Chirp Chirp Chirp

So TigerBlog has a new roommate — though hopefully only a temporary one. 

TB's issue with his new roommate isn't that he's messy, since he doesn't seem to be. It's not that they fight over the TV remote. It's not that he ate TB's cookies. 

It's more of a noise thing, especially in the middle of the night, when this roommate amps the volume way up. 

If you haven't guessed yet, TB appears to be sharing his home with the world's loudest cricket. TigerBlog did a search for how to get rid of a cricket, and it said the first thing is to point where the sound is coming from.  Unfortunately, this guy appears to be a ventriloquist, since he seems to be able to throw his voice all over the place. 

Just when TB thinks he knows exactly where the chirping is originating, it turns out there's no cricket anywhere to be found. It's like having 100 smoke detectors and trying to figure out which one has the low battery. 

TB did a search for how to get rid of him. Here's something very helpful that he learned: 

The cricket knows exactly what it's doing. It will stop chirping the SECOND you walk toward it and resume approximately 4 seconds after you get back into bed.  

As it turns out, one of the solutions seems to be beer. Yes, beer. Apparently if you leave some beer in a mug, the cricket is attracted to it, falls into the mug and can't get out. TB will let you know how it goes. First he has to go get some beer; the only kind he has is root beer. 

Of course, the surest way for the cricket to stop is for winter to come around. To get you pumped for that, there were two pieces of winter sport news that stand out from yesterday. 

First, the Ivy League announced that the league basketball tournaments will be played at the PPL Center in Allentown, Pa., from 2028-30. The three-year agreement will mark the first time that the league's tournament will be played on a non-Ivy campus. The tournament this coming season will be at the Palestra. 

You can read more HERE. 

TigerBlog loves the idea, in case you were wondering. It's not about home court advantage or anything like that. It's more about the atmosphere and feel that being at an off-campus arena will bring. It will definitely be a better experience for everyone involved. 

In addition, Princeton released its 2026-27 men's basketball schedule yesterday. 

If you're first and foremost a big fan of a team, like TB is with the teams he covers, then there is always something exciting about seeing the new schedule for the first time. Back when he was traveling with the men's basketball team (from 1989 through 2002), getting the new schedule meant as much as anything seeing which in-season tournaments he'd be headed to with the Tigers. 

In those good-old days, the college basketball season featured dozens of December events that no longer exist. They'd be almost always four-team tournaments, with the occasional eight-team one thrown in. They weren't like the current group of tournaments, which are almost all made-for-TV at exotic locations with tiny, often makeshift, arenas with tinier crowds. 

The ones that TB used to attend were at some pretty random locations all around the country. They were Friday/Saturday night doubleheaders throughout December, and Princeton used to play in two per year. Where did TB go? Green Bay. New Orleans. Honolulu. El Paso. Milwaukee. Muncie, Indiana. Charlotte. Fresno. Ames, Iowa (twice). East Lansing, Mich. There were others too. 

It was a great way to see parts of the country where he otherwise would not have gone. And to hear one of his favorite Pete Carril lines, the one where he told a reporter at a tournament at the University of New Orleans that while his team had some big guys just like UNO, he "didn't go down to the docks to get them."

TB laughed as he typed that.

Meanwhile, the 2026-27 Princeton men's schedule can be found HERE. The season opens on Nov. 2, which means it's only 47 days away. There are four home games in November alone. 

Ticket information is available HERE.  

 

A Week Off

The first weekend of the NFL season has come and gone, and don't look now but the Jets and Giants are both 1-0. 

It's looking like they're both headed for the Super Bowl, right? 

On top of the win, Giants' quarterback Jaxson Dart threw three touchdown passes against the Cowboys. That's one for each member of the Princeton field hockey program he took a picture with at Newark Airport two weeks ago. 

In college football "don't look now" news, suddenly Michigan is unbeaten and Ohio State has a loss. That's a pretty shocking turnaround, especially considering that Michigan sort of lost its opener against Western Michigan. 

Elsewhere in college football this past weekend, TigerBlog Jr. attended the Iowa-Iowa State game and sent this picture:

Those seem like pretty good seats. He said it was fun.

And then there's the Ivy League, which tees it up this weekend. Before TB talks about that, there is the matter of the news that was released yesterday that the Ivy League would be moving its season opener up one week for next season and then having a league-wide week off after Week 6. 

Seems like it only took 13 years and one day for the Ivy League to finally listen to TigerBlog.  

Where were you on Sept. 13, 2013? 

If you were reading TigerBlog that day, then you read this: 

TigerBlog's idea is a great one. Start this weekend. Play five weeks in a row. Take Week 6 off. Play five more weeks. That's 10 games, 11 weeks, one week for everyone to rest in mid-season. If it ever came to be that an 11th game was added, then the season could start a week earlier still. The idea of having the whole league off in the middle is perfect for resting and healing. 

Okay, so it's after Week 6. Still, it's a really positive move on a lot of levels. Also, keep in mind that while it seems like the Ivy League schedule has started later and later, it's really the rest of the Division I college football that's been starting earlier and earlier. 

Because of the non-conference scheduling commitments next year, the only way to insert a week off in mid-season was to move the Week 7 games to Week 1. In doing so, this meant that each of the eight teams will start with a league game. 

As such, Week 1 next year will see Penn at Yale, Brown at Cornell, Columbia at Dartmouth and of course Harvard at Princeton. There was a time when Ivy vs. Ivy games did occur annually in Week 1, from 1976-99. 

Which team did Princeton open its season with every year from 1954-75? That would be Rutgers, as you probably already knew.  

This year will see these matchups: Lafayette at Columbia, Dartmouth at Lehigh, Brown at New Haven, Harvard at New Hampshire, Cornell at Colgate, Yale at Holy Cross, Penn at Bucknell. As for Princeton, it'll be the Tigers at Bryant, with kickoff at 1.

Bryant brings a 2-1 record into the game, with wins over Stonehill and Hampton sandwiched around a 59-3 loss at Army. Bryant and Princeton have played once prior, a 16-13 Bulldogs win in 2023. Back then, Bryant was in its final year in the Big South/OVC for football.  

Starting in 2024, Bryant moved to the CAA for football (the school has been in the America East in other sports after moving from the Northeast Conference in 2021). The Bulldogs went 0-8 in the CAA two years ago and then 1-7 last year, with a win over Albany as its first in its new conference. 

Bryant matched that win total last weekend, with a 31-3 over Hampton in Virginia. The game against Princeton will be its first at home this season.

Princeton follows the trip to Bryant with its home opener next weekend against Albany. The Ivy opener will be at Columbia in Week 3, followed by the trip to Wagner. If you've never been to a game at Wagner's stadium, you won't believe the view from the stands. TB will leave it at that. 

Then it's home against Brown, at Harvard, home against Cornell, home against Dartmouth, at Yale and then home against Penn. 

You can trust TigerBlog. It'll be Nov. 21, the date for the Penn game, in no time.  

 

9/11 + Three Days

TigerBlog took this picture from his room in State College prior to yesterday's 2-1 field hockey win over Penn State.

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.  

Twenty-Five Years Later

Twenty-five years? 

Has it really been 25 years since Sept. 11, 2001? 

Every emotion from that day still sears through the blood of everyone who was old enough to remember how it all happened, where they were as it started to unfold, what they were thinking when reality set in. How old do you have to be to really, truly remember it all? 

Forty? 

It's hard for TigerBlog to comprehend sometimes how much time has moved along, to the point where events that happened when he was old enough to experience them first-hand are known by so many simply as something from a history class, or at least a vague knowledge. For almost every day of the year, at least in TB's world, that usually relates to things like sports or music or TV shows. 

Today, Sept. 11, is clearly one of the exceptions. Those names on the flag above? They're just a small portion of the 3,000 names of the murdered. One of them, John Schroeder, was a Princeton men's lacrosse national champion in the Class of 1992. 

There are no longer any Princeton athletes who were even born before that day. They have no memory of the world before 9/11, a world that vanished forever 25 years ago today. 

TB would like to share with you what he's written before about that day. He wants to repeat what he wrote as an unchanging record of what Sept. 11, 2001, was like for those who weren't old enough to know for themselves. 

Please read it again, even if you have before:  

He was dropping off TigerBlog Jr. at the University League Nursery School, on the far side of the parking lot outside Jadwin. It was the most perfect weather day, crystal clear, sunshine, no humidity, not a cloud to be found.

TB dropped TBJ off at the school, and the woman who was the office manager said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.

TigerBlog walked outside, looked up, and thought "how in the world did that happen?" By the time he got to Jadwin, he found out how.

Most of that day was spent huddled around the only television around, the one in the athletic training room in Caldwell Field House. It was a day where people spoke very little, where everyone had dazed looks on their faces.

By mid-afternoon, he went back to get TBJ at the nursery school. He can still see the children, swinging on the swings, playing in a sandbox, oblivious - happily oblivious - to what had happened to the innocence of the world outside that playground.

Later that night, after it was dark, TigerBlog walked outside to the end of his driveway and looked up. There were no planes in the sky. They'd all been grounded. TB remembers it vividly, the sight of the stars, without planes, above a world of confusion, angst, uncertainty, fear.

If he had to pick one word, it would be scary.  

In fact, when TB got to Jadwin that day, the first person he saw was John Mack, now the Ford Family Director of Athletics and then in his first year of working in the department. 

There were 14 Princetonians who were killed on 9/11. There were hundreds more who were near Ground Zero when it all happened.

One of those who died was men's lacrosse player John Schroeder, known to everyone in the program as "Stinky.". TB wrote about him on the 20th anniversary. It's as emotional and heartbreaking a story as TB has ever written.

When TB went to meet with John's father Jack, he was struck by the American flag that hangs in his kitchen. The stripes are composed with the names of every person who was killed that day.

It's an overwhelming thing to see them all there and to imagine all of their stories. And, each time the anniversary roles around, there are people who mark another year without them.

By the way, here is what one of Schroeder's teammates wrote about him shortly after 9/11:

“There are two images that run through my head over and over. One is of Stinky picking off that pass. It was as if he said ‘I’ll do my job when it’s asked of me. I am part of the greatness that is this team.’ The other is an image of Stinky on Tuesday. This is how I picture it – Stinky was badly injured initially but was capable of escaping from the building. He was on his way down the stairs when he ran into some rescue personnel heading the other direction. He did the right thing and turned back to help. I imagine him carrying a worse-injured person down the stairs, making typically Schroederian sarcastic remarks on the way to help the other person out, when the building collapsed. I agree with you, T, that Stinky is in heaven, probably playing lax, with too many members of our family watching in the stands. When we do gather, Stinky will be there too, and the first and last rounds will be on him.”

Sept. 10 is the last day of innocence.

Sept. 11 is the day it all changed. It's a day that always needs remembrance, and reverence.

Photo By Rich Fahsbender

TigerBlog was seated in the middle on the Princeton field hockey team's flight home from North Carolina last Sunday. 

He definitely prefers the window. He can look out the window for the entirety of a flight, whether it's one hour from Raleigh-Durham or all the way to Europe or beyond. On this occasion, though, he settled for the window. 

Rich Fahsbender, the strength and conditioning coach for the field hockey team, was supposed to be across the aisle from TB. Neither one of them had anyone in his row as boarding was winding down, leading Fahsbender to completely jinx both of them by saying "hey, we might get a whole row each." 

About five minutes later, TB had travelers on either side of him. The one on the aisle was friends with the one who was supposed to at the window in Rich's row, so she swapped with him. It's a good thing she did, because Rich more than made up for his jinx by snapping this shot as the plane descended into Newark:

It doesn't get much better than that, right? It gets TB to forgive Rich for what he said on the plane and what he said in the hotel earlier in the trip, when he said something about worry about it when he's "60s and bald." Uh, what? 

*

There are 17 events for Princeton teams between tonight and Sunday, including the 2026-27 debut of yet another team. That would be the men's tennis team, which is at Virginia for the Orange and Blue Classic. The UVa courts are located at the resort where the Princeton men's lacrosse team stayed during its NCAA championship weekend this past spring, so it's a place that will always be special to TB. 

The game tonight is a women's soccer matchup between the Tigers and Colgate. Because the school's Director of Athletics is Yariv Amir, whom TB hired long ago to be the men's hockey contact at Princeton, TB will usually root for Colgate teams — unless they're playing Princeton. 

The Tigers are 2-3 after back-to-back losses to Big Ten members Ohio State and Rutgers. Colgate is 1-4-2, including 0-1-2 in the its last three, which were 0-0 ties against Maine and Cornell and a 3-1 loss to George Washington. 

Kickoff on Myslik Field is at 7.

*

The men's soccer team defeated UMass 2-0 Monday night in Amherst to improve to 3-0-1. The Tigers, ranked 23rd, have allowed just one goal in those four games and none in the last three. 

Princeton swept the Ivy League weekly honors, with Bardia Hormozi as the Offensive Player of the Week and Andrew Samuels as the Defensive Player of the Week. Hormozi was honored for the first time; Samuels now has six such honors. 

Princeton went 3-0 last week (the UMass game included due to the holiday), and Hormozi either scored or assisted on five of them. Hormozi was a first-team All-Ivy League selection last year after having six goals and four assists for the season; he already has three goals and three assists through four games. He also plays with obvious confidence to go along with incredible field vision. 

Next up for the men is a game Saturday (6) at Albany.   

*

The field hockey team has its only home appearance in its first seven games tomorrow at 5 when it hosts Rutgers. The Tigers, after a 4-0 win against Old Dominion and a 1-0 shootout loss to North Carolina last weekend, are currently ranked fourth nationally, while the Scarlet Knights are No. 17.

Sophomore Gabriella Anderson was the Ivy League's Defensive Player of the Week after she played all 135 minutes of the two games as Princeton did not allow a single goal. She also converted her attempt in the shootout when it would have ended the game there had she not.  

It'll be a homecoming on Bedford Field for Princeton alum Talia Schenck, who is a grad student at Rutgers. Speaking of Princeton alums on other teams, congratulations to Grace Anne McCooey, who scored her first career goal, which turned out to be the game-winner, as Syracuse defeated Rutgers 3-2 last Friday. 

One of the great things about college sports is the friendships that are built, and to that end, every Princeton player was thrilled for McCooey — who used to be known as "Gooey" and then became just "GAM" a year ago. 

*

The complete schedule can be found HERE. 

 

First Of Many, Coach

TigerBlog nominates the following for the broadcasting Hall of Fame:

Commentator No. 1: "When Michelsen was six, he told his parents that if they made him play lefthanded, he'd quite tennis."
Commentator No. 2: "When my son was six, he said he wanted to be a space invader. We probably shouldn't leave the big life decisions to six year olds."

Genius. Just genius. It was uttered by Andy Roddick during yesterday's match between Alex Michelsen and Francis Tiafoe. For some context, the broadcast had just shown video of Michelsen as he threw tennis balls into the crowd lefthanded and then throwing a football righthanded. 

TigerBlog, by the way, thinks that Roddick is an incredible announcer. He and John McEnroe should broadcast all sports. 

In other news, what was the name of the Central Connecticut State men's basketball coach back in 2007-08? Howie something. It'll come to TB. 

While he thinks of that, TB does remember the CCSU-Princeton game of Nov. 11, 2007. It was a 59-57 Tiger win, and it came in Sydney Johnson's first game was head coach. Dickenman. Howie Dickenman. That's it. 

TigerBlog was escorting Johnson into the postgame interview room, which at that point was in what used to be the D level conference room at Jadwin. As Sydney walked in, Dickenman walked out, paused and said these exact words: "First of many, Coach." TB remembers it as a very thoughtful and genuine gesture. 

These days, by the way, Johnson is the head coach of the WNBA's Washington Mystics, who are 24-16 now with a playoff berth clinched. A year ago? Washington was 16-28. 

Another former Princeton men's basketball player, Will Venable, is orchestrating a similar turnaround, though his is in his other sport, baseball. Venable has taken the Chicago White Sox from 60-102 and 28 games out of first a year ago to currently 75-68 with a three-game lead in the American League Central.  

Of course, no coach ever forgets Win No. 1. This past weekend at Princeton, there were two No. 1 wins. 

One of them wasn't exactly a first win. It was more like win No. 149. 

It belonged to men's water polo interim head coach Derek Ellingson, who has been on the staff since 2004 and has been the head women's coach since 2019. Ellingson led the Princeton men to a 3-0 start at Navy's tournament last weekend, when the Tigers defeated George Washington, Air Force and Salem by a combined score of 62-25. 

Princeton will now have five matches this weekend at home at its own Invitational, including one against last weekend's host. You know who coaches Navy's men, right? That would be the great Luis Nicolao, who was Princeton's head coach for 844 wins between the men's and women's team. Ellingson was his assistant. 

Ellingson's team will play St. Mary's Friday at 3:30, Navy Saturday at 9:30 am, San Jose State Saturday at 5, Pepperdine Sunday at 12:30 and Mount St. Mary's Sunday at 3:30. For the California teams, it's a rare time of playing indoors. 

For an actual Win No. 1, TigerBlog refers you to Karameli Fa'ae'e, who led her team to a 52-17 win over La Salle in her first game as Princeton's women's rugby head coach. Here is what she had to say after the win: 

"I'm proud of the effort and commitment the whole squad showed yesterday. With no preseason match, this was our first real test of the new systems. We saw debut appearances, players returning from injury, and others stepping into new positions for the first time. There's a lot of room to grow, and that's what makes this exciting. I'm grateful to the whole staff, to the community and family who came out, and most of all, to our team captains for the leadership that made this platform possible." 

TB knows next to nothing about rugby, but he does know from meeting Fa'ae'e that she is very impressive, very smart and very confident. He also knows enough about rugby to know that it's a fast-moving sport with a natural appeal to it, which explains why the team has been drawing well since its inception. Up next is a Sunday (noon) home game against Long Island U.  

Congrats to Coach Fa'ae'e. Where is she taking the program? That's TBD. Will she ever forget Princeton 52, La Salle 17.

No chance.  

After Review

This past weekend was the one where Princeton had six different teams being their seasons, with some ups and a few downs. 

The two biggest ups came from the women's rugby team and the men's water polo team, both of which brought their head coaches their first wins with their programs. While TigerBlog was going to start there, today, he decided upon further review that he had to talk about technology today. 

See what he did there?  

With apologies, those stories and more from the past weekend can wait a day. Technology was just too big a story in college athletics this past weekend. 

TB wonders how many video reviews there were in all of the Princeton athletic events that happened this weekend. There were enough in the two field hockey games he was at in North Carolina that he lost track. He's sure there were some in the other sports as well. 

By the way, don't take for granted that these reviews just happen. The explosion of replay has fallen to the multimedia departments in schools around the country, and those people have more than handled the task.  

Officiating is tough. Theoretically, the ability to do reviews should help. TB is just not sure. In fact, he thought of this as he was switching between two events Saturday night in his hotel in Chapel Hill.  

On one channel, you had US Open tennis without line judges, only computerized out calls. 

On another 20 channels, you had college football, where games are stopped for measurements after the ball is spotted by the side judge, without any technological advance from when teams originally got a first down for gaining 10 yards. Chains, after a hit-or-miss spot? Still? 

Which is better? Good question. 

If you pay attention at all to anything, you saw Saturday night what can happen when the human element is eliminated from sports. Cans of worms worse than a bad call come spiraling into the night. 

TigerBlog is referring obviously to the end of the Western Michigan-Michigan game at the Big House. As you know by now, Western Michigan seemed to have won the game 12-7 when a Michigan Hail Mary attempt sailed past the end zone as the stadium clock went to 0:00.  

In the entire history of the world, dating back earlier than the dinosaurs, such an ending would have stood without controversy. Only since the advent of video review has this become an issue. And so what happened? The replay officials reviewed it, put one second on the clock and watched as Michigan converted this time. Final: Michigan 13, Western Michigan 12. 

Ah, but this only satisfied the people who wear Maize and Blue. To the rest of the world, this was clearly a travesty. And why wouldn't it be? As anyone who watched the game could see, the clock on the NBC broadcast reached 0:00 before the WMU player touched the ball. 

Game over.  

The Big Ten officials would later put out a statement about how there were two clocks and how the replay booth only saw the one that had 0.4 seconds on it when the ball was touched. As a result, the clock had not yet reached all zeroes, and so one second was put back up. 

This led the questions of 1) why were there multiple clocks and 2) which clock is official? This is from the NCAA football rulebook: 

Game Clock. Playing time shall be kept with a game clock that may be either a stopwatch operated by the line judge, back judge, field judge or side judge, or a game clock operated by an assistant under the direction of the appropriate judge. The type of game clock and the location of the game clock operator shall be determined by the game management. The game clock operator may be located on the sideline or in the traditional press box area. If the clock operator is in the traditional press box, it is recommended the location is between the goal lines. This location shall be shielded from public interference and shall afford a direct and unobstructed view of the playing field. The game clock shall not display tenths of seconds. 

Do with that information what you will. By the way, one of the complaints that TB and so many American fans have about professional and international soccer is that only one person has the official time, as opposed to the stadium scoreboard. Part of American sports is that everyone in the building knows how much time is left and knows what 0:00 means. 

TigerBlog is now entering his second term on the NCAA Division I men's lacrosse rules subcommittee. He was part of the committee when video review first came to the sport, and he can tell you that what happened in the game Saturday night could not happen in men's lacrosse because the stadium clock is official and it can only be used for replay purposes if it is burned into the video feed (the only exception is new for 2027 and involves using a stopwatch to determine a 15-second count to be able to challenge certain plays, which is nowhere near what happened the other night).

As TB has said many, many times in committee meetings, the last thing you want is for an outcome of a game to seen illegitimate, and that's what the Western Michigan-Michigan game feels like. This takes TB back to his original question? Which is better? The impact technology has had or living with the human element? 

Video review has not done what it was supposed to do, which is to correct egregious errors. Now? There are too many reviews and there are too many head-scratching outcomes. 

At the first video review at Princeton-North Carolina field hockey Sunday, TB had this to say: 

"After review of the play in the field hockey game, Michigan football has been awarded another play." 

It got some laughs, though it's not the kind of joke you want if you're in charge of the rules.  

 

Flight 1890, The Sequel

Bless Dina Rizzo's heart. 

The associate head coach for the Princeton field hockey team doesn't give up easily. 

Ah, but that part of the story will have to wait. That part happened around noon yesterday, long after the field hockey team's day began. 

 In fact, the team bus rolled out of the Caldwell Field House parking circle slightly before 4:30 am yesterday. The team had a flight to catch at Newark Airport, a 7:15 departure for Raleigh-Durham ahead of today's season-opener against No. 18 Old Dominion at the University of North Carolina, whom Princeton will play Sunday. 

The Tigers, by the way, are ranked second nationally in the National Field Hockey Coaches' Association poll this week. 

To get on a bus at 4:30, one has to be awake significantly earlier than that. For TigerBlog, that meant somewhere in the 2:45 range. It was okay, though. The flight would get into RDU at around 8:45, and then there would be time for a nap before practice began in the afternoon. 

Right? 

Wrong. 

Princeton arrived at Newark around 5:20 or so and was easily through security around 5:50ish. Everything proceeded as normal when boarding started. As he walked onto the plane, TB mentioned to head coach Carla Tagliente that they'd done all that and it still wasn't even 7 am. 

Oh, and what in the world possesses people to eat burgers and have beer around 6:30 in the morning, which is what more than one person was doing. On the other hand, there's no time for digressions in this story. 

The team was settled in mostly in the back of the plane. TB was in seat 34B. The middle is not his favorite, but it was a short flight. 

The pilot came on to welcome everyone to United Airlines Flight 1890, complete with her "greetings from the flight deck" report. She said that due to traffic and weather, flight time would be 1:19, a little longer than usual, and that the plane would have a cruising altitude of just 8,000 feet. That seems a bit low, but she explained that the higher elevations were being saved for the planes heading to Florida. 

Okay. That's not a big deal. The flight attendants went through the safety instructions, the plane pushed back and the taxiing began. That's when things started to take a turn. 

For the next two-plus hours, the plane visited various parts of the Newark Airport tarmac. The pilot eventually returned to say that a warning light had come on and, guess what, Flight 1890 would be heading back to the gate. Or at least some gate. 

It took a while for all that to be sorted out. Then it was time to get off the plane, around 9:30. Keep in mind that it's about an eight-hour bus ride from Princeton to Chapel Hill, so that would have put the team in North Carolina around 12:30 or a little later with a few stops. 

For the passengers, though, it was back to the terminal. United offered $15 food vouchers, and other than that it was hang around and wait. First the monitor said the flight would go off at noon. Then 12:20. Then 12:40. That's a lot of time to be killed.  

Interestingly, nobody seemed all that annoyed. Maybe it was sort of an "everyone's in this together" situation, for the Tigers and for everyone else on the delayed flight. Even the two pilots were hanging around the concourse. 

Out the window it was clear that maintenance was working on the right engine. It seemed like there was one technician with one screwdriver, and TB isn't sure if that made him feel better or not. 

Oh well. More time to kill. And that's where the part of the story about Dina comes into play. 

At some point, Dina got an excited look on her face. Who is that guy? What guy? That guy!! That guy there!!! He looks familiar. Overhearing her, another passenger said "That's the Giant's QB1. That's Jaxson Dart."

And it was. There he was, with his girlfriend, calmly walking to a gate for a flight. 

Dina said "I have to get a picture with him" and sprinted after him. As she did this, it took TB back to the last time this happened. Ironically, it was at the UNC field hockey stadium last November, as Princeton practiced for the Final Four. Dina is a huge New England Patriots fan, having grown up walking distance from Gillette Stadium. She wanted to get a picture with UNC football coach Bill Belichick, who was inside the facility giving a pep talk to the Tar Heel field hockey team. 

Dina waited and waited and waited — and then Belichick gave her the brush-off, even when she told him she was from Walpole. 

Would it happen again? Would Jaxson Dart pull a Belichick? Turns out Dart is a pretty good guy. Here's the proof:

That's Dina on the left. That's Olivia Caponiti and Izzy Morgan on the right; those two went to get a picture of their own as well. 

TB then walked over to where Dart was sitting and thanked him for being so approachable. He also told him the Belichick story, something that he and his girlfriend chuckled at. Dart then wished Princeton good luck, and TB did the same for him. Before he walked away, TB turned back and said "and try not to take so many hits."

Then it was back to reality. There would be a new plane and a gate change, with a resulting walk back to where the first flight started out before it parked at a gate far away. The flight began boarding at 12:30, and the pilot came on and announced "Welcome To Flight 1890, The Sequel." She was very good at reading the room, or at least the plane. Keep in mind, every single person on the plane had gotten up around the same time as TB, but she kept everyone from losing it. 

There was still one hurdle to clear. The luggage had to be moved from one plane to the next, something that fell through the cracks between the morning crew and the afternoon crew. As such, it wasn't until around 2:00 that the plane actually took off. It landed at RDU exactly one hour later, though it seemed like 15 minutes.

If you're keeping score, it was 10.5 hours from the time the team left Caldwell until it landed in North Carolina. It was only 8.5 hours from the time of boarding the first plane to landing on the second one. 

Anyway, the team made it. The season is starting today. 

It was a long day — but ultimately a fun one. It's the sort of misadventure that will make for great stories in the years and decades to come. The players on this team will be talking about the day they got stuck in Newark Airport long after they forget who won and who lost this weekend. 

And now it's time to play.  

Congrats Alex

The Department of Athletics Welcome Back staff meeting was held yesterday in Jadwin Gym. 

Near the beginning, Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack asked everyone who was at a staff meeting for the first time to come forward. TigerBlog was on the end of his row in the stands, and he had to get up into the aisle to let someone in his row head down. 

As he stood there, someone behind him who was also walking down paused to let TB go in front of him. 

"First meeting?" he said to TB.

That made TB chuckle. 

In the world of college athletics, there will be always be turnover year over year. It's the nature of things. There was a time (a long time ago) when it was in fact TB's first meeting. These days, there are only a handful of people who have been here longer than he has. 

In fact, he's pretty sure there's only football coach Steve Verbit, ticket officer Stephanie Sutton and women's open rowing coach Lori Dauphiny. TB and women's squash coach Gail Ramsay are tied, since they started on the same day. 

The parade of new faces was great to see. Most, but not all, are early in their careers. Others are new to Princeton but not the world of college sports. 

One face that TB was glad to see there was that of Alex Henn, his Office of Athletic Communications colleague. Alex is in Year 3 at Princeton, after she graduated from Georgetown. 

Why single her out? It's because she was recently promoted. 

Elliott Carr recently left the OAC to become the Assistant AD for Strategic Communication at some other school somewhere, a school where he traded his orange and black for green. Given that Elliott stands 6-6, that makes him truly representative of the Big Green of his new employer, Dartmouth. 

Even though he left for an Ivy League rival, Elliott deserves a few words of praise from TigerBlog, especially since there haven't been too many nicer people who ever walked into Jadwin Gym. He came to Princeton single and left for Hanover with his wife Colleen and son Leon.

No matter where his career takes him or whatever big events he gets to experience, it's likely — or actually almost a certainty — that he'll never have anything that matches his time with the Princeton men's basketball team during its run to the 2023 Sweet 16. Elliott was the men's basketball contact for that magical ride, and he was a great representative of Princeton in every way. 

TB wishes him the best in Hanover. It was great to work with someone so upbeat, friendly, willing to help and easy going. 

To nobody's surprise, Alex has been promoted into Elliott's spot. Many of the same things that TB said about Elliott apply to her (other than the fact that she's more than a foot shorter). 

From Day 1 Alex has shown the same kind of work ethic as Elliott. She also has the qualities that you need to have to be successful in this field, which certainly isn't for everyone. And TB isn't talking just talking about the skills for the job. 

Alex in some ways reminds TB of himself with the way she walks the fine line of being the biggest fan of her teams while also having enough professional distance to not be a cheerleader. It's a difficult balance, and she does it extraordinarily well. 

It's been nearly 40 years since TigerBlog first started covering Princeton Athletics during his newspaper days. This is Year 33 of being on the University payroll. 

If you asked him all those years ago if he could see himself at Princeton in 2026, he would have said "yes" in a heartbeat. He sort of said that to Alex the other day, that she could, if she wanted, have the same longevity here. She certainly has all the components for it, as well as an innate leadership quality that might one day take her into the administration once she has more experience. 

Can she see herself at Princeton 30 or so years from now? That would be 2056. That's a pretty big projection. 

For now, she has a very well deserved promotion, for which TB congratulates her. 

Princeton Athletics is very lucky to have her.  

Class Is In Session

Happy first day of classes!!!

TigerBlog, as you probably know, is very stingy with his exclamation points, so the first day of classes must big. And it is. 

TB remembers his first-ever college class. It was a political science class held in the University Museum, opposite Franklin Field. He also remembers his last-ever college class, which was a history class in the David Rittenhouse Lab, in front of the Palestra. 

If he knew then what he knows now, he probably would have at the very least spent those four years in between rooting for Princeton. He also would have made a few investments in up-and-coming companies, like Apple and Microsoft.

He did go to college with someone who was one of the first computer science majors in the world, TB supposes. He got a job with Microsoft after graduation and was paid a small salary and additional stock. The last time TB saw him wasn't in person. It was on the cover of a magazine, with his picture and the headline "What Do You Do When You're 30 And Have $250 Million?"

Fortunately, there are things more important than money, and as such, TB wouldn't trade all of this for that kind of wealth (he would be okay if his salary got bumped up to nine figures). 

TB is writing this from a bench outside his eye doctor's office. His new lenses came in, and he figured that he might as well use the hour it would take to switch out the old ones to get this done and then move on to his next project (he'll have more on that later). He's wearing his backup glasses, which, by the way, he hates. Why did he get these in the first place? 

To his right is a man who got pulled over by three police officers for going the wrong way on a one-way street, though in fairness, there are detour signs up for road paving everywhere and it was a bit confusing. On the other hand, it does say "Do Not Enter" a few yards from where he was pulled over.

To his left is the actual street paving and with it the smell of the tar. It's the same smell TB smelled when he walked down Spruce Street on his way to that first class all those decades ago, and this smell has always taken him back to that moment. 

To all Princeton students, good luck and remember — the University is filled with people whose full-time job it is to help you. If you are overwhelmed, make sure you reach out and take advantage of them. That's what they're here to do. 

This is especially true for freshmen. Miss TigerBlog did so her first year, and the help she got was immeasurable in preparing her for the early days of being an MAE major. 

Meanwhile, if you missed it Monday night, the men's soccer team had itself a great performance and a huge 2-0 win over a Portland team that was ranked third in Division I. The two goals came late in the second half of what was a tight game throughout, one with the feel of postseason rather than early season. 

The first Princeton goal came with 16 minutes left from Noah Hammerschmidt, a freshman from Brooklyn. It was also the first of his career. The second came four minutes later, from Kevin Kelley. Both goals were brilliantly set up by Bardia Hormozi with passes that are best described as either "perfect" or "beautiful" or both. 

Hammerschmidt's goal came, obviously, before he ever took a college class. It's always fascinating when that happens. Freshman fall athletes have been on campus for a few weeks now, becoming acclimated to the athletic side of their experience. 

Now begins the academic side. Some, like TigerBlog, will go four years and not one class more before embarking on a career. 

For others, this is the start of a run of education that will stretch beyond 10 years and end with MDs, P.hDs, JDs and even MD/P.hDs. Whatever the path, best of luck to all of them. 

This is, after all, why they all chose this school.  

They'll be glad they did.