Pride Month

Today is June 30, which makes it the final day of Pride Month. 

TigerBlog thought that his colleague Mason Darrow celebrated by getting a dog:

Making new friends is the best part of Pride pic.twitter.com/tjjow3IxKX

— Mason Darrow (he/him/his) (@mason_darrow) June 27, 2021

As it turns out, Mason did not get a dog. That dog belongs to a friend of his. "I wish," is what Mason actually said. 

If you go to Mason Darrow's Twitter account, you'll see that he wrote on top "Used to be a gay football player, now just a gay Princeton ’17 #BeTrue"

You may recall that back in 2015, Mason Darrow came out as gay. There was a story about him on outsports.com, which you can still read HERE.

This is what TigerBlog wrote afterwards: 

Even in 2015, when gay marriage is legal everywhere in the United States, when the idea of living a "closeted" existence seems silly, this is still big news. And it's not easy to do what Darrow did. It's not easy to put yourself out there like that, as "different." Especially in a sport like football.

Hopefully, in the nearly six years that have passed things have gotten a bit easier to do what Darrow did. Maybe having a month called "Pride Month" helps. Just last week, Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib became the first active NFL player to come out as gay. 

Darrow is not the only openly gay member of the Princeton Department of Athletics. There are several others, including coaches who are exactly the kind of people you want coaching your kids (and in the case of one, IS the coach who is coaching TB's kid). 

A year ago, during Pride Month 2020, Princeton women's lacrosse coach Chris Sailer said this to US Lacrosse Magazine:

“I’m passionate about this as a human being. I’m passionate about it as a coach of young people. As a gay woman, it’s important to be a good role model and promote the concept of diversity and acceptance and to help create inclusive communities for all of our players. I know that inclusion is always part of our message. If you’re talking from the standpoint of coaches, I think it should be part of every coach’s message. Our teams are made up of people from different backgrounds — different socioeconomic backgrounds, sexual orientations, different races. I don’t know how you can have a great team unless you create an inclusive environment.”

That's a great message. Isn't that the exact message you want your child to learn from a coach? 

Certainly things have changed since Sailer was younger. And from when TB was younger. In fact, he was a freshman in college when his older brother told him he was gay. It was a difficult message to hear back then, and it was something that TB would never publicly admit to anyone for years after that. If anyone asked, he'd say his brother was "single" or "hadn't met the right person yet."

To be completely honest with you, writing that now makes TB chuckle at the absurdity of it. And it also reminds him that if it was difficult for him to hear the news, it had to be 100 times harder for his brother to say it about himself to others. 

As much as TB would like to think the world has changed, it's probable that the world isn't quite as accepting these days as he hopes. Still, there's no doubt that it's come a very, very long way. 

TB's biggest concern on the subject is that there are people out there, young people, who are still afraid to have to say the words to the people closest to them. TB's advice is exactly what Mason Darrow says: be true.

TB is glad he works in a department that welcomes its members to "be true." There has been special attention paid the last 30 days to Pride Month, but it doesn't end with the turn of the calendar. And nor should it.

Oh So Close

Did you see the crash at the Tour de France the other day? 

It started when a woman who was holding a sign stepped out onto the course, apparently to get her picture taken. In doing so, she unwittingly got in the way of one of the riders, who then started a chain reaction that left at least two riders unable to continue for the rest of the month.

You can see it for yourself here:

Huge crash on stage 1 of Le Tour de France today.

pic.twitter.com/yQpKHN2Jg1

— MUHQ News (@MUHQNews) June 26, 2021

That was nasty. The riders were lucky that more of them weren't seriously hurt.

TigerBlog can tell you that even at the speed at which he rides, which isn't anywhere near what the riders at the Tour de France do, there is almost no reaction time if some unexpected obstacle comes along. He was riding the other day when a car came over a hill and was across the center line by a few inches. The driver quickly went back to the other side, but TB figured that if the car came at him, there was absolutely nothing he could have done to get out of the way in time.

TB cannot imagine what it must be like to see the Tour de France riders up close. He's often overtaken by riders who are much faster than he is on the roads where he goes, and they seem like they're going lightning quick. What must the professionals be like?

On one of TB's recent rides, a woman rode up next to him. She and her husband live down the street from TB, and the two rode together for awhile. She can ride faster than TB, and it was something of a sprint for him to keep up with her - for about 15 miles. He was wiped out after that.

The women is a graduate of Butler, in Indianapolis. When she first mentioned that to TB, the first thing he said was the first thing everyone must say to her when they meet her: "It would have been amazing if that shot went in."

The shot he refers to, of course, was from Gordon Hayward, whose potential game-winning shot from half court against Duke in the 2010 NCAA men's basketball championship game hit the backboard and rim and did just about everything except go in. Had it fallen, it would have easily been the greatest moment in college basketball history. 

TB was trying to think of something similar in Princeton athletic history. It can't just be a buzzer-beater that didn't fall. It has to be something where the play itself would have been a one in a hundred play, and it would have to have been at the perfect moment.

The closest TB came to thinking of one was the ending of the 2002 NCAA men's lacrosse championship game. Princeton trailed Syracuse 13-12 with around five seconds to go. It would be Princeton ball, off a restart, just across midfield.

The ball was in the stick of Sean Hartofilis as play started again, and as TB remembers it, he almost made something huge happen. Maybe if there had been another second or two, which was the same as with Hayward.

That 2002 championship game, in which Hartofilis scored four times, saw Princeton fall behind 12-7 before rallying. The Tigers had won the 2001 title game against Syracuse in overtime, and Cuse had beaten Princeton in the 2000 game as well. 

Hartofilis, for his part, is one of the great clutch players NCAA men's lacrosse has ever seen. When he graduated, he was eighth all-time in NCAA tournament goals, and he seemed to be at his best when the stakes were biggest. 

When Hartofilis graduated in 2003, he ranked third all-time in goals in a career at Princeton with 126, trailing only Jesse Hubbard (163) and Chris Massey (146). Michael MacDonald, who had 132, is the only player in the last 18 years who has caught Hartofilis.

He's gone onto a career in movie making. His wife Liza, a Princeton women's lacrosse alum and also an NCAA champion, is a doctor who was featured as part of the "Tiger Heroes" series.

As for Sean Hartofilis, he had something of a Gordon Hayward moment long before Hayward did. 

Of course, Hartofilis, an all-time Tiger great, is known far more for the ones that ended up in the goal.

A Great Run

It dawns on TigerBlog, or at least it was told to TigerBlog, that there is some luck involved in making the U.S. team for the Olympics in track and field. 

You need to finish in the top three at the Trials. You have to also better the Olympic qualifying standard for that particular event as well.

There are athletes who come into the Trials having already bettered the standard during the year, possibly because they had the good fortune to have found themselves in a race in, oh, March or April where the weather was right, the pacing was perfect, the field was just strong enough - and the athlete was on top of his or her game. There are others who chose to go to a different race that same weekend that didn't have all of those factors in their favor in that moment, and so they came to the Trials not having met the standard.

Donn Cabral found himself in that situation Friday night in the steeplechase final. The veteran (he's 31 now, somehow) had not yet bettered the 8:22.0 he needed to in order to get to Tokyo, and so he had to run at a faster pace than he might have wanted to if all he had to do was worry about finishing in the top three.

Cabral led for six laps. Ultimately, he finished sixth in what TB presumes was his last go-round of an Olympic cycle. He'll be 34 for the 2024 Games, which will be in Paris. 

He's already been to the Olympics twice, and both times he reached the final in the steeplechase.

To give you a sense of what TB was talking about before about how there is a certain amount of luck involved and how much things can fluctuate race to race, consider this:

Cabral 2012 Olympic final – 8:25.91 (good for eighth in the final)
Cabral 2016 Olympic final – 8:25.81 (good for eight in the final)
Cabral 2021 Olympic Trials – 8:25.95 (good for sixth in the trials)

Think about that. There was a 0.14-second different between the fastest and the slowest of his three times, but they had much different outcomes. 

So where does this all leave Cabral? 

He's clearly one of Princeton's all-time best athletes. He was an NCAA champion in the steeplechase his senior year, winning that race by five full seconds back on June 9, 2012. In less than two months, he went from there to the Olympic Trials, to the Olympic semifinal and then to the Olympic final.

He repeated that trip four years later.

When you think of the very, very best male athletes Princeton has ever produced, all logic says it's a group of three at the top - Hobey Baker, Dick Kazmaier and Bill Bradley. The question is, who is fourth? There are a lot of options there.

Another question is who is the best Princeton male athlete since Bradley? Again, there are all kinds of possibilities. 

Then there's another question that TB has asked before. Who are the most successful Princeton athletes beyond Princeton? This is one of his favorite questions to ask.

First of all, you have to start out again with Bradley. In addition to what he did at Princeton, which was ridiculous in its own right, he also added an Olympic gold medal and two NBA championships. 

Who else? Chris Young is way up there too, with a World Series championship, an All-Star Game appearance, a Comeback Player of the Year Award and had a career that lasted 13 years. There's Ryan Boyle and Matt Striebel, who won multiple lacrosse championships in the professional ranks and the World Championships. There are others, including NFL and NHL players, Olympic medalists, professional soccer players and others. 

Maybe TB will make a list sometime this summer.

If he does, you can be certain Cabral will be on it. His career has been something special and something extraordinary, and he's represented Princeton with great class with every stride he's taken internationally. He's done this in one of the toughest events on the track, and he's had success on the highest level that few Americans have ever matched.

If the race Friday was indeed his last chance, then Cabral had what can only be called an amazing run.

The First Weekend Of Summer

Don't forget. Donn Cabral runs tonight in the 3,000 meter men's steeplechase final at the U.S. Olympic Trials at 7:42 Eastern time.

For Cabral to make the Olympics for the third time, he needs to finish in the top three and run the Olympic qualifying standard of 8:22.0, something he's done many times in his career but has not yet done this year. 

In the least surprising Olympic qualifying news of the year, Ashleigh Johnson will be back in goal for the U.S. women's water polo team. Johnson, who has been named the best women's water polo player in the world on more than one occasion, won a gold medal with the U.S. team at the 2016 Summer Games.

And there you have everything that TigerBlog was going to say today. 

And that's all of 119 words, so he'll have to come up with something else.

He can tell you that one of the most annoying things to deal with in the world today is the automated voice system when you're trying to get a human on the phone in customer service. You've experienced this. The computerized voice asks you a series of questions, when all you want is to talk to someone. Also, the questions they ask don't lend themselves to the exact situation you need to address. 

In the end, you probably let out a few curse words and throw your phone across the room. Yes, many things can be handled online. No, not all can. 

What else? 

Okay, how about a bit more on Johnson. She deserves it, of course.

Johnson will be trying to join Caroline Lind as the only two Princeton women alums to win two gold medals. Lind won gold medals in women's rowing in 2008 and 2012. 

On the men's side, Princeton has had four athletes win multiple gold medals. Only two have done so in Princeton varsity sports. 

The first was back in the first modern Games, the ones in 1896 in Athens. There, Princeton's Robert Garrett Jr. won gold in the discus and shot put and silver in the long jump and high jump. Imagine what Fred Samara could have done with a guy like that.

Karl Frederick of the Class of 1909 won three gold medals at the 1920 Games in Antwerp, making him the only Princetonian ever to do so. Frederick's specialty was shooting, and not with a ball. He won the individual free pistol event and then two team events, the 30 meter military pistol and 50 meter free pistol.

The next two-time gold medalist was Hermon Whiton, who won gold in 1948 and 1952 in sailing. The other two-time gold medalist was Nelson Diebel, who won the 100 breaststroke and was on the winning 4x100 medley relay team in the 1992 Games in Barcelona.

Oh, speaking of annoying things, how many calls do you get from a number that isn't in your contacts that is telling you about your car's extended warranty or some other scam like that? Some of them are pretty creative and convincing.

The down side is that 1) they're a pain and 2) it makes you not want to answer the phone from any number you don't recognize. This is especially problematic when you're trying to call someone who won't have you in their contacts, because they think you're just another scammer.

And that's 559 words. Is there something else TB can share today?

How about the fact that it'll be Princeton vs. Princeton tomorrow night in Baltimore in the Premier Lacrosse League. The game at 8 at Johns Hopkins' Homewood Field matches the Archers, featuring alums Tom Schreiber, Ryan Ambler and Austin Sims and coached by former Tiger head man Chris Bates, against the Waterdogs, with Tigers alums Zach Currier and Michael Sowers, though Sowers is still unable to play after a vicious cross check to the back of his head after one of his goals in his pro debut three weeks ago.

The game can be seen on the NBC Sports Network and on Peacock. Another Princetonian, Ryan Boyle, will be the color commentator.

And to get past 700 words, TB will say that this is the first weekend of summer for 2021. He hopes everyone has a chance to get outside and do something fun, and that it's the start of a great summer for everyone.

And with that, have a great weekend.

Another Tiger Hero

TigerBlog is writing today with one finger that has a mind of its own.

It's the middle finger on his right hand, which means that letters like "I" and "K" are particularly problematic right now. He's also having a problem with commas as well.

The issue is something called a "trigger finger." No, it has nothing to do with weapons. 

This particular "trigger finger" has to do with having a knuckle get stuck due to some issue with a tendon that's being blocked. In TB's case, it's on an unfortunate finger, since once it gets stuck, it ends up getting unstuck by popping straight up when pushed, which, well, appears to give anyone in the vicinity the finger.

The solution was a steroid injection, which TB received yesterday. The problem is that the finger was numbed, leaving it with the feeling similar to having Novocaine in your mouth after a trip to the dentist. In other words, there isn't much feeling there now, which is making typing a bit of an adventure.

It can be caused by a bunch of different things, including repetitive motion, which fits in TB's case. Ah, the things he does to reach you every day.

The doctor TB saw yesterday was the second one he saw in this particular orthopedic practice lately. The first was last week, for an unrelated shoulder issue (this is from about 15 years of playing squash). That doctor told TB that the injection for the trigger finger is really painful. As it turned out, it wasn't.

When TB shared that with the hand doctor he saw yesterday, the response he got was classic: "Make sure you show him your finger on the way out." That's the kind of subtle humor the medical profession definitely needs. 

TigerBlog could never have been a doctor, for so many different reasons. Science was never his best thing. Blood definitely isn't. 

He does have great respect for those who have made it through medical school and then residency all the way to being a doctor. It's not easy. It's a great deal of sacrifice. And it puts those who can do it in a position to make a huge impact on society for the good.

TB is thinking about people like Vietta Johnson, the 2021 Class of 1967 Citizen-Athlete of the Year Award winner. She, like countless others, has used her medical expertise to bring health care to those who otherwise might not have access to it, here and in other countries.

The "Tiger Heroes" series has told story after story of former Princeton athletes turned doctors who have been invaluable in their contributions to society during the COVID pandemic and in so many other ways. The most recent story that TB saw in the series was of former field hockey player Shahrzad Joharifard, Class of 2005, who is now a pediatric surgeon in British Columbia.

You can read it HERE.

TigerBlog wrote about several doctors in his book on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton, and their experiences as athletes definitely helped them in their medical training. They also took a great deal from their own experiences with injuries along the way. Joharifard is no different:

I had three ACL reconstructions during my field hockey career, and rehabilitating from these surgeries in order to get back on the field taught me grit and resilience, attributes that were critical to surviving 12 grueling years of surgical training.

If you want to know what she's all about, consider this quote from the story:

I am a pediatric surgeon, which means that I operate on a wide variety of congenital and acquired conditions in tiny premature neonates all the way to burly 18 year old's. In addition, I have spent a good part of the last 15 years working in various capacities in sub-Saharan Africa, initially with the International Rescue Committee in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through a Princeton-in-Africa fellowship, and thereafter with a number of organizations in a dozen countries across the continent. Currently, I work with Partners in Health (PIH) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors Without Borders) to provide surgical care in conflict and post conflict settings.

Joharifard was a captain of the 2004 Tigers. She played on three Ivy League championship teams at Princeton, and she earned All-Ivy honors as a junior in 2003. The last game of her senior year, though, was one of the most excruciating losses TB has ever seen for a Princeton team.

It came against Penn, in a game in which the winner would get the Ivy championship. It was 1-1 until past the end of the second half, when the Quakers scored the game-winner on an untimed penalty corner. 

Maybe that loss helped drive her moving forward. TB has no idea. 

He does know that Shahrzad Joharifard is another of the alums of Princeton athletics who has gone on to reinforce that the values learned while being a Tiger never leave these Tigers, no matter where they go.

Rooting Again For Donn Cabral

What are you doing Friday night at 7:42 Eastern time?

You should be watching the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials. That will be the time when Princeton alum Donn Cabral runs in the men's 3,000-meter steeplechase final. 

Cabral is a 2012 Princeton graduate. He is also a two-time Olympian in the steeplechase, and a two-time Olympic finalist at that, having finished eighth in the steeplechase at the last two Olympic Games. In fact, he is one of only six Americans who have ever finished in the top eight in the steeplechase in two different Olympiads.

Now at 31, he's chasing another shot at the Games. 

He took the first step Monday night, when he ran in the semifinal at the U.S. Olympic Trials. There were two heats, and the top five in each heat plus the next four fastest advanced to the final.

Cabral finished fifth in the first heat, nine-hundredths of a second away from the automatic qualifier into the final. This put him in position of having to watch the second heat and hope that no more than three runners beat his time of 8:24.14.

As it turned out, his time would have won the second heat by nearly five seconds. TigerBlog has no idea how the pacing of the two different races worked out or what any of it means for Friday night's final.

To reach the Olympics, a runner needs to be in the top three in the final and have run the Olympic qualifying standard this year. Cabral has not yet met the standard of 8:22.0 (his career personal best is 8:19.4). In fact, only five of the 14 runners in the final have already met the standard.

Again, TB has no idea how that plays into tactics and strategies for the final.

He does know that Cabral is one of the most impressive Princeton athletes he's ever seen. He once wrote this about him:

Anytime Cabral was around - running or just walking into the building - everyone gave him the "there he is" look. It's the rock star treatment. He's not a big man, and in TB's limited dealings with him, he's quiet. He seems polite, respectful. And driven, very, very driven. TB doesn't remember too many athletes who have competed here who drew attention to themselves simply with the sheer impressiveness of their training the way Cabral has. It's as if he's putting on a show for the people who happen to look out on the track when he goes through his workouts. TB has stood on the balcony and watched him, along with other people in the department, and muttered only "wow" as he went lap after lap, seemingly in a dead sprint the whole time. 

There are some things in sports that almost cross over into art, and the way Cabral has run is one of them. He had a meteoric rise as a steeplechaser, going from a novice to the NCAA champion his senior year of 2012 to the Olympic finals that year in London. He repeated that trip to the final in 2016 in Rio.

For all of that, perhaps the moment of Cabral's career that stands out the most to TB is the Heps cross country race his junior year, back in 2010. Cabral was sick that day and not supposed to run, but he competed anyway.

TB was standing near the finish line and saw Cabral as he came to the line. There was literally nobody else in sight as he headed for home, and he ran the final 100 meters or so in a sprint where he seemed to go faster and faster with each stride. It almost seemed like he was going to lift off the ground, he was going so fast. 

Here is how it looked:

Now he's back in the Olympic Trial finals. Qualify or not, he's still had an amazing career, one of the best ever by an American distance runner. 

And by a Princeton athlete. Where does he rank? Well, it's so hard to compare the apples and oranges of different eras and sports at Princeton, but there is no way he's not among the most elite athletes who has ever competed here.

Remember, he runs again Friday night at 7:42.

Make sure you tune in.

Coast To Coast

TigerBlog has been living vicariously through Charlie Bagin and Maddie Plank the last few weeks.

He would have loved to have done what they recently finished doing. The two Princeton basketball players made their way from New Jersey to Washington State, all on their bicycles.

It's one of the coolest things TB has ever heard of. Think about that. You get on your bicycle on April 10 at the Jersey Shore. You touch the Pacific Ocean in Washington State on June 17.

In between, you have a lifetime of memories. It's incredible.

TigerBlog didn't realize they were keeping a daily blog on their trip until the middle of May. Since then, he's checked in on them regularly. 

They're not the first people to ride ocean-to-ocean. In fact they're not the first Princeton athletes to do so this year. Men's swimmer Matt Marquardt, who recently graduated and is headed to medical school, did his own trip, going from San Diego to Jacksonville.

As you are probably aware, TigerBlog is a regular bike rider. He can't imagine what it would be like to have covered that distance in that amount of time. 

There are certain things you'll always be able to say, no matter what happens. For the three Princeton athletes, they'll always be able to say they rode a bike across the country. Very, very few people can make that claim, TB supposes.

Because of the blog that Plank and Bagin were keeping, it felt like TB was riding along with them. The way they spoke about winds and hills and weather and backroads and more dangerous highways is something he could definitely relate to, and at the same time he can comprehend how daunting a task it is. 

Marquardt averaged more than 130 miles per day. Bagin and Plank averaged about half of that, but those are still extraordinary distances to cover day after day after day. 

Bagin and Plank rode for the fun of it and the adventure of it during their year away from Princeton due to the pandemic. They also rode for a bigger cause. This is from their blog, before they left:

We have also decided that we will be riding in support of NAMI and mental health awareness. The covid pandemic has only exacerbated the growing mental health pandemic that plagues hundreds of millions of people worldwide. A commonly quoted fact from 2019 states that about 1 in every 5 adults in the US had some sort of mental health illness, and about 1 in every 10 struggled with anxiety or depression specifically. Surveys taken in January 2021 show that about 4 in every 10 adults now struggle with anxiety or depression. SAMSHA, a mental health national hotline, saw their call volume surge almost 900% over the summer of 2020. 90% of suicides are due to mental illness.The stats go on...

I, Maddie, having struggled with eating disorder symptoms over the past few years, used the free time provided by quarantine to focus on resolving my body dysmorphia, excessive stress surrounding food, and unhealthy eating habits. I am eternally grateful to my family and friends, who gave me the confidence, love, patience, and support as I worked on my mental health. I relied heavily on the help of a dietician (who served more as a psychologist and friend) and sports psychologist to manage my symptoms and improve my quality of life.

I, Charlie, was not even aware of the concept of “mental health” until I got to college. Over the last four years I’ve learned a lot on the subject. I’ve read articles, watched videos, and attended lectures that addressed the topic. Most importantly, and most impactfully, I’ve listened to close friends and family describe their various battles with mental health. This is an issue that I hope can be discussed more openly in everyday discourse so that we can break down the borders of stigma and help people work through their struggles.

It was a great cause. And they did a lot to get the word out and to help raise some money along the way.

Whether they know it or not, they also are great storytellers. Their blog reads a bit like a John McPhee book, with first person accounts of their travels, the people they met along the way and the observations of what they saw. They talked about obstacles they faced. They talked about what they got out of it. 

Here is what Bagin had to say about the finish, at Rialto Beach in Washington:

It’s so hard to describe how I was feeling as we came to the end and reached the beach. Mostly thrilled, and a little relieved. It was also weirdly normal, too. This was the expected the outcome, basically never in doubt. It’s not like winning a big basketball game, where you dont feel the joy of victory until the final buzzer sounds. For the entire trip we felt joy. Each and every day was a minor victory in itself. By the time we reached the beach, we were used to winning. But wow, actually rolling the bikes onto the beach and touching the water was such a great feeling. I felt like I was in a dream.

They were more accurately in a dream come true. They had in fact finished their ride, and it was real.

He emailed them congratulations and jokingly asked if they were going to turn around a ride back now. Of course, their return was via airplane (Bagin has already flown back). That too must be fascinating. Imagine looking out the window knowing you had just ridden all that way. 

It is amazing.

TigerBlog couldn't be more impressed with them.

The Story Of The Starfish Again

The story of the starfish goes something like this:

After a storm, there were millions of starfish who washed up on the beach. And there was a little boy who was throwing them back into the ocean one at a time. An old man walked down the beach and saw the boy and said "You're wasting your time. You can't possibly throw all of the starfish back. You're not going to make a difference."

The little boy looked at the man and then at the starfish in his hand and said "It makes a difference to this one."

TigerBlog has heard Jason Garrett tell that story more than once. It's a lot better when he says it than when TB writes it.

Garrett is one of the very, very best public speakers TB has ever heard. He's also one of the most energetic people he's ever met. When you add to that the longtime commitment to helping people that he and his wife Brill have embraced, you get an extraordinarily inspirational outcome.

All of that and more was on display Saturday at his Jason Garrett Starfish Charities Football Camp. It was a one-day event that brought more than 150 high school football players to Mercer County. The overwhelming majority of them were from inner-city high schools.

From the event website:

Jason Garrett Starfish Charities and AthLife Foundation teach the campers both football and life skills that will prepare them for the next season and beyond.  The purpose of the day is to inspire the student-athletes to excel on and off the field and to focus on having college on their radar screen.

The camp definitely focused on both of those areas, football and life skills. There were sessions on those life skills, there were 16 teams that played five football games each and there were motivational speakers who talked about their own experiences in terms of football and education. 

The lessons were clear. Yes, football is a great avenue for many of them to get to college. For almost none, though, that avenue eventually leads to the NFL, and so there needs to be a Plan B. And, most of all, the young men attending the camp were told that they are responsible for realizing that and executing that Plan B.

Those lessons came from Garrett and from the speakers he brought in, including a former Navy SEAL and longtime NFL players like Greg Comella and Miles Austin. There was also another NFL player, Spencer Conley, who spoke for 20 minutes or so before the championship game and, well, he definitely got his points across. In fact, his presence was simply stunning.

To put his camp together, Garrett reached out to the two constituents with whom he has the strongest ties. First, there were the players he's played with and coached in the NFL, and so there were many current and former pro players in attendance. 

The most in-demand one was Daniel Jones, the current starting quarterback for the New York Giants. When the last game ended (Jones was one of the coaches for the winning team), pretty much every player at the camp wanted to get a picture with him, and he stopped for every one of them.

The other group whom Garrett recruited was the Princeton group. Everywhere TB looked he saw familiar faces, some of whom are current Tiger coaches and others of whom were former players he hadn't seen in years. There was also head equipment manager Clif Perry, who was another coach with Jones on the winning team.

One of those former players was Jimmy Archie, an All-Ivy defensive back and key member of the 1995 Ivy League championship team. Another was Michael Zampardi, one of the first Princeton football players TB ever wrote about, back in his newspaper days.

There were plenty of others too. It was a great scene, with the way Princeton football jumps at the chance to help out one of its own.

As for Jason, he floated from field to field watching the games, greeting everyone, encouraging everyone, oozing positivity everywhere he went. It's what he does. He inspires.

In the end it was a great day for everyone involved. 

Hopefully it was more than just fun, though. Hopefully, it was a difference-making day.

One starfish at a time, right? 

The Dog Drama Of Athletic Competition

TigerBlog has been meaning to tell you about the dog show all week.

It was last Saturday afternoon when he was flipping around the channels and stumbled on the Westminster Dog Show. He's seen it before, the video of dogs while being paraded by their owners. 

This time, though, he saw something he'd never seen before. It was a dog obstacle course race. It was tremendous.

First of all, there were cameras placed strategically at dog level, including inside of a circular tube through which the canines appeared to fly. Here is video of Gabby, the winner.

By the way, Gabby confirms one of TB's beliefs about dogs: The shorter the legs, the cuter the dog. 

The dog obstacle course made for incredible television. There was the thrill of victory (Gabby) and the agony of defeat (the poor little dog whose handler slipped while running alongside of him and took him out on the way to one of the jumps). 

If you don't get the reference, it's from the intro to ABC's Wide World Of Sports (if you're TB's age, those words only make you think of one thing, and you know what it is). 

The next line is: "The human drama of athletic competition." This of course was more like the dog drama of athletic competition.

The dog who got knocked over stopped briefly, looked down on his handler and basically thought "Dude, what are you doing? Do you know how hard I trained for this moment? Do you know how many dog biscuits I didn't eat? How many naps I didn't take? Be better."

Anyway, it was awesome. It was a little like a slightly more athletic version of another TB favorite: dressage, or, as he calls it, horse dancing.

What else does TB have for today?

Well, David Rosenfeld, who had been the men's basketball contact in the Princeton Office of Athletic Communications when Justin Conway was a Tiger, had a follow-up to what TB wrote about how Conway, now a physician, is pretty tall for a doctor at 6-4.

Rosenfeld emailed TB to let him know that if he thought Conway was a tall doctor, then what did he think of another former Princeton men's basketball player, Zach Finley. You remember Finley. He was a 6-10 center from South Dakota.

Today? He's a 6-10 orthopedic surgeon in New Orleans. That's a massive change in climate, by the way.

TB also has been meaning to congratulate Eric Robinson for winning a bronze medal with Team USA at the World Hockey Championships. 

Robinson, who has established himself as a steady contributor for the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets, had three assists in the tournament, held in Latvia. Robinson had a strong 2020-21 season, which saw him set career highs in goals (eight), assists (10), points (18), shots (75), hits (94) and blocked shots (16). He was sixth on the Blue Jackets in goals, eighth in points and ninth in assists and led the team in +/- at +6.

The U.S. team won the bronze by defeating Germany 6-1 in the third-place game. Robinson joins fellow Princeton hockey alums Jeff Halpern and Mike Condon as Americans who have won bronze medals at the World Championships.

Robinson was the captain of the Princeton team that won the 2018 ECAC title and advanced to the NCAA tournament. That 2018 team had one of the most dramatic postseason runs any Princeton team has had in the last 10 or so years, including winning the championship game 2-1 over Clarkson after the Golden Knights had tied the game in the final 10 seconds of regulation.

Robinson had 17 goals and 14 assists that year for Princeton. He's played 120 career NHL games now and has 15 goals and 15 assists, and he seems to be ready to make the next step forward in his career next season.

What else is there for this week? 

Oh yeah. TB meant to add something about John Allis, the Olympic cyclist who was in the Princeton Class of 1965. Allis cycled in three Olympic Games, the 1964 Games in Tokyo and then in Mexico City and Munich. On the plus side: He's a member of the U.S. Cycling Hall of Fame. On the down side: He spent 30 years coaching the cycling team at Harvard (just kidding, just kidding). 

When TB looked Allis up, he found out that he had played on the freshman soccer team at Princeton but gave it up because he thought he'd never get serious playing time. He turned to cycling for a different challenge, and he certainly found it.

And yeah, that's about it for this week. Have a great weekend - and Happy Fathers' Day to all the dads who read this every day. And, TB supposes, even to the ones who don't.

The Last Time In Tokyo

Trivia question – Princeton currently has four men's rowers who will be competing at the upcoming Olympic Games. Those four will represent four different countries. Can you name the countries?

Meanwhile, as a follow up to what TigerBlog wrote yesterday about former men's basketball player Justin Conway, there's a story from 2006 that's worth mentioning.

The Winter Olympics were going on, the ones in Turin, Italy. The Princeton men's basketball team was getting ready to play a game, and the coaches and staff were watching the biathlon on TV. Nobody spoke for a few seconds, until then-head coach Joe Scott said this: "You know who would be great at that? Conway."

It's a statement on the high esteem in which Scott, and everyone with the men's basketball team then, held Conway. 

TigerBlog is a big fan of the Olympics. He's never been to the Olympics, but he thinks it would be really cool to go at some point. As he's said many times before, if he could go to any sporting event anywhere that he's never attended, it would be the World Cup final first and then the Olympics.

Considering he's never been to a Super Bowl or an NBA Finals or an NCAA basketball Final Four, that's a big statement.

He has been to a World Series game. It was in the 1983 World Series, between the Baltimore Orioles and Philadelphia Phillies. TigerBlog was a vendor at Veterans Stadium that summer, and he spent his time hawking soda, hot dogs and beer throughout the upper decks of the massive facility. The money was decent, and he attended more than 50 games that year, including the NLCS and World Series.

If you know TigerBlog, you might have trouble picturing him walking around a stadium, handling cash, interacting with total strangers, spilling soda and beer all over him. You're not alone. TB can't imagine how he ever did that.

Meanwhile, back at the Olympics, the Summer Games are scheduled to begin July 23 and run through August 8 and will be held in Tokyo. These Games were supposed to originally be held last summer but were moved back a year due to the pandemic.

It's the second time that Tokyo will be hosting the Games. The first was in 1964, and Princeton was well-represented at those Olympics. 

There were five Princeton athletes in the 1964 Summer Olympics, and three of them won medals, including two golds.  One of the golds was won, of course, by Bill Bradley, who captained the United States to the gold medal in men's basketball. Bradley also won the 1964 Sullivan Award as the top American amateur athlete. 

Jed Graef won gold in the 200-meter backstroke in swimming. TB once wrote this about Graef:

Jed Graef won the gold medal in the 200 backstroke in Tokyo, just a few months after he 1) won the NCAA 200 backstroke and 2) graduated from Princeton. Graef won the 200 backstroke in a time of 2:10.3, which was the world record at the time. He led a 1-2-3 American sweep in the event. Graef's Olympic teammate, Gary Dilley (who swam at Michigan State), set the Olympic record in both the preliminary round and the semifinals, while Graef had the second-best time in both. In the final, Graef edged Dilley by two-tenths of a second, while the bronze medal went to Bob Bennett (a USC grad), who was nearly three seconds behind. 

Seymour Cromwell won silver in the double sculls, finishing behind the Russians and just ahead of the Czechoslovakians. Tragically, Cromwell passed away from pancreatic cancer in 1977 at the very young age of 43.

He was a member of the Class of 1956. The next time TB is up in the Class of 1956 Lounge at Princeton Stadium, he'll make sure to check him out in the class photo.

Princeton was also represented by fencer Frank Anger and cyclist John Allis. Neither won a medal. 

The Olympic Games coming up this summer will have more than five Princetonians, and the final full list of Princeton athletes in Tokyo is not yet completely filled. 

It does seem like every day, another Princeton rower is selected. Most recently, that meant Tim Masters a member of the Class of 2015, who will row in the Australian 8. It is his first Olympic appearance.

As for the trivia question, you have Masters (Australia), Fred Vystavel '16 (Denmark), Nick Mead '17 (United States) and Tom George '18 (Great Britain).