into December — the middle of December at that. All of these teams that are playing in mid-August? The NCAA Women's College Cup will be Dec. 10 and 13 in Cary, N.C.

That's a long way off. 

In fact, the women's and men's semifinals and finals will both be that weekend at the same site, with the men's games one day behind the women's. Is this a first? Is TB reading the dates wrong? 

Also, can you tell TB who the defending champions are, by the way? Florida State on the women's side and Washington on the men's side. 

Remember, by the way, that there is no admission fee for all regular season fall teams at Princeton other than football. And those other fall teams will be underway soon as well. 

The men's soccer team will play two home games in August, opening a week from Friday against Villanova and then the 31st against Portland. Fast forward to Friday, Sept. 2 (that's two weeks from tomorrow by the way), and you have the openers for men's and women's cross country, women's volleyball, men's water polo and field hockey. 

Opening Day for any sport is always exciting. Even the New York Jets can be excited on their opening day. 

At Princeton, this is more than just one soccer game. It's the start of a run that will go all the way into June, with 38 varsity teams and 1,000 varsity athletes. There will be (hopefully, knock wood) championships won, individual honors accrued, records set. There will be great games. There will be tough losses. 

And the best part is that there is no way to know which sports and athletes and events those will all be. 

Oh, and back at Final Jeopardy: 

The question: Who is Greg Seaman?

He wore No. 42 for the men's lacrosse team until he graduated in 2009. Today he is the head of the men's lacrosse Friends' Group.  

Here he is at the dinner to retire the No. 42 back in 2009, along with John McPhee and Princeton athletic legends (and No. 42 wearers) Bill Bradley and Dick Kazmaier:

Lastly when TB was in the newspaper business, he used to go to a welcome back luncheon at what was then Trenton State College and is now The College of New Jersey. Each year, the college president would always say the same thing: "I predict that all of our teams will go undefeated this year." 

TigerBlog won't go that far. He's pretty sure there will be some losses mixed in. As he thinks back to those luncheons, though, he always goes back to his mindset at the time. He was in his mid-20s and wondering if he could make this his entire career. He always figured he'd do it for one more academic year and then figure out what his "real" job would be. 

And then, come the start of the next year, he'd feel recharged and excited about what might happen during the coming months. He figured when he lost that, then he'd know it was time to try something different. 

He still thinks that way. That's why he's still doing this all these decades later. 

Go Tigers. Here's to another great year.