Once

It's been nearly 20 years ago when Princeton head men's soccer coach Jim Barlow asked TigerBlog if he'd seen the movie "Once."

TB doesn't remember the exact conversation, though he's pretty sure it went something like this:

TB: No.
JB: Watch it. You'll love it. 

And so TB did, and he very much did. In fact, he went to Blockbuster and rented the DVD. If that sentence confuses you, then you're way younger than TB. 

"Once" is a great movie. If you've never seen it, "Once" is like no other movie TigerBlog has ever seen. It was filmed for $112,000, without permits, using street scenes in Dublin and apartments belonging to the members of the cast and crew. What came of it was a movie that earned more than $30 million, something that doesn't count the Broadway musical adaptation. 

The movie won an Academy Award for Best Original Song. The show won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical. 

Here is the scene from the movie where the song that won the Oscar was first heard:

The movie tells the story of two characters who are never named and are simply "Guy" and "Girl" on the final credits. They are struggling through difficult lives in Dublin, and their shared love is music. 

TB has now seen the movie dozens of times, he'd guess. He also saw the show on Broadway and saw it at McCarter Theater, where Princeton men's lacrosse player Sam Gravitte — then a senior — played the guy.  

The original "Guy" in the movie was Glen Hansard, an Irish singer with the Frames. Hansard played an acoustic guitar and sang with an incredible range, and he performance in the movie was just about perfect. 

The news came last week that Hansard had died in a motorcycle crash at the age of just 56, and it was more crushing, at least to TB, than the news of the average celebrity death. It took TB back to when Barlow first mentioned the movie and how certain he was that TB would like it. 

The movie was released in 2007. A year later, the Princeton men's lacrosse team did an international trip to Spain and Ireland, staying in Dublin on the back end of the trip.  

TB went back yesterday through the file of photos he still has from that trip. They were a reminder of how much TB enjoyed that whole experience, especially when he got to the photos of the magnificent beauty of the Upper Lake at Glendalough. 

On one of the afternoons in the Irish capital, TigerBlog stayed behind while the group went to tour the Guinness factory, choosing instead to walk from the hotel to the nearby Grafton Street, where much of the movie had been filmed. He remembers vividly thinking that everyone there would know every landmark and was amused to see that they didn't. 

TB had not yet started doing his daily blog back then. In fact, it was just a few months off, though he had no way to know it at the time. 

 Instead, he chronicled his experience that afternoon on Grafton Street for a story on goprincetontigers.com, which he shares below. 

First, RIP Glen Hansard. That's a loss that really hurts. Go watch "Once," if you haven't already.   

For those who don't know, "Once" is the story of an Irishman who works in his father's vacuum repair store during the day and plays his guitar and sings on the streets of Dublin at night. He meets a young woman from the Czech Republic who is also a musician, and the movie is the story of their relationship. It won an Academy Award this past year for Best Original Song for the song "Falling Slowly." The man who plays the lead is Glen Hansard, who sings with the famous Irish group The Frames.

More background on the movie includes the fact that it was filmed on the streets of Dublin, and the entire movie took 17 days to shoot. It was done with next to no money and has gone on to make a fortune. The film's maker had no permits to shoot, so all of the street scenes were done from across the street, and the people on the street at the time had no idea they were in a movie.

With that background, it was off to try to find these locations. How hard could it be? Everyone in Dublin must know where this movie was shot, right? It had to be legend by now. Right?

Wrong.

The first 10 people randomly asked had never heard of the movie, let alone knew where it was filmed. It was only after going to Google that it was learned that the street scenes were on the famous Grafton Street. So off to Grafton Street it was. To get to Grafton Street from the Jury's Inn requires a right turn out of the hotel and then a 10-minute walk down Dame Street to Trinity College. Once at Trinity, go right, and the first street sign tells you that you are now at the intersection of Grafton Street and, ironically enough, Nassau Street.

Grafton Street is a walking street, filled with shops and shoppers. Somewhere on this street, Hansard stood and sang, and much of the story of the movie revolved around that. Certainly now somebody would know where exactly all this happened.

Nope. Not the first four people asked, but at least they had the excuse of being from Toronto. Not the women who worked at the flower stand, not a guy named Adrian who worked in a gift shop, nobody. Not even the four-man singing group from the Czech Republic who performed halfway down the street and hawked their new CD. They were pretty good, too. Could it be a coincidence that they were singing somewhere around where the street musicians in the movie did?

"Yeah, never heard of it," their manager said. "It had a Czech singer in it? Cool."

The first scene of the movie includes a song by Hansard, who is standing outside of one store with his guitar case open as people throw coins in. A young man comes and swipes the case and then sprints under an archway into a park, where Hansard tackles him. The park had to be at the end of Grafton Street, so finding it was simple.

St. Stephen's Green Park was a busy place in the early afternoon. There were people everywhere, including Mark, who buys and sells cars and was born and raised in Dublin. He was sitting on the grass in the exact spot where Hansard made his tackle.

"I saw the film," Mark said. "Loved it. Don't remember that scene, though. It was right here?"

Yes, right there. With the park found, it was time to zero in on the storefront that had been the background for Hansard and the filming spot across the street that was out of sight to passersby.

Crossing back onto Grafton Street, there was Linda, a radio station personality who was doing "man on the street" interviews. Her "man" on this street was actually a 17-year-old named Maude, who became the first Dubliner who actually saw the movie and knew where it was filmed.

"Right over there," she said. "Right in front of the Dunnes store."

Yup. That was it. Dunnes was a short distance away. Inside the entryway stood John Doyle, the store security manager. Surely John knew the reason his store was, uh, famous.

"Right on this spot," John said, poking his head out of the store and pointing straight down as he faced to the right. "He stood right there and sang."

Did John know a movie was being filmed?

"No. There are always people singing out there. I think I was on holiday when they filmed."

As for that filming, there were four large windows opposite the Dunnes, any of which could have hidden a camera.

And that was that. The locations of "Once" had been found, though with very little help from the locals. They had to be kidding, right? When "IQ" or "A Beautiful Mind" were filmed in Princeton, they couldn't record a frame without having the entire town know where it was.

The Dubliners had to have known all the time. Maybe they all got together and decided to mess with the tourists, and maybe they forgot to tell 17-year-old Maude.

 

Items For A Summer Friday

A few items for your summer Friday, before the page turns into August ... 

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One day later than he originally said he would, TigerBlog posted his Ryan Croddick feature story yesterday. 

He invites you to read it, which you can do HERE. 

Croddick, if you don't know, was the Princeton men's lacrosse starting goalie the last two seasons, including a senior year that saw him earn first-team All-American honors and become the Most Outstanding Player at the NCAA Final Four as Princeton won the championship. In addition, Croddick has spent most of his life watching as his father John has battled ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. 

The Croddick's story is uplifting and inspirational and has a deep message that 1) is found at the very end of the 7,500 word piece and 2) should resonate with everyone. 

TB hopes you read it. And that you come away, like he did, with even greater respect and admiration for the job Croddick did in his time at Princeton. 

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Congratulations go out to Princeton head field hockey coach Carla Tagliente, who was inducted into the  New York State Public High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame Wednesday night in Buffalo. 

Tagliente attended Marathon High School, where one of her teammates and closest friends was Hilary Matson. Is that name familiar? Matson is one of the best Princeton field hockey players of all time. 

Tagliente, of course, was a great high school and college field hockey player. Her 159 career goals scored are still the fourth-most ever by a New York public school player, and she scored 51 in one season, which still ranks eighth. 

What you might not have known about her was that she scored 1,692 career points in basketball, still second at Marathon, and she was also a first-team all-state selection in track and field (and is still the Marathon record holder in the triple jump).  

By the way, the Marathon High School graduating class with Tagliente and Matson totaled 55 students. That's total. 

Congratulations to Carla. The field hockey team opens its season Sept. 4 and 6 at the Conference Crossover at North Carolina, taking on Old Dominion in the first game and then UNC in its second (Penn will play the opposite schedule there).

Princeton went 18-4 last year and lost in overtime in the NCAA championship game to Northwestern. 

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While the subject is "field hockey and congratulations, " there is also Martha Russo, who was a superstar in field hockey and lacrosse in the 1980s at Princeton before two devastating knee injuries ended her career. Before that, she was a member of the U.S. women's national team in field hockey and was a lock to be on the team for the 1984 Olympics. 

Her athletic career over, she then shifted her focus to art, becoming a renowned sculptor. She recently had an exhibit in Europe, and TB received an email release announcing that "Walker Fine Art artist Martha Russo has been shortlisted for the European Cultural Centre Italy's ECC Awards 2026, presented as part of Personal Structures — Confluences in Venice."

This is from the release: 

Martha Russo creates sculptural and installation-based works that exist at the threshold of language and compel the viewer to engage on a visceral level. Rooted in the process of ceramics, yet deliberately challenging its historical associations, her work transcends traditional materiality, defying gravity and spilling into space. She harnesses the chameleon-like properties of clay to explore notions of mystery, wonder, and fragility of the natural world. Her work radiates both a quiet tension and undeniable force that creates a primal connection between the viewer and the work, a connection that is felt in the body as much as it is first seen by the mind’s eye.

The winners of the awards across five categories will be announced on Nov. 22. 

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Lastly for today, there is women's basketball/softball player Sarah Lessig, who is also a member of the United States national women's baseball team. Team USA went 5-0 the last two weeks in a qualifying tournament, earning a spot in next summer's women's baseball World Championships. 

This is from the goprincetontigers.com story, which you can read HERE: 

Lessig appeared in two games as a hitter, going 1-for-2 with a run scored and made two appearances on the mound, striking out seven in three innings. She collected a save vs. Korea and picked up the win vs. Hong Kong. 

The picture alone is ferocious. 

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And with that, TB says "have a great weekend." He'll see you in August. 

On Sale Now

TigerBlog begins today by rescinding his shout out to himself yesterday, when he said he'd be posting his feature story on Ryan Croddick, the goalie who was the Most Outstanding Player at the Final Four as Princeton won its seventh NCAA men's lacrosse championship.

As it turned out, the story won't be posted until today. He promises. He even got a handful of notes yesterday wondering where the story was. 

TB gave you the first paragraph yesterday. Here's the second: 

The eye blinks at around the same rate. Even the complex computer that is the human brain, equipped with its billions of neurons, cannot process a moment in time so small. So how to explain the man on the other side of the table, then? Maybe it’s as simple as acknowledging that to him, traditional measures of time are irrelevant. 

That whets the appetite. The entire story runs more than 7,500 words, which makes it the single longest feature story TB has ever written, other than chapters in the women's history book. You can buy that HERE, by the way.  

In the meantime, another week has come and gone, which means that as of today, Princeton is just three weeks away from the start of the 2026-27 athletic year. How can that be, right? 

It will begin on Aug. 20, when the women's soccer team will host Loyola. That will be Game 1 of nearly 700 athletic events between that game and the NCAA track and field championships in June.

Speaking of Princeton soccer, there is the matter of the men's team. The Tigers are coming off a 15-2-2 season that saw them go 7-0-0 in the Ivy League without allowing a single goal in any of those games and earn the No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament. 

The 2026 season begins Aug. 28, at home against Villanova. That game will be followed by another home game three days later against Portland, which sounds like an interesting matchup. 

There aren't many bigger Princeton Athletic fans anywhere than men's soccer coach Jim Barlow. When his team isn't playing he can be found watching any number of other Princeton teams play. 

This is why it wasn't surprising to TigerBlog to see Barlow make a tiny cameo in a video on the ticket page. You can see the video HERE; did you find Barlow? 

The ticket page now has five separate entries to buy season tickets for the upcoming 2026-27 regular seasons. Those five are football, men's and women's basketball and men's and women's hockey; HERE is the link to the main ticket page. 

All five of those teams have their own storylines heading into their coming seasons. Maybe the biggest one will be the debut of Lauren Gosselin as the women's basketball coach, after she had been part of Carla Berube's staff for so many years. 

Princeton returns four starters from last year's team, which went 26-4 and won the Ivy League and Ivy League tournament championships. From 1985 through 2009, Princeton women's basketball won two Ivy titles. Since then, the team has won 12 more and played in 11 NCAA tournaments. 

Princeton Athletics has undergone numerous changes since TigerBlog first came around back in the late 1980s. Right up there with anything has been the growth of women's basketball and especially women's basketball attendance, which has increased several times over in the last 15 or so years. 

What's most noticeable about that growth has been the number of men and boys in attendance at the games. Princeton women's basketball has become a terrific event each night. 

The men's team has a long history of being a great draw at Jadwin Gym. Every football game on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium is a happening. 

Both the men's and women's hockey teams are coming off great seasons, the women with an ECAC regular season championship and NCAA tournament appearance and the men with a dramatic run at the ECAC tournament before finally falling in overtime in the championship game. 

Hobey Baker Rink? It's quaint and historic, and game nights there are something if you've never been to one.  

The football team opens its season Sept. 19 at Bryant before the home opener seven days later against Albany. Then there are two straight trips to New York City, for the Ivy opener at Columbia and a non-league game at Wagner. The season finishes with four home games among the final six. 

And this will all be kickoff very soon. Tickets? On sale now.  

 

 

Shouting Out

Before anything else today, TigerBlog would like to give a shout-out to the men and women who took the pothole-decimated roads around his house and turned it into what you see here. 

Fresh oil and chips for everyone. Don't get the reference? It's what the sign said when the road was recently paved. TB mentioned it last week. 

Who else is worthy of a shout-out today? 

Jami MacDonald had a goal and an assist as Canada did in fact defeat Wales very early yesterday morning at the women's lacrosse World Championships in Tokyo. The Canadians finished the round-robin portion at 3-0 and advanced to the quarterfinals, which begin began today. 

Canada was to play the host Japanese team at 7 pm local time, which, if TB is doing this correctly, would be 6 am in the Eastern United States. If so, then the game might already be finished by the time you read this. 

The winner of the Canada-Japan game will play Friday against the winner of the game between England and the Haudenosaunee. That game started at 2 am today, so unless you were either up really late or really early, that game is now over. 

The other side of the bracket has Israel and Australia and the United States against Puerto Rico. Those games are probably over by now as well. 

The finals will be Sunday. The last three championship games matched the U.S. and Canada. 

Meanwhile, TB sends a shout-out to his longtime friend and former colleague Craig Sachson, who, along with TB's current athletic communications friend and colleague Warren Croxton and another Princeton Athletics employee whose name might be familiar (head football coach Bob Surace) are ridiculously avid Philadelphia 76ers fans. 

TB texted them yesterday to ask if they were okay with having their team assemble a roster of completely unlikeable players. To that, Craig responded with: 

Not sure what you’re talking about. If you remember correctly, we’ve always loved Lebron. And Jaylen Brown. 

Well played, Craig. Surace, for his part, said he was bummed that Draymond Green resigned with Golden State or it would have been yet another member of the unlikeable club. Surace also referred to the coming rivalry with the New York Knicks (also known as the NBA champion New York Knicks) as "our dream team against Villanova."

It's an interesting phenomenon, of course. If you've always rooted against a player and suddenly he's on YOUR team, do you suddenly like that player? 

TB has always thought of that when thinking about where some of his all-time favorite Princeton athletes might have gone had they not come become Tigers.  He would have had to root against all of them, though he would never have liked them in the first place since, you know, they could have been Tigers and chose not to be. 

Next on the shout-out list would be all of the Princeton rowers who won medals at the U-23 World Championships in Duisberg, Germany. The men's four race had, obviously, 12 total medalists. Of those 12, nearly half — five — are Princetonians. Tristan Wenger and Marcus Chute made up half of the gold medal boat from Great Britain. 

You can read more about that HERE.  

The women's open team had four rowers who won medals, including Joely Cherniss and Lauren Dubois, who won gold with the United States eight boat. You can read about the women's success HERE.

Another shout out goes the way of the four women's hockey players who will be competing at the USA Women's National Festival next week: Uma Corniea, Megan Healy, Gabby Kim and Rosie Klein. As it says in THIS story: 

At the conclusion of the camp, USA Hockey will name the U.S. Collegiate Women's Select Team, which will face Canada in a three-game series Aug. 12-15 in Richmond, British Columbia.

Lastly, TB sends himself a shout out. Coming up later today (or maybe already, depending on what time he gets this posted) will be his latest feature story, this one on Ryan Croddick, the goalie on the NCAA championship men's lacrosse team this past spring and the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. 

Here's the first paragraph: 

A ball moving at 80 miles per hour will travel 10 yards in 0.256 seconds. That’s two-hundred-fifty-six-one-thousandths of a second. Two-hundred-fifty-six-one-thousandths of a second.

 

As the great writer John Irving once said, the first paragraph should tell the entire story of a novel. TB thinks this paragraph does that for his feature on Croddick. 

Tokyo Time

Sometime around last fall, TigerBlog snapped a picture of a dog who appeared to be driving a car. 

TB said something like "he seemed to be good at parallel barking." Barking. Get it? 

This is a picture TB grabbed yesterday. The dog driving this car is definitely dialed in for safety, as he is checking his sideview mirror before heading out.

Of course, he decided he needed to turn around, so he made a three-point turn. You know what they call those? K9-Turns. Darn funny, that TigerBlog is.  

Anyway, how did TB and the rest of the world survive without the ability to grab a phone and snap a picture of a dog in the sideview mirror? Seriously, TigerBlog didn't even own a camera before smart phones took over the majority of picture taking in the world these days (unless you count the many great professionals Princeton Athletics uses). Now he takes pictures of almost anything, especially dogs who appear to be driving cars. 

TB did a search for what percentage of photos take these days, and he found some pretty incredible stuff, according to the PhotiAiD report analysis, if it is to be believed (and who knows what can be believed these days, right?).

You can read it for yourself: 

In each mobile phone, users can typically store approximately 2,795 photos.

Globally, more than 92 million selfies are being clicked regularly in 2025.

In America, average people check their smartphones six times a day to take a photo.

As mentioned in passport-photo.Online, around 1.8 to 2 trillion photos are taken on mobile annually, representing 5 billion photos captured daily and 57,246 every second.

That's incredible, no? Also, what percentage of photos taken are taken on a smartphone? TB will give you until the end to guess. 

While all this is being pondered and processed, there's the matter of something going on this week on the other side of the world. Specifically, that would be the World Championships of women's lacrosse, currently underway in Tokyo. 

You can root for the United States if you like. The Americans are clearly the favorite, having won the gold medal in nine of the 11 previous events dating to Year 1 in 1982. The only team to win besides the USA? 

That would be Australia, who won in 1986 and 2005, both times in the U.S., in Haverford and Baltimore. The United States has won the last four, defeating Canada in the final of the last three. 

The Canadians are the underdog but also the sentimental choice for Princeton fans, possibly. Why? Because recent Princeton graduate Jami MacDonald is making her full national team debut for Canada. 

MacDonald did win a silver medal with the Canadian team at the U-20 World Championships two years ago in Hong Kong, falling to, you guessed it, the United States. 

By the time you read this, Canada almost surely will have improved to 3-0 at the conclusion of the round-robin portion. Canada already had easy wins over Australia and Germany to start the tournament, and its final game in pool play was against Wales began at 2 am today Eastern Time.

Should Canada win (or already have won) it would clinch first place in Group B. Next up would be the quarterfinals, which will be held tomorrow. The semifinals follow Friday, and the championship game is Sunday. 

There are also two other Princeton alums who are competing in Tokyo, both for the Philippines. Those two would be Olivia Pugh, who graduated in 2022, and Sarah Nelson, who graduated in 2025. 

The Philippines went 1-2 in Group D, finishing behind unbeaten Israel and 2-1 Japan, the host. The top two in each group advance to the quarterfinals, which leaves the Philippines in the consolation rounds to play for 9th- through 16th-places.  

MacDonald had a goal and assist in the first two games. Nelson had two goals and one assist in the three games, while Pugh plays defense and has no stats on the tournament website. 

Oh, and according to that report? How about 92.5 percent of all photos are taken on smartphones, with 7.5 percent on traditional cameras. 

PLL Tigers

Mark it down. 

July 25, 2026. 10:40 pm. 

TigerBlog saw his first back-to-school commercial of the summer. Can Christmas music be far behind? 

When TB was a kid, by the way, he was sent off to school with a notebook and a few pencils. When his kids were kids, they were sent off to school only after an extensive search for every single item on the school supply list. 

"Noooooooo. They're out of those ridiculous multi-colored post-its that are the exact right size. Would it be okay to get the ones that are slightly larger? Will that set them back for an entire year of learning?" 

The back-to-school commercial occasion was watching the Premier Lacrosse League's Saturday night game between the Philadelphia Waterdogs and the weekend's host, the Denver Outlaws. He was rooting for Princeton, of course. 

That's his approach to the league. He roots for the Princeton alums. Wins and losses take care of themselves. 

There was a great deal to root for this weekend. In all, there were seven different Princeton alums who had either a goal or an assist, and they combined for a total of 13 goals and eight assists. 

And that doesn't even count the fact that both former Princeton head coaches in the league — Bill Tierney and Chris Bates — went a combined 4-0 on the weekend.  

Included in the Princeton success this weekend was the first professional goal for John Dunphey, who made his PLL debut for the Denver Outlaws after being a huge reason that Princeton won the 2026 NCAA championship. Dunphey, by the way, went from 39 total points his first three seasons at Princeton to 39 points his senior year alone. 

Dunphey's goal came Friday night in Denver, after a two-hour lighting delay. TB was about to give up on watching when the game finally began. 

He definitely wasn't watching the second game of Friday's doubleheader, which matched Tierney's Waterdogs and the New York Atlas. Michael Sowers scored the game-winner in that one (his third of the night) with 1:52 to go to give Philly an 11-10 win; the game ended after midnight in Denver, which put it after 2 am in TB's house. 

The Waterdogs had a very quick turnaround from Friday to Saturday, like a 19-hour turnaround, before playing their second game. How did Sowers do in that one? He went for three goals and three assists in an 18-8 romp while fellow former Tiger Zach Currier had four assists of his own. 

As of now, Princeton has three alums in the top nine in the league in assists: Sowers (first), Coulter Mackesy (sixth) and Currier (ninth). Sowers leads the league in points with 36 (18G, 18A), and he has a great chance to become only the fourth PLL player ever with at least 20 goals and 20 assists in a season. 

By the way, what Princeton player has the program record for most assists in a season by a midfielder? The answer isn't Tom Schreiber, who is quite likely the greatest passing midfielder of all time. It's Currier, who had 34 as a senior in 2017, along with 24 goals, 130 groundballs and the team lead in caused turnovers while winning 57 percent of his face-offs — and somehow was not a USILA first-team All-American. Has a midfielder ever had a better season than that? 

And, as always, when you talk about Currier, you don't fixate on points to define him. In the game Saturday night, Currier had 10 groundballs, giving him 14 for the weekend and 51 for the season, which is fifth in the league. 

TB loves that the PLL has a way to track the number of touches a player has in a game and by extension the season. Currier has 134 of them and has turned the ball over only three times. That's ridiculous as well. 

If Currier is fifth in the league in groundballs, who is fourth? That would be another Princeton alum, face-off man Andrew McMeekin, with 52 GBs. Meeks also happens to be leading the league, winning 61.3 percent of his face-offs. 

In another shake of the head, how was McMeekin only an honorable mention All-American this year? 

Chad Palumbo, who along with Dunphey, McMeekin and Ryan Croddick gives Princeton four PLL rookies this summer, had three goals as his Carolina Chaos defeated McMeekin's Cannons 13-12 in overtime Saturday (despite a 23 for 28 performance from McMeekin, including winning the OT face-off). Palumbo now has 13 goals for the season, second among first-year players behind the 16 of Ryan Stines, a Richmond alum.

The Sagacity Of It All

Ah, the sagacity of it all. 

TigerBlog stumbled upon the word yesterday and had no idea what it meant. Vocabulary isn't always his strong suit. Or maybe that's spelling. Or fixing stuff around the house. 

When he went to look it up, this is what he found: 

"Sagacity: the quality of being sagacious."  

Okay, how does that help anyone? Now you have to know what "sagacious" means before you can figure out what "sagacity" means. Pretty much anyone looking up "sagacity" now has to go look up "sagacious" as well? What, the good people at Merriam-Webster are in it for the clicks? 

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Among the stories that have been cycling through goprincetontigers.com the last few weeks are the ones introducing the incoming classes for various teams. 

TigerBlog always checks these stories to see if there are any newcomers who went to his high school (Manalapan, in Monmouth County) or the high schools of his kids. It's rare that he finds anyone who has. 

Even Kayla Wong, the rising senior on the women's soccer team, attended Freehold Township High School, though her hometown is listed as Manalapan. Here's a fun fact: Manalapan and Freehold Township were built in the same year from the same exact floor plan, which means that if you walk into either school, the layout is identical. It's a bit freaky if you attend one and then go the other. At least it was in the 1970s. 

The other thing TB checks for when looking at the incoming stories would be relatives of current or former Princeton athletes. To that end, he couldn't help but notice an incoming women's track and field athlete named Lux Burgin, from Bronxville, N.Y.

Hmmm. She has to be the sister of Princeton rising senior men's lacrosse player Wilder Burgin, right? When TB texted Wilder, he confirmed it: 

"That is indeed my sister coming in…she couldn’t be more excited!"

Welcome to Princeton, Lux. And at some point, TB will do a deeper dive into Wilder Burgin and how he ended up with the role with the NCAA champions that he has — hint, see the picture:

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While the subject is NCAA champions and trophies, a very belated congratulations to TB's former colleague Joanna Dwyer, who left Princeton to become the water polo and swimming contact at USC. Here she is with the NCAA water polo championship trophy the USC women won this past spring:

It goes without saying that the people who work in athletic communications work hard and do almost everything they do behind the scenes. It's great to see pictures like this, with the big smile and the obvious joy that goes along with them. It's not something a high percentage of TB's colleagues throughout the country will get to experience, and it's never something that should be taken for granted. 

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Congratulations go out to Nika Kukharchuk, who is leaving her role as an assistant coach with the Princeton women's tennis team to become the head men's coach at Fordham. You can read more about that HERE.

There all kinds of examples of men who are the head coach of Division I women's teams. Are there many examples of women who are the head coach of Division I men's teams? TigerBlog doesn't think there are. 

He does know of one at Princeton. Susanah Occhi was the men's volleyball head coach in the 1970s, as well as the first head coach of the women's volleyball team. In fact, she and Penny Hinckley (who coached field hockey, basketball and women's lacrosse) were the first two paid women coaches in Princeton history.

TigerBlog has always thought there have been quite a few women coaches at Princeton who would have been great coaches for corresponding men's teams. 

Anyway, as TB texted Nika: "Go Rams!!" 

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Finally, if you were wondering what "sagacious" means, here you go: 

Having or showing an ability to understand difficult ideas and situations and to make good decisions : marked by keen and farsighted understanding and judgment : discerning, wise

This could be TigerBlog's new favorite word. He's always told his kids to "make good decisions." If you read his novel (okay, you can buy it HERE), the dedication says just that. 

Now he can shorten that to "be sagacious." Saves one word. 

Enjoy your summer weekend everyone. 

Fresh Oil And Chips

Pretty much every road near TigerBlog's house needed repaving after the winter and its accompanying potholes. 

Okay, so now it's July and it's all being done, which is fine. Better late than never at all. 

The potholes were pretty big. If you drove straight through most of them, for instance, you'd definitely need the services of Ron, the official mechanic of TigerBlog. Ron, by the way, fixed the destroyed sideview mirror on TB's car, if you were wondering from last week. 

You can see for yourself with the before and after: 

Well done, Ron. TB is pretty sure Ron, armed with a book and YouTube video, could perform open-heart surgery. 

Anyway, the roads have all been repaved, though not yet relined, which creates its own issues. You'd never guess that removing every marker on a road would cause so many problems, like the one where a car coming toward TB veered perilously close to requiring yet another new sideview mirror. 

Oh, And a bunch of these "Fresh Chips and Oil" signs have sprung up all around. 

Fresh Chips and Oil? It sounds like something on the menu at an English pub. 

"I'll have the Yorkshire Pudding."
"Okay, love. Would you like fresh oil and chips with that?"  
"A pint would go great with that, wouldn't it?"

Anyway, another Thursday has rolled around, and suddenly the start of the 2026-27 athletic year at Princeton is now just four weeks away. Once again, it begins with women's soccer, who will be home against Loyola on Aug. 20. 

That'll actually be the third game of the season for the Greyhounds. Loyola's opener? That would be Aug. 12 — 20 days from now — at home against William & Mary and former Tiger head coach Julie Shackford. Game 2 will be the 16th, also at home, against Arkansas. 

Loyola, by the way, had the rather different record a year ago of 5-5-8. Its Patriot League record was 2-2-5, meaning the team had more ties than wins and losses combined in its conference games. 

Princeton women's soccer, by the way, has never had a season where it had more ties than wins or losses. 

The Tigers will dive right into their schedule, with four games in 11 days to start: Loyola, followed by a game at Syracuse and home games against West Virginia and James Madison. Princeton plays 16 regular season games, half of which are in the summer in this "fall" sport. It's sort of the opposite of lacrosse season, where the team plays half its games in the winter of this "spring sport."

In other Princeton women's soccer news, Pietra Tordin, a Princeton alum, is having a big season in the National Women's Soccer League. A two-time first-team All-Ivy League selection and the 2024 Ivy Offensive Player of the Year, she was also the leading scorer for the U.S. at the 2024 U-23 World Cup as the Americans won the bronze medal. 

Tordin is in Year 2 with the Portland, and she has made a nice jump from a year ago. Here is the year-by-year comparison:

2025 — 26 games, four goals, 31 shots, no assists
2026 — 16 games to date, four goals, 20 shots, six assists

Those six assists, by the way, are tied for the league lead. 

As for the Thorns, they are currently in fourth place in the 16-team league. Next up is a home game tomorrow night against second place Gotham. 

The regular season runs through Nov. 1. A week later, the Princeton women's soccer regular season will end with a home game against Brown. 

Both of those will be here soon enough. 

What Did You Say?

As you may know, TigerBlog is a big fan of puzzles. 

His daily routine includes all of the following: Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections, Strands, Letter Boxed, Spelling Bee and all three New York Times crosswords (mini, midi and daily). In fact, he heard from Mark Bernstein of the Princeton Alumni Weekly about a story he's doing on people who do puzzles every day. 

The daily crossword yesterday included this clue: "Said ______ Ever." Five letters. 

"Said No One Ever." 

Inspired by that, TigerBlog decided to go back in the archives to see what some people actually did say after some big Princeton moments through the years. Here are a few he stumbled upon (and by the way, this took him way longer than simply writing 700 or so words would have): 

"Right now Kaz gets a great deal more publicity than Milton Berle." — Bob Lovell's commentary about Dick Kazmaier after his huge 1951 game against Cornell, shortly before Kazmaier won the Heisman Trophy.

"You can't dwell on the past. In two or three years, we're going to be a winning team. I know the tradition has been great here, even though the last few years have been bad," he said. "I hope to bring us back to that level." — Bill Tierney after being hired as Princeton head men's lacrosse coach in 1987. How'd that work out? He was right. In three years he had a winning record. Oh, and then he won six of Princeton's seven NCAA championships. 

"Two Princeton coeds, Marjorie Gengler and Helena Novakova, made a stunning debut in the Eastern College Women's Tennis Tournament this weekend by capturing first and third places from a field of 99 of the East's finest women tennis players." — Daily Princetonian blurb of Oct. 20, 1970, after Princeton's first varsity intercollegiate athletic event for women three days prior. 

"I think my teammates just have all the confidence in the world in me and I knew that if I missed that shot, they were getting good offensive rebounds. So it’s really hard not to shoot with confidence when you have teammates like mine.” — Grace Stone after she drained the game-winning three-pointer to beat North Carolina State 64-63 in the 2023 NCAA tournament opening round. Stone is now back at Princeton as Director of Women's Basketball Operations. 

"While countless Americans spent the Friday after Thanksgiving doling out exorbitant sums of paper, metal and plastic money in preparation for the holiday season, the women’s soccer team used a less tangible sort of currency namely, cohesiveness on both sides of the ball to buy themselves a trip to the Final Four." — Karl Micka Foos in the Daily Princetonian after Princeton's 3-1 win over Washington in the 2004 NCAA quarterfinals. 

"I was there for three years. I started at $500 and more than tripled my salary by the end. I made $1,700 my last year." — Cindy Cohen about her first college softball coaching job. She'd go on to put together a record of 560-277-3 at Princeton, with 12 Ivy League championships and back-to-back Women's College World Series appearances.

"When I heard that final buzzer, I threw off my helmet and my arm pads, and I just started sprinting toward my team. It was like a dream; it was the most incredible feeling I’ve ever felt. It was awesome.” — Goalie Christina Maida after Princeton's 3-2 win over North Carolina in the 2012 NCAA field hockey championship game. 

"When I was 15 I was hanging out in Exeter, New Hampshire, with the townies, smoking cigarettes." — Anne Marden, Princeton's only four-time Olympian, who won two medals in rowing.

"Picture Shaquille O'Neal (or Chris Young on his tip-toes). Now add four inches. That's how high Princeton senior Tora Harris soared Friday night to win his first NCAA indoor championship. Competing in Fayetteville, Ark., seven-time Heptagonal champion Harris entered the meet with a No. 1 seed, along with Adam Shunk of the University of North Carolina, both having cleared 2.25 meters (seven feet, 4.5 inches). In championship action, Harris improved his Princeton record to 2.26 m (7-5"), while Shunk faltered slightly in clearing 2.23 m to place second." — Daily Princetonian story of March 11, 2002. Two bonus facts: 1) the story was written by Emily Kroshus, herself an All-American track and field athlete at Princeton, and 2) Harris' 7-7 to win the outdoor NCAA title that spring is still the Ivy League record. 

 

Welcome To Princeton

Whether or not the World Cup final was a thing of beauty (it wasn't) to a more neutral observer, to your average Spaniard it couldn't have been prettier. 

TigerBlog doesn't know too many average Spaniards. He does know one who is hardly average — Princeton women's tennis No. 1 singles player Alice Ferlito. 

A rising senior, Ferlito was the top-ranked singles player in the ITF Northeast Regional rankings and a first-team All-Ivy League selection this past season. Ferlito, who played No. 3 doubles as well, helped Princeton to the Ivy League championship. 

Her hometown is Barcelona, and TB reached out to her to see if she was there for the game. This was the response: 

Yes I was in Barcelona jajaja. It was insane!!! The atmosphere was electric jajaja everyone was on the streets celebrating all night and it was so beatiful❤️❤️🇪🇸🇪🇸. It was so well deserved so it was such a special moment😆😆😆😆. I loved it and had so much fun celebrating it was one of the best days!!!! 

Here are some pictures she sent from the celebration, along with one from her Instagram:

Hey, Spain has now won the World Cup twice. There are no guarantees that it'll ever happen again, so you have to celebrate, right? 

TigerBlog was at Brown on a Sunday afternoon back in April when it poured heavily as Princeton won the women's tennis Ivy championship. He had been at Harvard the day before for men's lacrosse and the field hockey banquet in Princeton the day before that. 

If you remember, TB wrote about being at the hotel the night before the Harvard game with six other college teams in addition to Tiger men's lacrosse. One of those other teams was Duke baseball, in town to play Boston College. 

TB had no idea who was good in ACC baseball, so he looked it up. What did he find? It turned out that BC was ranked in the Top 25. 

BC would sweep three games from the Blue Devils that weekend, allowing only nine runs in the three games combined, on its way to the NCAA tournament. The 17 ACC wins were the most BC has ever had. 

TigerBlog thought back to BC baseball when he saw the news that Ryan Forrest has been hired as the new head coach at Princeton. Baseball at Princeton goes back, way back, in fact, all the way to the beginning of intercollegiate sports here. The first baseball game was also the first Princeton game, on Nov. 22, 1864, when the Tigers defeated Williams College 27-16. 

For decades, one of the best Princeton traditions was the baseball game against Yale on Commencement Day, something that began in the 19th century and lasted all the way through 1966. 

Forrest comes to Princeton after being the Eagles' pitching coach the last three seasons. Before that, he was the pitching coach at Air Force, where among the players he coached was Paul Skenes, the same Paul Skenes who transferred to LSU and is now one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball.  

Forrest's own playing career saw him pitch at Maine and Creighton. He has a master's degree in sport management from West Virginia, and he got his bachelor's degree from Maine. His major? Journalism. Not bad. 

Here is part of one of Forrest's quotes from the release about his hiring, which you can read HERE.

I am grateful for the opportunity to lead the baseball program in one of the most respected and prestigious departments in college athletics and to become part of such an extraordinary institution. Princeton is truly a special place, one that is committed to excellence in everything it does. That pursuit of excellence extends beyond the classroom and playing field, shaping leaders of character who are prepared to make an impact long after graduation. It is a privilege to join a community with such a rich tradition and a bold vision for the future.  

That says it all. 

Welcome to Princeton, Ryan Forrest. Hopefully your experience will be a great one as well.