Pretty Flamingo

Here are two pretty fascinating pieces of information from TigerBlog's brain Snapple cap. 

First, flamingos are pink because they eat a lot of shrimp. TB can picture all these pink birds, one foot on the ground, the other pretentiously facing outward, as they complain about having to peal all these shrimp. 

While TB is on the subject, what color would they be if they didn't eat shrimp? Say they gave up on the shrimp and went to a diet of, say, sea bass. 

Then there's the second one. Tiger stripes are on their actual skin, not on their fur. 

It's clearly a sign of toughness. It's a rite of passage. You want to be an actual jungle Tiger? You better earn your stripes. And none of this stripes-on-fur stuff. That's for lions or giraffes or someone not as bold. 

TigerBlog has no segue from that to the women's open rowing team's Ivy League championship this past weekend, so he'll dive right into it. 

Oh wait, wait.  

Flamingos. Pretty Flamingo. Fast forward to 5:00 if you don't want to hear his story. Also, there is absolutely no mention of shrimp anywhere in the song, but it's still a classic. 

Okay, back to the Ivy League women's rowing championships — or at least a few days beforehand. TigerBlog saw Princeton head coach Lori Dauphiny as TB walked out of the last department meeting of the year, and he said "hello."

He could have said: "Good luck in the Ivy championships," but what would the point have been? Lori would have said "we really don't have a good chance," to which TB would have said "you said that last year, and the year before, etc." 

And then Lori would have laughed and headed away, on her way to the boathouse, to put the finishing touches on yet another championship.

For the record, Lori's team did in fact have a chance, a really good one at that. 

The Tigers won the first varsity 8 race by 3.5 seconds. Beyond that, Princeton also won the Shoemaker Trophy for the overall points title by one over Yale, 44-43.

🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇

So much gold!

The First Varsity of Lindsay Saunders, Amalka Delevante, Joely Cherniss, Anna Cowell, Michaela Ulicna, Ellie Smith, Cate Sauer, Laoise O'Donohue and Phaedra Van Der Molen cross the line 3.5 seconds ahead of Yale! pic.twitter.com/4nJZeudSfL

— Princeton Open Women (@princetonwcrew) May 17, 2026

What are the prizes? The first varsity 8 winner is crowned Ivy League champion. The points winner earns the league's automatic bid to the NCAA championships.  

By the way, make that nine straight and 10 of 11 Ivy titles for opening rowing.  

In this case, Princeton took both. The team found out yesterday its seeds for the NCAA regatta, which will be in Georgia next weekend. Where are the Tigers? The first varsity is fourth. So is the second varsity 8. The varsity four is 11th. 

The top three seeds in the 1V are Tennessee, Texas and Stanford. In the 2V it's Texas, Stanford and Virginia. 

If you've never been to an NCAA rowing championship, it's worth the effort. It's a rowing festival of the highest order. 

Meanwhile, the Ivy League championship won by the 1V was Princeton's final one of the academic year. Again, here is the full list: 

Fall: men's soccer, women's soccer, women's volleyball, men's cross country, women's cross country
Winter: women's basketball, men's swimming and diving, women's swimming and diving, men's indoor track and field, women's indoor track and field, women's squash
Spring: softball, men's lacrosse, women's tennis, women's open rowing, men's indoor track and field, women's indoor track and field

Okay, Count von Count. How about you count them all out for everyone?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 — Seventeen Ivy League titles. That ties the all-time league record, set a year ago by ... Princeton.  

And, again, that doesn't include field hockey, which won the Ivy tournament on its way to the NCAA final, or women's hockey, who won the ECAC regular season, or women's lightweight rowing, who won Eastern Sprints, or men's water polo, the NWPC champion, or men's heavyweight and lightweight rowing, who both won the overall points trophy at Eastern Sprints. 

Not bad. Not bad at all.  

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.

 

Not For The Meeks

The game was over; the trip to Charlottesville and a date at noon Saturday with Duke in the Final Four secured. 

The Princeton men's lacrosse team was in its locker room. The celebration of the 14-10 win over Penn State in the quarterfinals was in full swing. 

TigerBlog had to interrupt the festivities for three players who were needed in the postgame interview room. One was Jackson Green, who had three caused turnovers, two of which directly set up Princeton goals, and who yet again could not have his impact on the game measured in statistics.

Another was Tucker Wade, who had already been interviewed on TV and now was headed to answer more questions from the assembled print media. Here are two important things to know about Wade: 1) he scores a lot of goals (four in the game, 35 for the season now) and 2) he hates the spotlight. TB felt badly about having to ask him, except that he had been dominant. 

The third was Andrew McMeekin. On a day when Princeton's "we not me" attitude was on full display, nobody had the impact on the game that McMeekin did. McMeekin had no shirt on when TB told him he was needed, which led TB to two thoughts: 1) what must it be like to walk down the beach with his arms and 2) how in the world is this guy so underrated? 

McMeekin, Princeton's record setting face-off specialist, had just gone up against Penn State's Colby Baldwin and Reid Gills, who between them had the Nittany Lions fifth in Division I in winning percentage at the X, with better than .600. On a brutally hot day on the Delaware turf, the challenge for McMeekin was to take almost every face-off for the Tigers and not get worn down by the two-headed monster he was up against. 

This brings TB back to McMeekin's arms, and the rest of him. If you've never seen him in anything other than a lacrosse uniform, he comes across a bit like Jaws, either the one from from the old James Bond movies or possibly the great white shark. If anyone could match up physically, it would be McMeekin.

This was from an Inside Lacrosse story of anonymous coaches' scouting reports, under "Penn State keys to win:"

"Keep Andrew McMeekin on his toes with your 1-2 punch at the stripe."

There was also this: 

"Baldwin is a veteran, good off the ground, different than Gills in that he makes everything a scrap. The combination of them both makes it really hard on the opposing specialist." 

So what happened? McMeekin went 19 for 26 with 12 groundballs and a goal. And it wasn't just any goal. It came in the fourth quarter, six seconds after John Dunphey had given the Tigers an 11-10 lead. McMeekin's goal made it a two-goal Tiger advantage and was the kind of backbreaking goal that can only come from a face-off guy. 

Here are some of McMeekin's records:

* most face-off wins in Princeton history
* most groundballs in Princeton history
* ranks 1-2 on Princeton's single-season groundballs list
* has three seasons of 100 GBs; no other Tiger has more than one
* this season's team has won more face-offs than any other in Princeton history

And yet, where are his individual honors? 

Other than being the Most Outstanding Player of the Ivy League tournament as a sophomore and a second team All-Ivy selection this year, there's not really much else. When USA Lacrosse Magazine released its All-American team, he was nowhere to be found. He didn't earn any honors a year ago, Ivy or national. 

How is that possible? 

Meanwhile, as far as the game yesterday, this was an all-around team effort. Every player who stepped on the field contributed. Take Caden Southworth, a freshman shortstick defensive midfielder who hasn't played much. Princeton threw him out for a huge third-quarter shift because of the heat, and he responded with big one-on-one defense and a big clear. 

Wade had his four. Chad Palumbo had three more goals and two more assists. Behind those two, Princeton had eight different players with one goal each. 

From the opening face-off until the end of the third quarter, neither team led by more than two. It was 6-6 at the half. It was 9-9 after three. It was 10-9 Penn State a minute into the fourth. 

The game came exactly one year to the day when Princeton lost 19-18 to Syracuse in this round, falling short of the goal of Championship Weekend. There was zero chance this team was going to let this one get away. 

And they didn't. They responded with 14 great minutes, scoring the final five goals of the day. Was McMeekin worn down by the heat? 

Well, he won the FO after the Penn State goal and then the next two after that. He didn't take the one after his goal but won the next two. By the time he lost one, there was less than a minute to go in the game and Princeton was headed to Charlottesville. 

Worn down by the heat?

Hah. Have you ever tried to face-off against a great white shark, or a giant guy with steel teeth?  

Quarter Horses

The forecast for Sunday in Newark, Del., is for sunny skies and a high of 85 degrees. 

It'll be there that top-seeded Princeton will play Penn State in the NCAA men's lacrosse quarterfinals. It'll be the second meeting of the year between the teams, after Penn State defeated Princeton 13-7 in the Tigers' season opener back on Valentines' Day. 

The high temperature for that game was 34. 

As is always the case, another season has flown by. Just when the weather is getting better, it's time to determine a champion.  

There are exactly 10 days left between now and Memorial Day, which means that 10 days from today will be the championship game, at Scott Stadium at the University of Virginia. 

There are, obviously, eight teams left heading into this weekend's quarterfinals. The math is easy: one of those eight teams will be in a dog pile 10 days from now and seven others will be left to think of how close they came and regroup for next year. 

The first two games will be played tomorrow at Hofstra, where second-seeded Notre Dame will face Johns Hopkins at noon and then No. 3 North Carolina will take on No. 6 Syracuse. Those winners will play in one semifinal. 

The Princeton-Penn State game is the first one at Delaware, also at noon, followed by a game between two unseeded teams, Georgetown and Duke. The winners of those games play in the other semifinal. 

Princeton is 11-7 all-time in NCAA quarterfinal games, not that a stat like that matters at all right now. Both Princeton and Penn State are loaded with NCAA tournament appearance, as the Tigers are in their fifth straight tournament and Penn State went to the Final Four a year ago. 

You remember last year's quarterfinals, right? It was there (at Hofstra) that Princeton and Syracuse played the best game of the 2025 season. As they say, it's a shame either team had to lose. Unfortunately, one did, and it was Princeton, 19-18.

The season opener this year between Princeton and Penn State was not the best game of this season. It was an awful one for the Tigers, who fell behind 7-1 after one quarter and were never in it. 

Since then? Princeton is 14-1, the lone loss during the regular season to Cornell. That was nine games ago. One of those nine wins was over the Big Red in the Ivy tournament final. 

This Princeton team has scored more goals than any in program history (238) and has allowed 28 fewer goals this season that last (in one fewer game). Princeton has won 247 face-offs, which obliterates the existing single-season program record. 

Face-off wins, though, will not be easy to come by Sunday for either team. Penn State has won just over 60 percent of its face-offs this year, with Reid Gills sixth in Division I and Colby Baldwin 25th. Both have more than 100 face-offs wins this year. 

Of course, if the face-off X is going to be a heavyweight bout, TigerBlog refers you to the Princeton corner, where 6-2, 235-pound Andrew McMeekin sits with his program records for face-off wins and groundballs in a career and his overwhelming postseason success (191 for 336 with 118 GBs in 13 games).

Nate Kabiri comes into the game with 99 career goals and Chad Palumbo comes in 98. Palumbo's last two NCAA games have seen him score 12 goals on 15 shots with three assists. 

Did you read TB's feature story on John Dunphey yet? You can HERE.

If you don't want to read the whole thing, well, TB doesn't know what to tell you. There is a part of it, though, where Dunphey talked about last year's loss to Syracuse:

The takeaway is that one little play here or there and it can get away from you and suddenly you lose 19-18 instead of win 19-18. It shows you how important every little thing is. Maybe you missed a groundball or took a bad shot in the second quarter and didn’t think about it in the moment. You can’t take anything for granted. This time is so sacred and so special. It’s fleeting. How can you make the most of every day? Like I said, maybe you don’t think about it in the moment you didn’t get that groundball. This year, we can’t let that happen.”

Maybe Princeton needed to go through that to get to this point. Lesson learned? Will Princeton be able to reverse what happened three months and 50 degrees ago? 

The prize for the winner is a big one.  

 

Double Feature

Are you too young to remember double features? 

When TigerBlog was a kid, you could often go to the movies and see two different pictures for one ticket. Also, the tickets weren't really all that expensive. Ah, those were the days. 

Anyway, this is a different kind of double-feature week for TigerBlog. It's a double feature story week. 

He posted the first one yesterday, about Princeton senior lacrosse midfielder John Dunphey. You'll have to read it for yourself, which you can do HERE.

Dunphey has gone from being a very solid complementary player for his first three seasons and six games to one of the best middies in the country in a blink. Here is some info from the story: 

Though Princeton lost that game to Cornell 13-11, Dunphey scored twice, on two shots. The following week he scored five more, on five shots, with three assists in a 20-14 win at Brown, earning a spot on the USILA Team of the Week. That win started Princeton’s current winning streak, which has now stretched to nine straight with the win over Marist. Dunphey’s totals in that run? He has 15 goals and 14 assists, for 29 points. That’s an average of 3.2 per game, or triple his career average prior to that. Incredibly, he has scored those 15 goals on just 24 shots, which is a .625 shooting percentage. That’s an insane number. 

Oh, and here's the first line: 

Thuh-Wump. Pfft. Thuh-Wump. Pfft. Thuh-Wump. Pfft. Thuh-Wump. Pfft. 

If that doesn't make you want to read the story, nothing will. 

Princeton, by the way, plays in the NCAA quarterfinals this Sunday at noon against Penn State at the University of Delaware. The Tigers are the top seed in the tournament — and not surprisingly, TB will have more on this matchup tomorrow. 

His other feature story will run tomorrow, in advance of the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships, which will be held at Weaver Track and Field Stadium Saturday and Sunday. The subject of this one? Pia Beaulieu, an All-Ivy League women's soccer player who will be running the 3,000 meter steeplechase at Heps. 

TigerBlog had never met her until he spoke to her last week. She's, uh, memorable. And her story is a really good one. 

TB told women's soccer head coach Sean Driscoll and women's distance coach Brad Hunt that when they suggested the story, they had him at "steeplechase."

There are five remaining Ivy League championships to be crowned for the academic year, and all five will be awarded this weekend. The men's and women's outdoor track and field titles will go the Heps winners, while the women's open rowing and men's heavyweight and lightweight Ivy titles will also be decided this weekend. 

Of those five, three will be won in New Jersey, with the women's Ivy rowing championships on the Cooper River in Pennsauken. The men's Eastern Sprints will be on Lake Quigsigamond, in Worcester, Mass. It's possible that TigerBlog spelled "Quigsigamond" wrong; it's been a challenge for several decades now. 

The men's and women's track teams will be looking to complete another Triple Crown sweep, something that you may take for granted but not something that just happens. All three first varsity 8 races should be crazy competitive after the way the results this season have gone. 

And lastly for today, TigerBlog gives a shoutout to Thanana Kotchasanmanee, a freshman from Thailand who competed at the NCAA golf regionals for the last three days. And how did she do? 

She tied for the individual title, which earns her a spot in the NCAA championships. This is from the story on goprincetontigers.com:

She entered the day six shots off the lead which was held by Cindy Hsu of Texas at -8, and by the end of the day Kotchasanmanee had shot her second 66 (-4) of the week to vault into a tie for first at 204 (-6) alongside Marta Silchenko of Oklahoma State who had also shot 66 in the final round. With the Cowgirls in third place as a team and in possession of one of five team AQs through to the NCAA Championship, Kotchasanmanee was the recipient of the lone individual qualification that goes to the highest-finishing individual not on the five teams to advance.

Kotchasanmanee is the fourth Ivy Leaguer to secure a trip to the NCAA Championship since it was first held in 1982. The other three are all Princetonians as Kotchasanmanee joins Mary Moan (1997), Kelly Shon, (2013) and Maya Walton (2017) as Tigers to reach the final site.

The 2026 NCAA Division I Women's Golf Championship begins May 22 at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif.

And the second feature will be out tomorrow. Make sure you look for it.  

Stacie Too

 

TigerBlog was at the final Department of Athletics staff meeting of 2025-26 yesterday.

One of the staples of each meeting is an update in competitive success — and Princeton has certainly had its share of it this academic year.

In fact, there are 12 Ivy League tournaments each year. How many has Princeton won this academic year?

How about more than half of them? 

Here's the list: men's soccer, field hockey, women's volleyball, women's squash, women's basketball, men's lacrosse, women's lacrosse. That's seven out of 12. 

That makes the final scoreboard for 2025-26 Princeton 7, Everyone Else 5 (that's what it will be when the baseball tournament ends this weekend). 

And that doesn't count men's and women's Heps cross country and indoor track and field and men's and women's swimming and diving, all of which Princeton won, though they aren't technically in the team tournament format. Also, men's and women's Outdoor Heps hasn't happened yet either; they will be held this weekend at Princeton's Weaver Track and Field Stadium. 

Or, for that matter, women's soccer, which was the Ivy League champion by winning the regular season title. Or women's tennis, who won the Ivy title in a sport where there is no tournament. Or women's hockey, who won the ECAC regular season championship. Or men's water polo, who won the NWPC championship. Or women's lightweight rowing, who won Eastern Sprints. Or the other three rowing teams, who compete this weekend for Ivy title. 

So that's a fair amount of winning.

TigerBlog has been here a long time, and he's said the same thing time after time after time: None of this winning is guaranteed. He's even linked to the last scene of the movie "Patton" to hammer home the point: 

TigerBlog isn't sure how many athletic department meetings he's attended. One possible answer would be: "Not as many as Stacie Traube."

Stacie Traube has also been at Princeton longer than TigerBlog. If TB has the numbers correct, she is finishing her 41st year at Princeton, the last 37 of which have been spent in the football office, after four years in the Politics department. 

For all the years TB has know her, he never knew this, which he learned from her bio: 

She began her career at Princeton in the politics department, working closely with the late Prof. Walter F. Murphy. Her name (nee Scofield) can be found within in Murphy's acknowledgements in the preface of the Con-Interp textbook.

That's impressive. 

What's really impressive would be the number of athletes with whom she has worked, beginning before their recruiting visits and continuing long after their graduations. Given the size of the roster and the number of years, that's probably somewhere around 1,000 football players, maybe more, given that she started at a time when there was still freshman football. 

Stacie in many ways is Princeton Football. TB isn't sure how many home games she's missed in all those years, but it's not a lot. There's more to it than that, though.

She's always been super-protective of the program from a standpoint of the people who have played and coached here and any public messaging that has gone out. She has always been dialed in 100 percent on making sure every aspect of the program is properly represented. 

And there's no aspect of the program that hasn't had her fingerprints on it. In a sport where there are offensive coordinators and defensive coordinators and special teams coordinators and running game coordinators and so on, Stacie was just a coordinator. Recruits. Current players. Alums. Coaches. 

Ask any of them what Stacie Traube has meant to Princeton Football. They'll all smile and gush over here, and why wouldn't they? She's made every one of their experiences better. 

You can consider this the third in TB's series of "She's retiring." First it was Karen Malec, from the events staff. Then it was Nancy Donigan, from compliance. 

In this case, it's Stacie Traube who will be stepping away at the end  of the academic year. Those three? That's a combined 116 years of service to Princeton Athletics — loyal, hard-working, high-quality, high-quantity service at that. 

And that's something that deserves to be saluted. 

Again, as TB has said before — twice now — their retirements will leave a huge void around here.  

To The Quarters

 TigerBlog will be back shortly. 

He needs to update Nate Kabiri's and Chad Palumbo's NCAA tournament numbers in the Princeton men's lacrosse record book after the top-seeded Tigers defeated Marist 17-8 in the opening round Sunday on Sherrerd Field. 

This might take a few minutes. In the meantime, you can pencil in this coming Sunday, when Princeton will play Penn State at Delaware in the quarterfinals. Princeton is in the quarterfinals for the second straight year and third time in five years. 

At stake is a trip to the Final Four Memorial Day Weekend in Charlottesville, Va. As a subplot, Penn State defeated Princeton 13-7 back on Valentines' Day in the Tiger season opener; Princeton has won 14 of 15 since and avenged its only other loss, to Cornell, with a 19-9 win two Sundays ago in the Ivy League tournament final. 

Also, while TB is busy, you can check out this groundball from Johns Hopkins' Luke Martin in overtime to set up the possession that gave the Blue Jays the winning goal in a 9-8 win over Cornell. 

THE PLAY OF THE SEASON 🤯🤯 pic.twitter.com/ZXoEwG7vJ3

— Johns Hopkins Men's Lacrosse (@jhumenslacrosse) May 10, 2026

That is without question the greatest single groundball pickup that TigerBlog can ever remember seeing anywhere, let alone at a moment like that, in OT in an NCAA game.  

Okay, TB is back. 

He starts with Palumbo. 

So in the game Sunday, Palumbo put up six goals, tying the program record for goals in an NCAA game. Whose record did he tie? His own. Well, technically, this was the sixth time that a Princeton player has had six goals in an NCAA game: Palumbo twice, Chris Massey twice and Jesse Hubbard and  Coulter Mackesy once each. That's elite company. 

Palumbo's six goals against Marist gave him 12 in his last two NCAA games, including the six he scored against Syracuse in last year's quarterfinal loss. Those 12 goals have come on 15 shots.  

As for Kabiri, the Tewaaraton Award finalist, he had three goals and five assists in the game against Marist. Only Hubbard has ever had more points in an NCAA game, when the Hall-of-Famer had six goals and four assists in the 1996 quarterfinal against Towson. 

Kabiri's eight points are actually tied for second, along with ... Palumbo, who had eight points against Syracuse in that game last year, and Jon Hess, who had a three-goal, five-assist game in the 1997 NCAA final against Maryland as he earned Most Outstanding Player honors. 

Beyond just the NCAA record book, Kabiri now has 99 goals in his career, while Palumbo has 98. Should they get to 100, they would be the 16th and 17th to do so at Princeton.

Kabiri, only a junior, is also on the verge of getting to 100 assists and 200 points (something only eight Tigers have ever done). He brings 95 assists along with those 99 goals into the quarterfinal game, making him already one of only two players in program history with at least 90 goals and 90 assists, along with Michael Sowers (121G, 181A). 

And that's the individual stuff. At this point in May, it's all about the team. Actually, with this group, it's always about the team. 

It was mid-February on Sherrerd Field when Princeton and Penn State met. The high temperature that day was 38, but after the cold spell and snow that dominated the month before, it felt downright warm. 

Hot? That was Penn State's start. The Nittany Lions led 7-1 after the first quarter and won by six. Penn State defeated Army-West point 10-6 Saturday to reach the quarterfinals in its own right. 

There will be all kinds of NCAA tournament experience on the field at Delaware. How much? How about every class on both teams has been to the NCAA tournament every season. 

Penn State reached the Final Four a year ago. Princeton is still smarting from that 19-18 loss to Syracuse last year.

Face-off in Delaware is at noon, followed by Georgetown-Duke. The two winners will meet in one semifinal at UVa. 

The other side of the bracket has Notre Dame-Johns Hopkins and UNC-Syracuse Saturday at Hofstra.  

Softball Celebration

There are times when TigerBlog wishes he could go back to his high school self and tell that guy where technology would be in the future. 

This past Saturday at 7 was one of those times. 

This is how the conversation would have gone:

Current TB: "So there was an NCAA men's lacrosse tournament Zoom, overtime of the Cornell-Hopkins game on ESPNU on YouTube.TV and the Ivy League softball tournament streaming on ESPN+. Had the meeting and the softball game on the laptop and Cornell-Hop on the smart TV. Was also getting texts on the smartphone. Had to pay attention to the meeting for the game while Cornell-Hop went into OT. Wanted to blog about softball for Monday, so wanted to focus on that too."
HS TB: "What in the world are you talking about?" 

That pretty much sums it all up. 

You'll be happy to know that TB was able to follow all three. Meeting went smoothly. Hopkins won in overtime. 

And softball? It was a dominant performance by the Tigers all weekend, finishing it off Saturday night with an 8-0 win over Columbia to take the championship. Princeton went 3-0 at Cynthia Paul Field in the event. 

Had any team other than Princeton come out of the softball tournament with the win and gotten the league's automatic NCAA tournament bid, then that would have been a big shame, after the way Princeton dominated the 21-game regular season. The Tigers tied the Ivy record for league softball wins with 18 and won the league by six games. 

In fact, TB didn't even notice this until he went back to see the standings, but there was a bigger gap between Princeton and second place than there was between second place and last place. He wishes he could go back — easily — and look up how many times that's ever happened in the league in any sport. 

Princeton started the tournament by falling behind 4-0 to Brown after two innings of the first game. From that point forward, Princeton outscored its opponents by a combined 21-2. 

The Tigers came back to take down Brown 7-5 and followed that with a 6-0 win over Columbia. Brown eliminated Harvard, who lost to Columbia in the first round, and then was itself eliminated by Columbia.

That set up the final day of the tournament. Princeton needed one win. Columbia needed a win to force a deciding game. 

It was scoreless into the fourth before Princeton put up five and then closed it out with three more in the fifth. It ended once the eighth run crossed the plate.  

Of course, Cassidy Shaw didn't need eight runs to win the game. The Tiger pitcher went five innings in all three days, striking out 17 and walking only one. Is that good? Seems it. Unsurprisingly, Shaw was the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. 

The win set up quite the Tiger celebration. Shelley Szwast came away with some great shots, including: 

 Those are happy Tigers. 

And why not? This has been one of the greatest seasons in program history, and now the five-time defending Ivy champs head to the NCAA tournament for the 13th time. 

All that was left after the celebration was the selection, which was announced last night at 7. Princeton will be heading to Stillwater and the campus of Oklahoma State, where the Tigers will open the regional with a game against Stanford Friday at 2 Eastern. The host Oklahoma State team will then play Eastern Illinois on the first day of the three-day, double elimination event. 

OK State is 15th in the Division I RPI, one spot ahead of Stanford. Eastern Illinois is 124. Princeton is 83rd. 

Not that any of that matters. Princeton has had a huge season and just had a huge weekend. 

The plane ride to Oklahoma is the reward — and an opportunity to keep it rolling.  

 

NCAA Lax Trivia

The NCAA lacrosse tournaments begin this weekend for the two Princeton teams. 

The women will be at Maryland to take on Rutgers at 2 this afternoon, with the winner to take on the host Terps Sunday at noon. The men will be home Sunday at 2:30 to take on Marist, who defeated Stony Brook 10-6 Wednesday night in the play-in game. 

With these games about to start, who's ready for some Princeton Lacrosse NCAA tournament trivia? You are, right? 

Question No. 1 - Princeton has won six NCAA men's championships and three NCAA women's championships, for a total of nine. How many NCAA championships have the other seven Ivy schools combined to win, with the men and women added together?  

Question No. 2 - Of Princeton's nine combined NCAA championships, five have come in overtime. What five Tigers have championship game OT goals?  

Question No. 3 - Princeton had two players named to the men's NCAA tournament 25th anniversary team in 1995. Who were the two players?  

Question No. 4 - Who holds the Princeton record for career NCAA tournament goals (men or women)?  

Question No. 5 - Chad Palumbo tied the Princeton single-game record for goals in an NCAA game by a Princeton men's player with six in last year's quarterfinals against Syracuse. Whose record did he tie? There were three of them.

Question No. 6 - Both the Princeton men's and women's teams have won better than 60 percent of their all-time NCAA games. Only one other school has done the same. Name the school. 

Question No. 7 - Chris Massey, Jesse Hubbard and Jon Hess played in 11 total NCAA tournament games, with a record of 10-1 and three championships. How many points did those three combine for in those 11 NCAA games? 

Question No. 8 - The game today will be the second postseason tournament game between Princeton and Rutgers. When was the other? 

Question No. 9 - Princeton men and women have played a combined 39 NCAA tournament games on the Princeton campus. What is Princeton's record in those games?  

Question No. 10 - The two Princeton teams have played 18 overtime NCAA games between them. What is their record in those games?  

To put a little space between the questions and answers, here's another dog picture, this one with his own Princeton Lacrosse hat:

Answer No. 1 - 6 (five men, one women)

Answer No. 2 - Andy Moe (1992), Kevin Lowe (1994), Jesse Hubbard (1996), B.J. Prager (2001), Theresa Sherry (2003) 

Answer No. 3 - Scott Bacigalupo and David Morrow — both of whom have children on the current teams (Maggie Bacigalupo and Kevin Morrow)

Answer No. 4 - Lauren Simone, who scored 37 before graduating in 2003. At the time, Simone was tied with Maryland's Jen Adams (now the head coach at Loyola) for the NCAA career record. To give you an idea of how much the game has changed, those two are now tied for 14th. Also, like Bacigalupo and Morrow, Simone (now Lauren Farrell) also has a child who plays lacrosse at Princeton — freshman Grace Farrell. 

Answer No. 5 - Jesse Hubbbard, Chris Massey (twice) and Coulter Mackesy

Answer No. 6 - Maryland

Answer No. 7 - 127. Yes, one-hundred-twenty-seven points, in 11 games. 

Answer No. 8 - Rutgers defeated Princeton 12-10 in the 1979 AIAW consolation round. The AIAW was the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, which was the forerunner for the NCAA tournament for women, which began in 1982 for women's lacrosse. 

Answer No. 9 - Princeton's combined record is 33-6 in NCAA home games. 

Answer No. 10 - In 18 games, Princeton is 10-8. 

How did you do? 

And remember: Princeton-Rutgers women today at 2, winner to play Maryland Sunday at noon. Princeton-Marist men Sunday at 2:30. 

Another Yeah/No

Remember when TigerBlog did this the first time? 

You don't? It was only two months ago. 

Well, even if you don't, here it is again:

YEAH 
Who is that in the picture? That's Jamison Moore of the men's lacrosse team. J-Mo, as he's know, got an A+ on his senior thesis, entitled: "Policy Visibility in a Polarized Age: Government Stimulus and Electoral Accountability in the United States.” How rare is it to get an A+? Apparently very. Apparently it takes multiple graders and then outside approval and confirmation. Anyway, congrats to J-Mo. That's really impressive stuff. 

YEAH
The Ivy League softball tournament starts today at noon at Cynthia Paul Field, where top-seeded Princeton will take on fourth-seed Brown, followed by second-seed Harvard and third-seed Columbia. It's a three-day double-elimination event that will have either six or seven total games. The winner gets the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. 

NO
There is some rain in the forecast for the next few days but nothing that should prevent the tournament from being played. There was enough rain yesterday to force the teams into the Jadwin Gym E-level "pit" for practices. TigerBlog saw a Brown assistant coach who was seemingly lost on C-level and was able to direct her to where she needed to be. It's easy to forget that Jadwin has six levels and is an easy place to get lost. 

NO
TigerBlog made a mistake earlier this week when he said the softball team finished 19-2 in the league to set a record for most wins. Instead, Princeton was actually 18-3, tying its own record — and still very impressive. 

YEAH
How many players are on the field at any one time in softball? That would be nine. How many are in the batting order? Also nine. How many All-Ivy League softball players did Princeton have? Once again, nine. The full recap of those honorees is HERE.

YEAH
The Princeton women's lacrosse team will be making its 31st NCAA tournament appearance when it takes on Rutgers tomorrow at 2 in College Park, Md. The winner of that game gets Maryland, the third overall seed, Sunday at noon. 

YEAH
Princeton women's lacrosse has been to 11 Final Fours and seven NCAA finals, winning three of them. Princeton is 42-27 all-time in NCAA games. 

YEAH
Princeton defeated Rutgers 15-9 in Princeton on Feb. 25. Rutgers is 10-8 on the year, with an RPI of 20. Princeton's RPI is 18. 

NO
TB went back to see the Princeton-Rutgers women's lacrosse year-by-year results, he was surprised to see that they've only played 21 times? How is that possible? Well, it starts with the fact that they first played in 1977 and played each of the next five years but then not again until 1999. Why? No idea. Then they didn't play from 2014 through 2023. Again, no idea. Princeton leads the series 16-4-1. This is the first time the teams will have played at a neutral site. 

YEAH
One last thing from the Ivy tournament sweeps for Princeton. The five all-tournament selections for the women were Maggie Molnar, Haven Dora, Jami MacDonald, Dylan Allen and Ella Sloan. The five men were Nate Kabiri, Chad Palumbo, Tucker Wade, Finn Fox and Ryan Croddick. Molnar and Kabiri were the Most Outstanding Player winners. 

YEAH
The top-seeded Princeton men finally know their first-round opponent. It'll be Marist, who defeated Stony Brook 10-6 last night in one of the two play-in games. It'll be Tigers-Red Foxes Sunday at 2:30 on Sherrerd Field. 
 
NO
Princeton is the No. 1 seed for the third time, despite having won six NCAA titles. The No. 1 seed on the men's side has won only six times in the last 18 tournaments. 

YEAH
Nate Kabiri is one of five men's finalists for the Tewaaraton Award, the highest individual honor in college lacrosse.  Kabiri is Princeton's sixth finalist, along with Coulter Mackesy last year, Michael Sowers in 2019, Tom Schreiber in 2013 and 2014, Ryan Boyle in 2004 and Trevor Tierney in 2001. 

YEAH
Princeton has the second-longest streak of NCAA appearances in Division I with five, trailing only Georgetown's eight.   

YEAH
Princeton sophomore Porter Malkiel has 11 goals on 17 shots, for a .657 shooting percentage. That is the highest shooting percentage any Princeton player with double figures in goals in a season has ever had. 

Welcome, Karameli Fa’ae’e

Karameli Fa'ae'e Named Women's Rugby Head Coach

It dawns on TigerBlog that through the years he's written about a lot of athletes, coaches, alums — and dogs. 

TB loves dogs, ever since he grew up with a toy poodle named "Louie," who was named after the French Revolutionary king.  

And dogs seem to love him. Maybe that's why he takes so many pictures of dogs and has, as such, written about them. 

He's written about dogs on surfboards, dogs on skateboards, dogs who run obstacle courses, dogs who appeared to be driving cars, dogs who were wearing various amounts of Princeton gear; you know, pretty much anything dog-related. 

Take Watson, for instance. 

A Princeton Bulldog. Specifically, the bulldog of former women's lacrosse player Shea Smith and her family. This picture notwithstanding, Watson was the life of the party at pretty much every team tailgate. 

Who else? Remember Fred? TB wrote about him in June of 2014, when he saw him parked outside of a Baltimore ice cream store in a sidecar of a motorcycle. Who was inside the store? A former Princeton swimmer named Stephanie Wright and her family. 

TB didn't know them, though the fact that he was wearing his standard Princeton gear got them to ask about his connection. 

Anyway, here was the photo of Fred (no relation to the Wright family):

Then there was Nutmeg. 

TigerBlog ran into him in the lobby of the Marriott Newton before the 2024 Princeton-Harvard field hockey game. Nutmeg is another good-looking doggo:

How's that for a face? 

It took more than 18 months, but Nutmeg's family reached out yesterday. Yes. Here's what his owner had to say: 

Holy cow!I know I’m a year & a half late to this but very glad Nutmeg brought Princeton great luck in your field hockey game vs Harvard!!
Go Tigers!
Our Nutmeg does love to suck up the attention and rub downs!
He was in town to cheer on our daughter rowing for One Arlington Rowing (club team of Yorktown High School, Arlington, Va) in the Head of the Charles.  

How about that? It's nice to know Nutmeg is doing well. Thanks for reaching out. And his owner is correct. As TB recalls, Nutmeg was an attention, well, hound.  

TigerBlog could go on all day about dogs, except for the news yesterday that Princeton has hired its new women's rugby coach. Her name is Karameli Fa’ae’e, and she's coming to Princeton after being an assistant coach at Brown. 

She's also an assistant coach in the United States national team program, with the U-23 team. Here is a quote from the release announcing her hire that really stood out to TigerBlog:

“I want to acknowledge God, my family and the community who have supported and shaped me into the leader I am today. I am deeply honored to accept the opportunity to serve as Head Coach of the Women's Rugby program at Princeton University. I look forward to building an athletic environment that reflects the same standard of excellence found in its academic mission.  My commitment is to cultivate excellence in performance, integrity in action, and a shared dedication to something greater than ourselves.” 

The women's rugby program at Princeton is still essentially in its infancy. How do you build a winning program? You start by building a winning culture. That seems to be something that Fa’ae’e understands perfectly. 

She certainly has a strong background in the sport. She was a U.S. national team captain as a player, after she played for Samoa and New Zealand. She's been a coach on the collegiate, professional, national and international levels. 

And now she comes to Princeton. If you read the release that TB linked up top, you probably came away thinking the same thing TB did: She looks like she has a lot of energy. 

Maybe it's a rugby thing, but Fa'ae'a certainly gives off a vibe in her photos of enthusiasm, excitement and forcefulness (she can also hold three rugby balls and her phone at the same time). Those are all qualities that will serve her well as she builds her program 

Welcome to Princeton, Karameli Fa'ae'e. 

What's Left?

Guess what's a little more than four months away? 

That's right. Princeton football season. 

The 2026 schedule was released yesterday, and opening kickoff is Sept 19, in Rhode Island, against Bryant. The home opener is a week later against Albany. The other non-league game is at Wagner. 

If you've never been to a game at Wagner, there is an amazing view across the field to the nearby Verrazzano Bridge. 

TigerBlog is pretty sure he'll have more on Princeton Football as the season gets closer. Still, four months doesn't really seem like that long — though there is that little thing called "summer" between now and then. 

What's left of the 2025-26 athletic year at Princeton? While there might not be much left on the schedule, what there is will be very significant. 

As you probably know, Princeton won both Ivy League lacrosse tournaments this past weekend. If you were wondering, that's only happened once before, in 2014, when Penn won both. 

TB knows this because his colleague Chas Dorman, who used to work at Penn, said that he was the lone constant between those two sweeps. TB will give Chas his due on this one. 

Not that this should shock anyone, but TB will have more lacrosse as the week goes along. For now, there's just a reminder that about the the NCAA draw for both teams: the women are at Maryland against Rutgers Friday at 2, while the men (the No. 1 overall seed) will host the winner of Wednesday's play-in game between Marist and Stony Brook in the first round Sunday at 2:30. 

This week will bring the Ivy League softball tournament to Princeton, who went 19-2 during the regular season to set a record for most regular-season league wins. The event is scheduled now to begin Thursday at Cynthia Paul Field, and hopefully the weather cooperates.  

How did Princeton put together its record-setting season? Well, it helps that the Tigers lead the league in team batting, pitching and fielding.  

Princeton, the top seed, will play fourth-seeded Brown in the first game of the double-elimination tournament at noon, followed by second-seeded Harvard and third-seeded Columbia. There will be three games Friday and then one or two Saturday, with the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament for the winner. 

Princeton has won five straight Ivy League softball championships and hosted the league's postseason each of those five years. 

What else is left beyond lacrosse and softball? There is track and field, rowing and NCAA golf. 

There are five Ivy League championships still to be crowned in this calendar year, two in track and field and three in rowing. 

The Ivy League Heptagonal Championships will be held at Weaver Track and Field Stadium next weekend, as both the men and women look to wrap up another Triple Crown. Princeton has tuned up for Heps with the Penn Relays and Larry Ellis Invitational the last two weekends and will be off this weekend. 

TigerBlog's contribution to Heps will be an upcoming feature story on women's soccer player/steeplechaser Pia Beaulieu, which will be on the website at some point next week.

As for rowing, the women's lightweights won yet another Eastern Sprints title, taking both the first varsity 8 race and the overall points championship. Up next is a trip to California at the end of the month for the IRA national championships. 

The three Ivy titles on the table in rowing will also be next weekend, with the Eastern Sprints for the men and the Ivy League championships for the open women. The men's event will be on Lake Quigsingamond in Worcester, Mass.; the women will be on the Cooper River in South Jersey. 

Looking beyond, there will be the NCAA women's rowing championships, the NCAA track and field regionals and the IRAs for men as well, all at the end of the month. There will be the NCAA track and field finals in early June. 

And that'll be it. 

An athletic year at Princeton has somewhere around 700 events. When you get to this point, almost all of those are behind you.

As TB said, though, the ones that are left? They'll all be huge.  

Twin Championships

With all of the goals and all of the stats and everything else that happened this weekend in the two Ivy League lacrosse tournaments, here's are two numbers  that pretty much sum it all up for Princeton: 15 and 26. 

What do those numbers represent? They are combined totals of goals and shots between the Princeton women and men in the quarters that decided the two championship games yesterday. 

Both of those games, by the way, ended with Princeton wins. Both of those wins avenged regular season defeats. 

The women defeated Yale 12-8 after trailing 8-6 heading into the fourth. Princeton then scored six goals on 11 shots while not allowing a Bulldog goal to roll to the championship, its seventh all-time, the most by any Ivy League women's team. 

The men never trailed in a 19-9 win over defending NCAA champion Cornell, but that game was 7-5 entering the third quarter. Princeton then scored nine straight goals, on 15 shots, in the first 14 minutes of the third quarter, blowing the game wide open at 16-5. 

Added together, and that's 15 goals on 26 shots in those two deciding quarters. That's a percentage of .577. That's crazy. 

Also, that's two Ivy League tournament championships. Both of those were won on their opponents' home field.  

There are a few other similarities between the women and men. Both fell behind by four in the first half of their semifinal games. Both then had 7-0 runs to take control. 

When the two Princeton teams relaxed outside Caldwell Field House Thursday waiting for their buses to head to their destinations, the men knew that they were definitely headed to the NCAA tournament and the women knew they probably were. Possibly. Probably. Maybe. You know what's better? Definitely. 

That's what winning the tournament did for Princeton. It locked in an automatic NCAA tournament spot, which made the drive back from New Haven for the Selection Show much less stressful. 

To win its tournament, the Princeton women needed to beat two teams it had lost to during the regular season, starting Friday night in the semifinal against Penn, to whom the Tigers had lost 10-9 in two overtimes April 8. The Quakers jumped out to a quick 4-0 lead. Princeton came back to tie it. 

Penn then went up 5-4. Princeton then scored seven straight. Final score: Princeton 15, Penn 10.

For the men, Yale went up 6-2 in Friday's semifinal at rainy Schoellkopf Field. What did Princeton do? Rip off seven straight of its own, going up 9-6 and winning 12-10. 

That set up yesterday's two finals. 

The women started at noon against a Bulldog team it had lost to 16-8 on March 28. This time it was 4-4 at the half and 8-6 Yale on a goal with two seconds left in the third. The fourth? All Tigers. 

Princeton's six fourth-quarter goals came from five different players, with two from Maggie Molnar. Jami MacDonald had a goal and two assists during that run, and Meg Morrisroe had two assists.

MacDonald finished the tournament with five goals and six assists. Haven Dora had a team Ivy tournament record of seven assists Friday night and finished with 3G, 8A for the two games. 

The men started at 1. By 1:05 the Tigers had a lead they'd never give back against a Big Red team to whom it had lost seven straight, including 13-11 back on March 21. Princeton has not lost since — and it wasn't about to in the ILT final, which turned out to be the Tigers' third title in four years. 

The third quarter was insane. Princeton had a 7-5 lead at the break first had to survive a seven-shot barrage by Cornell in the first 3:51 of the third quarter, which the Tiger D did masterfully. When the Tigers finally got a possession, they were still up by two. Then three. Then four. Then 11. 

Which was the best goal? That's up to you to decide. Andrew McMeekin's behind-the-back score and Jackson Green's "dare me to shoot it? Okay I'll rip a corner" blast were probably the two nicest. 

And then it was the celebration, the photos, the banner, the t-shirts — and then a race to get back to Princeton in time for the selections, which for the women meant 9 and the men 9:30.  

All that was left was to see the NCAA matchups. The men earned the No. 1 overall seed and will be at home Sunday at 2:30 against the winner of the play-in game between Stony Brook and Marist. The women will be on the road, against Rutgers at Maryland. 

There aren't too many teams who are still playing lacrosse now. It was good to see the name "Princeton" come up twice last night on the draw. 

It was even better not to have to sweat out whether it would.  

Welcome To Postseason

Welcome to May. 

Welcome to postseason. 

It starts at 11 this morning, at least Eastern time, when the men's tennis team plays SMU at the University of Texas in the opening round of the NCAA tournament. The host Longhorns will play Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in the second match, and the winners play Saturday in the second round. 

Princeton and SMU are a combined 37-21 on the season. Of those 21 losses between them, eighteen have come to NCAA tournament teams. 

Princeton is looking to get to the NCAA second round for the second year in a row, after beating St. John's last year in Round 1 before falling to Virginia.

The match is likely to be moved indoors due to rain in the forecast. You can follow the live stats HERE.

There is rain in the forecast for Ithaca as well, though there is no chance that the Ivy League tournament for men's lacrosse will be moving indoors. Funny thing about this forecast: There was no rain in it when TigerBlog was packing yesterday for the trip. There were cold temps, but no rain. 

And so TB packed lots of sweatshirts and layers, though sadly no rain stuff. Maybe he should have simply assumed that the first weekend in May in Ithaca always requires being prepared for rain and cold, not just one or the other. 

Hey, he's seen snow there for the Ivy lacrosse tournament. On Mothers' Day.  

Rain or no rain, cold or no cold, it'll be Cornell and Harvard at 4 and then Princeton and Yale at 6:30. The winners meet Sunday at 1 for the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

No matter what, Princeton and Cornell have already shared the 2026 Ivy championship. Also, both of those teams — and quite likely Harvard — are headed to the NCAA field when the bids are announced Sunday night. 

All of those games can be seen on ESPNU. 

Meanwhile, the forecast in New Haven is for clear skies and reasonably warm temps. The Princeton women will be there for their Ivy League tournament, which also begins today. 

Game 1 will be between Yale and Brown, with the opening draw at 4. Princeton and Penn will then play at 7, with the winners to meet Sunday at noon for the automatic bid. Princeton and Penn played a great game the first time around, one that the Quakers won 10-9 in two overtimes. 

The rematch will have huge NCAA implications, since the winner gets two prizes: a shot at the automatic bid and the chance to boost an at-large resume.  

The postseason will be intense. The day before? That wasn't as intense, at least not while the two lacrosse teams waited outside Caldwell Field House for their departures. That was more of a party atmosphere. 

The women, all in matching sweatsuits, sat between the field house and DeNunzio Pool, waiting for their food orders to arrive. TigerBlog congratulated Jami MacDonald on being the Ivy League Attacker of the Year. 

The men's players, as they waited for their bus, played Hacky Sack. Even photographer Camryn Ley joined in, after looking like a kid at the playground who was hoping to get the attention of the big kids. 

TB also showed the Ivy League Defenseman of the Year graphic to Jack Stahl, who was unanimously voted for the honor after a year that saw him also named the Division I Breakout Player of the Year in midseason by Inside Lacrosse. 

Stahl stands 6-4 and says very little. He's Teddy Roosevelt's kind of player — talks softly and carries a big stick. That quote, by the way, is literally etched in stone at Class of 1952 Stadium. 

TB wasn't expecting a huge reaction when Stahl saw the news, and, in keeping with his persona, there wasn't one, just a bit of a smile. TB could tell Stahl was happy, obviously.

Princeton had six first-team All-Ivy men's lacrosse player, tied for the second-most in program history. Only the 1997 team, with seven, had more — and that team went 15-0.  

It was a day to be happy. It was still April, after all. Then the buses left, eventually arriving at their destinations. And then April turned to May. 

And now it's time for postseason. 

Now it's time to get serious.  

Goodbye, April

Goodbye, April. 

You have to love the month. It has no idea what it's trying to do. 

According to AccuWeather, in Princeton this April you had five days where the high temperature was over 80 degrees, with four more with a high between 77 and 79. That's eight of 30 days where it was at least 77.

Ah, but then there's the flip side. There were 11 days where the low was below 40, six of which where it was below freezing. 

The truly fun part is that five of the sub-40 days came after the five 80-plus days. 

Don't ever change, April.

*

The Ivy League baseball regular season comes to an end this weekend. There are three teams who are locked into the tournament — Penn, Brown and Yale, any of whom could still be the host. 

There are also four teams in a race for the fourth and final spot — Princeton, Columbia, Cornell and Dartmouth. 

Princeton ends its season with three home games against the Crimson, who have already been eliminated from the ILT. The enter the weekend in fifth place, at 8-10 in the league, one game up on Dartmouth and Cornell. 

Then there is Columbia. The Lions had a postponed game against Brown from earlier in the season that was made up yesterday, when Brown did Princeton a big favor with a win that dropped the Lions to 8-9-1. That "-1" is a tie game with Yale that won't be finished, so winning percentage will be the ultimate decider of the last spot.  

Working in Princeton's favor is the fact that it holds the tiebreaker over Dartmouth and Cornell after having won the season series against each. The Tigers also have the tiebreaker over Columbia, but unless Princeton somehow ends up with a tie then that won't matter. 

The other three matchups this weekend have Columbia at Cornell, Dartmouth at Yale and Brown at Penn. 

First pitch for Saturday's doubleheader at Clarke Field is 11:30 and for Sunday's single game is noon.  

*

The Larry Ellis Invitational Meet will be held at Weaver Track & Field Stadium this weekend, beginning tomorrow and running through Sunday. 

As was the case with the Sam Howell Invitational a few weeks ago, TigerBlog would like to remind everyone who Larry Ellis was. 

Does the name Bob Beamon mean anything to you? Beaman was the one who soared 29-2 1/4 in the long jump at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City, shattering the existing record by nearly two feet. For more than two decades, nobody came close to touching the record, and it was among those considered unbreakable — until it was broken in 1991, when Mike Powell leapt 29-4 1/4. Now, 38 years later, Beamon's jump is still second. 

Why bring up Beaman? He grew up in New York City, Jamaica, to be exact. It was there that he was first mentored by the then-Jamaica High School coach. His name? Larry Ellis.

That's the same Larry Ellis who went on to become one of Princeton's most legendary coaches ever, with a 22-year run with the men's track and field program, as well multiple cycles as an Olympic coach. Also like Howell, Ellis was a true gentleman and a warm, welcoming person. 

He could also cut to the chase, at least in one example that TB overheard. He was walking down the Jadwin Gym balcony one day when he saw Ellis and one of his athletes in a conversation against the railing:

Athlete: What do I have to do to get my time down?
Ellis: Run faster.  

TB will never forget that. 

Ellis passed away in 1998 at the age of 70.  

*

Among the rowing highlights this weekend will be a matchup Saturday between the third-ranked Princeton heavyweight men and No. 6 Brown on Lake Carnegie for the Content Cup, which honors Martha Content Joukoswky, Brown Class of 1958, and dates to 1994. 

The women's open rowing team welcomes Penn and Central Florida Saturday as well. The lightweight women have their Eastern Sprints Sunday in Worcester. 

*

The Princeton softball regular season ends this weekend with three games against Dartmouth at Cynthia Paul Field. The facility will be back in business next weekend, for the Ivy League tournament.

Princeton, 17-1 in the league, has already clinched the Ivy title and the host role for the ILT. Should Princeton get at least one win this weekend against the Big Green, it would tie the record for most wins ever in an Ivy softball season.

The rest of the field for the tournament isn't set yet, as three out of Columbia, Harvard, Brown and Penn will be in town next weekend. 

*

The complete weekend schedule is HERE. 

You Too, Nance?

You see this picture? 

TigerBlog has shown it a few people who know who's in it and they've all had one of two reactions: 1) there's a lot of goals in that picture or 2) did she end up passing him?

So yes, there are a lot of goals there. And yes, she did pass him. 

That would be the MacDonald family. TigerBlog was going to correct that it was the MacDonalds plus him, but then he thought better of that. 

And why not? He considers himself an honorary MacDonald, something he earned when he thumped them all in their family card game, Wizard. 

This is what TB wrote about it after he played with them the first time: 

TB had never heard of it until he sat down to play with the entire MacDonald family. The fact that he didn't know the rules notwithstanding, TB won — three times. And that was after he saw cards thrown, insults hurled, marital choices questioned (at least that's what Linda MacDonald said to her husband Steve) though it was all in good fun. They are a great group, the MacDonalds. 

This picture was taken this past Saturday, after the women's lacrosse team's Senior Day win over Dartmouth. It was Jami MacDonald's final Sherrerd Field appearance, after eight years of MacDonalds who dominated at the facility. Her brother Mikey was the 2015 Roper Trophy winner; he still has scored more points in a season at Princeton than any other men's lacrosse player not named Michael Sowers. 

Jami, who was named the Ivy League Attacker of the Year yesterday, brings 260 career points into Princeton's Ivy League tournament semifinal against Penn at Yale Saturday. Mikey? He finished his career with 208. Jami also has the edge in goals (158-132) and assists (102-76). 

It's going to be a long, long time before siblings will ever reach 468 points (and counting) between them. 

There's a different picture from Saturday that TB wants to talk about though. It's this one: 

This one is from halftime of the men's game, when, despite the rain, Princeton Athletics honored two longtime legends who will be retiring at the end of this academic year: Karen Malec and Nancy Donigan. 

TigerBlog wrote about Karen a few weeks ago, when she first announced that her 36-year career at Princeton was going to be coming to a close. You can read that HERE.

Today is Nancy's turn. TB could actually just do a "find" and "change" for "Karen" to "Nancy," because much of what applies to Karen applies to Nancy, who, by the way, have always been really close friends. 

When TB first came to Princeton, Nancy and her husband Joe had two little kids. You can see them all in the picture — with their next generation of little kids. Where did the time go? 

Nancy is retiring after 39 years at Princeton, most of which has been spent in the compliance office after starting out in the football office. She was a great athlete in her own right and is a member of the Notre Dame High School (in Lawrenceville) Hall of Fame.  

When TB thinks about what to write about Nancy, he comes back to two words: warmth, and smile. Nancy exudes the first and almost always has the second. 

TigerBlog has had his share of ups and downs during his time at Princeton. Through it all, Nancy has been a constant as a friend whose support, compassion, humor and kindness have helped sustain TB through those downs. 

Much like Karen, Nancy is just fun to be around. She laughs. She jokes. She lives each day devoted to her family and to those closest to her. Whatever she's doing, she maximizes the enjoyment for everyone in her orbit. 

On top of who she is, there's the job she's done. Pretty much every athlete who has come through Princeton during her time has no idea who she is. They have no way of knowing that if she didn't do her job the way she did, they would never have gotten a chance to compete as a Tiger. The coaches here certainly know how important she's been for their programs.  

When TB heard the news that Nancy was retiring, his first thought was "you too, Nance?" What will Princeton Athletics be without Nancy Donigan? Much like it will be without Karen Malec. 

Better for having had them here as long as they were — and yet never really the same again.  

Tigers To Texas

Junior Bridgeman? 

Did TigerBlog hear that name correctly? Did one of the Princeton men's tennis players actually say "Junior Bridgeman" in the time before the NCAA Selection Show yesterday afternoon? 

Yes. It was Top Nidunjianzan, the senior No. 2 singles player, who asked one of his teammates if he knew who Junior Bridgeman was.

Do you know the name? TigerBlog does. He just can't remember the last time he's heard it. 

Junior Bridgeman was a very, very good but not great NBA player in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly for the Milwaukee Bucks, with some time with the Clippers when they were still in San Diego. He averaged more than 13 points per game in both the regular season and playoffs and finished with 12,129 points overall.  

He was actually drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the 1975 draft (No. 8 overall) but was traded to the Bucks in one of the most consequential trades in NBA history — it was that trade that brought Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the Lakers.

So why in the world did his name come up? 

According to Nidunjianzan, he had just seen something pop up on social media mentioning Bridgeman's ultra-successful post-basketball career, one that saw his amass a fortune of more than $1 billion before he passed away last year at the age of 71. 

And that was the Junior Bridgeman mention. 

The main event yesterday was the NCAA selections, something that Princeton seemed to be a lock for heading into the show, at least in the rankings that are used. This was mostly a question of where and who, rather than if. 

Princeton went 16-10 overall but 2-5 in the Ivy League, ending a five-match losing streak with wins over Yale and Brown to end the regular season. The Tigers had high hopes after winning the ECAC tournament (a gathering of the eight Ivy schools) in February, but injuries derailed that. 

Still, the team had really strong season prior to that, with wins over teams like North Carolina, Pepperdine and Buffalo, in addition to three NCAA-bound Ivy League schools. Of the 10 losses, eight came against NCAA teams. At one point, Princeton was ranked No. 19 by the ITA. 

The team gathered in the Cordish Family Lounge, overlooking the outdoor courts at the Meadows complex, for the 4 pm show. TigerBlog was impressed by the lack of tension, as every player was confident in what was going to happen. 

It just took a bit longer than anyone expected. For two reasons. 

First, there was the matter of the way the selections played out. The 64-team draw was released in 16 groups of four — of which 15 passed without any mention of Princeton. 

And still there was no panic. As each host site was revealed, there was a clamor about whether or not this would be a spot Princeton would want to go; there seemed to be some hope for San Diego. 

In the end, it would be Texas, in the last group of four announced. Princeton will be taking on SMU Friday at 11 am Eastern time, while Texas will play Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in the other opening round matchup. The winners will play Saturday at 4 to see who advances to the Round of 16. 

SMU finished the regular season with a 19-10 overall record and an 8-5 record (tied for fifth) in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Mustangs are led by No. 1 singles player Trevor Svajda, the NCAA singles runner-up this past fall, when Princeton's No. 1 player Paul Inchauspe reached the semifinals. Princeton and SMU have played twice, most recently in 1995. 

For Princeton, it's now three straight NCAA tournaments and four of the last five. TB has written all season about how tough the Ivy League is, and the selections reflected that, as five league teams saw their names come up. 

If the players weren't worried about whether or not they were in, then TB definitely wasn't. Why is that? Well, it seems that the computer on which Princeton was watching the show was a bit behind. By the time the Tigers came up, TB had already gotten two text messages about the draw. 

As with any other sport, the selections for a team that knows it's heading into the tournament has a party atmosphere. Yesterday in the Cordish Lounge was no different. 

And just like every other time, the Tigers exploded out of their seats when they saw their name up there. 

Now it's off to Texas. It's the reward for a season that will always be remembered for what have been had the team been healthy — and a season that will be remembered for the national impact Princeton men's tennis continues to have.  

Another Winning Weekend

TigerBlog wants to ask you a question to start your week: Did you see where Princeton stands in the Learfield Directors' Cup standings after the winter? 

It's insanely impressive. 

Here is the Top 10:
1. ACC
2. Big Ten
3. ACC
4. Big Ten
5. Big Ten
6. ACC
7. PRINCETON
8. Big Ten
9. SEC 
10. ACC

That's ridiculous. To date, Princeton's best finish to date has been 18th, in the 2021-22. And now seventh through the winter? 

Look at that company. 

In case you don't know what the Directors' Cup is, it's a ranking system that looks to rate the top overall college athletic programs, using NCAA tournament participation and success. It's been awarded in Division I, II and III since the 1993-94 academic year. 

Princeton has been the top Ivy League program in all but five of those years. There have been seven Top 30 finishes, but nothing quite like this. Also, in most years, Princeton has gotten more points in the spring than in either the fall or winter. 

What will happen this year? Well, there are certainly some spring teams that are headed into NCAA competition. Could Princeton get a Top 10 finish? That would be extraordinary. 

If you think this happens accidentally, it doesn't. To get big points you have to advance in NCAA tournaments or have high finishes in NCAA competitions. 

Meanwhile, within the Ivy League, Princeton has continued to add to its championship total for 2025-26. This weekend saw two more Ivy League titles added to the list, as the softball team clinched a fifth straight and the men's lacrosse team shared the championship with Cornell with its 17-9 win over Dartmouth. 

That runs the total for the academic year to 14. That's a lot — though not the record, which Princeton set last year with 17. 

Here are your Ivy champs to date: 

Fall - women's soccer, men's soccer, women's volleyball, men's cross country, women's cross country
Winter - women's basketball, women's squash, men's indoor track and field, women's indoor track and field, men's swimming and diving, women's swimming and diving, men's indoor track and field
Spring (to date) - women's tennis, men's lacrosse, softball

That list does not include men's water polo and women's hockey, which won their non-Ivy League championships. It also doesn't include the field hockey team, which won the Ivy League tournament and reached the NCAA final but did not win the Ivy League championship (which goes to the regular season winner).

The softball championship has been particularly impressive. The Tigers won their first 14 Ivy games before a loss against Yale and then rebounded to pummel Harvard 8-0, 12-3 in a Saturday doubleheader to clinch the championship. 

According to the Andrew Borders Sports Bureau, this was the first time Princeton ever swept Harvard in doubleheader with both games by run-rule. 

Princeton clinched the championship after 17 games. Duncan Yin of the Class of 1982, who is as big a Princeton sports fan as there is, did the math on this. 

First, he texted a question to TigerBlog:

Question inspired by our softball team:  After 17 games, what is the maximum number of games that the leader can hold in terms of its lead over the second-place team?

Then he answered his own question:

It's not easy to be up 6 games after only 17 games.  The maximum possible is what? 17-0 leader, five teams at 8-9, one team at 7-10, one  team at 4-13. Max possible mathematically after 17 games is +9 and we're up +6.

TB will take Duncan's word for it. He did go to the Harvard Business School after Princeton, and that doesn't make him a bad person. Quite the opposite. He's a good person and a devoted father. And really good at math, it seems. 

Princeton finished off its weekend by winning the game at Harvard yesterday by an 8-2 score. Next up for Princeton will be three home games against Dartmouth to finish the regular season, before hosting the Ivy tournament the following weekend. For the historical context, it's back to the AB Sports Bureau:

With the win, the 2026 Tigers became just the eighth team since 2007, when the Ivy League season grew to 20 games before becoming 21 games in 2018, to win at least 17 Ivy games. Four of the eight teams are Princeton teams, with 2026 alongside 2008, 2022 and 2025, and it's just the second time an team has won at least 17 Ivy games in back-to-back seasons, along with Harvard in 2011 and 2012. Princeton can go for the league wins record next week when it hosts Dartmouth, as Princeton in 2008, Harvard in 2011 and Dartmouth in 2014 set and then equaled the Ivy wins record of 18.  

Impressive. 

Senior Saturday

Remember that Wednesday night women's lacrosse game between Princeton and Penn a few weeks ago on Sherrerd Field? 

Penn won it 10-9 in two overtimes. It was a great game to watch, even if the home team lost. 

And guess what? There will be a rematch. Will it be as good as the original? 

This is the final weekend of the Ivy League regular season for the women and the men. For Princeton, that means a doubleheader at home against Dartmouth, with the women at noon and the men at 4.  

Of the eight teams that will compete in the two Ivy tournaments, six of them are already known — Yale, Penn and Princeton on the women's side and Princeton, Cornell and Harvard on the men's. Those six will be joined by either Brown or Cornell on the women's side and either Yale or Penn on the men's. 

The women know they will be gathering at Yale, who is locked into the top seed. Penn will be the No. 2, and Princeton will be the No. 3 — hence the rematch. 

For the men, the tournament will be either in Princeton or Ithaca, and the outcome of Princeton's last game does not impact that. If Cornell beats Harvard tomorrow, then the Big Red will host. If Harvard wins, then the tournament comes to Sherrerd Field. 

That's not to say there's nothing on the line for Princeton's men tomorrow. A win assures Princeton of no worse than a share of the Ivy League championship. A Princeton win and Cornell loss means an outright title for the Tigers; the reverse is true for the Big Red. 

There are still scenarios for a three-way or four-way tie for the men. All of those need Princeton and Cornell to both lose. 

The Ivy tournaments will be next weekend, with games Friday and Sunday. The NCAA tournament selections will be announced a week from Sunday. 

TigerBlog says this all the time, but man did this lacrosse season fly by. Has it really been 2.5 months since it started? 

Then again, he also points out that the whole four-year experience flies by. And that brings him to today's real topic. 

Senior Day. 

TigerBlog received the following text messages this week, one from the father of a player on the men's team and one from a father of a player on the women's team. Here's what they said: 

Woman dad: How is it possible that this is the last regular game for her?
Man dad: How did it go so fast? I just dropped him off for orientation.

Yup. That's how it goes.  

Here's what TB wrote about his own experience as a Princeton dad, at the Senior Day of his own daughter, back in 2022. That's another thing that's hard to believe — it's been four years already? 

Senior Day for TigerBlog has always been a combination of a pain (in writing the script) and anxiety (getting everyone in the right place at the right time, trying to get the timing right and more than anything else not leaving anyone out). He long ago lost track of how many of these Senior Days he's done from the perspective of someone from athletic communications.

This time, though, it was completely different. This time, he was on the field, along with his daughter, He'd describe it as surreal, to see his own daughter be a part of one of these moments, only there were so many other emotions that were dominant at the time.

As they walked out past a lineup of teammates on either side, TB tried to take as much of it in as possible. As special as this felt to him, this wasn't his moment. This was his daughter's moment.

As such, he found it hard to focus on anything other than her, and as they walked, he saw something that he'll never forget. It was the widest smile his daughter has ever had.

She knew how hard it was for her to get to that moment. And she knew that her Senior Day was something to cherish. 

TB smiled widely as well, all as he brushed away a tear or two.

TigerBlog hasn't looked at a Senior Day the same way since.