TigerBlog can't begin to guess how many "media day" photos were taken last week on Jadwin Gym's D level.
There were five teams who went through the four stations: men's soccer, women's soccer, field hockey, women's volleyball and men's water polo. That's nearly 100 athletes.
Total photos taken? Maybe close to 100,000?
And that doesn't even count the teams still to come — football, women's rugby and men's and women's cross country — who will be taking their turns this coming week. That's a lot of shooting, editing, posting and everything else.
If you follow any of these teams and athletes on Instagram, then you've seen several hundred of the finished products. If you follow teams from other schools, you can see how huge a part of college athletics this has become. It's another item on the "didn't exist all that long ago and now would be unfathomable not to do" list.
TB is, of course, biased towards field hockey, so he says this with that disclaimer. Of all those photos that were taken, these were his two favorites.
If you're wondering, by the way, that's Molly Nye of the field hockey team, a junior who was a key part of last year's run to double overtime of the NCAA championship game. Fun fact: Nye's family home is within walking distance of the field at Harvard where Princeton won the Ivy League tournament last year.
Anyway, which do you like better, facing the camera of facing the Tiger? TB went through this after the NCAA men's lacrosse championship last spring, when he had these two pictures taken with Miss TigerBlog ’22:
He's still not sure. He's just glad he has that conundrum in his life. You know. The championship and all.
Oh, and a belated Happy Birthday to MTB. For those who remember her from her Little Miss TigerBlog days, she's 26 now. Yeah.
MTB is actually four months older than Washington Commanders' quarterback Jayden Daniels, who is still 25. Or is that five?
Daniels, you might recall, had his legal representatives tell LSU that they no longer had the right to use his name, image and likeness because the football program gave his No. 5 jersey to a different player. He called this "profoundly disrespectful."
Clearly Daniels has never done stats at an LSU football game. With rosters of more than 100 players, not having the ability to use all available ones makes it even more problematic for the statkeepers.
Besides, it's college football, not the NFL. FBS rosters completely turn over every four five six seven eight years (or, moving forward, perhaps only five).
Princeton has retired exactly one number, and it's across all 38 sports. That's the number 42, the one worn by both Dick Kazmaier and Bill Bradley, worn by nobody in either of their sports since they did and nobody at Princeton on any team since 2009.
TB wrote this as he watched the field hockey team practice yesterday afternoon on Bedford Field. Opening day for the Tigers is a little more than two weeks away.
As with every year and with every team, you have players who graduated and freshmen who are coming into the program. There are six freshmen on this team, four of whom are wearing a uniform number that belonged to someone who graduated last year and the other two of whom are wearing one that nobody wore last year but was worn for the previous four years by someone else.
It's just how it is. In fact it's a fun part of Princeton Athletics, following the legacy of uniform numbers, something that can be traced back more than 100 years for certain teams.
In the case of field hockey 2026, on its most simplistic level, you have the No. 14. It belonged for the last four years to Ella Hampson, an Englishwoman with a very big personality whose default was laughter. Now that number has been passed on to Savannah Faulkner, a freshman from Louisville. To see the No. 14 on the field without hearing Hampson's running commentary takes a little adjustment, but it's also something TB loves to see.
It's the literal marching forward of each team's lineage. That's an ultimate sign of respect.
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