The Tigers stayed at a golf resort, similar to where the men's lacrosse team stayed in Charlottesville during its Final Four weekend this past spring. If you didn't hear, Princeton won.
Those little white dots are golf balls. There were probably 10-15 or so. TB's view was blocked.
How did they end up on that roof? They couldn't possibly have come from the tee box next to the pool. They had to come from a different hole.
And how often does someone go out on the roof to get them? Daily? Weekly?
Pru Lindsey scored both Princeton goals, a little more than three minutes apart in the second quarter. Princeton's defense was again lockdown, though it did allow a goal for the first time this season. No other Division I team had held its opponents scoreless as long.
Afterwards, a few of the players sat under a tree at the postgame tailgate, and the discussion turned to whether or not it was a good thing that Princeton gave up a goal. You know, it gets rid of the pressure of being the only team who was perfect. Most of the players said yes, and TB agrees with them. Of course, that's only because the team won the game.
It's not the game that TB wants to talk about, though. It's not the golf balls on the roof or the bus ride or anything else. It's what the conversation was at the team breakfast in the hotel.
Usually the coaches and staff sit at one table and the players sit at the other ones. This time, a few of the players mixed in at the "adult" table. The conversation eventually turned to 9/11.
None of these players had been born at the time. All they know about that day is what they've heard or what they've been taught. There's only so much you can get from what it was like that day, and before it and after it, if you weren't alive for it and old enough to appreciate it.
Or is there?
One of the players mentioned that her father was supposed to have been at a meeting in one of the towers that morning, only he was running late. She said he was sprinting towards the building when he saw the first plane hit.
That was stunning to hear, even 25 years later. Her mother was pregnant with her older brother. Had her father been on time, she wouldn't have been there to tell the story. Has she ever considered that? TB guesses she has, more than once.
How many others have stories like that? How many missed planes, or changed their flights, or didn't go at the last minute? Who was sick and couldn't go to work that day?
And then there's the other side. How many were there because of last minute changes, or simple bad luck? How many weren't born because of it?
The players couldn't believe what they were hearing about how the world was on 9/10/01, how your parents could meet you at the gate in the airport, how you could bring whatever you wanted onto the plane, how security was barely one metal detector.
TigerBlog told them about all the Princeton athletes who were at or near the Trade Center that morning. He told them about the football media lunch the next day, when then-head coach Roger Hughes talked about how he tracked down all of the players from the program who were there.
TB thought back to the story he wrote about Dan Swingos, former captain, and how he barely escaped being buried under the rubble. And he told them about John Schroeder, "Stinky," who didn't make it out.
Mostly, he was lost in his own thoughts, about the world pre-9/11 and the staggering ways in which it has never been the same. And how the number of people who remember those days continues to dwindles.
Breakfast ended around 10. A little more than two hours later, he was on the field at Penn State for the game, listening to the Star Spangled Banner. It's a song that always inspires pride in TB.
Yesterday, it was even more special to think about the lyrics. And to be grateful to all of the nameless people who have done so much and given so much — in many cases given everything — to keep it from happening here again.
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