Another Night With The Pole Vault

If you live anywhere near Princeton, you're well aware of the fact that the air is a bit thick these days.

It was Tuesday afternoon when TigerBlog first noticed it. He saw on the news that there were forest fires in the Pinelands of South Jersey, so he assumed it might be related. Then he started to understand the scale of it, which made it clear that this was something else. 

As it turned out, it's the result of Canadian wildfires and winds from the north, which are blowing the ashes hundreds of miles to the south. Princeton, and much of the Mid-Atlantic area, has been right in its path.

The sun became almost invisible behind the haze all afternoon, and pretty much anywhere you went, it was the first thing anyone wanted to mention.

It was tough to be outside for very long without feeling the effects. TigerBlog can't remember anything quite like this before.

It was definitely a weird sensation. Cars had their headlights on in the middle of the afternoon. Very few people were outside. Schools were talking about closing for today. Flights were delayed.

It was like a blizzard without the snow and the cold. 

How long will it last? The National Weather Service has issued air quality warnings until tomorrow. Hopefully it clears out.

The smoke was so bad that both the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies had to cancel their games last night. That has to be a rarity.

It's like "Twilight Zone" stuff. 

About 1,700 miles away from this, the air was clear and clean for the NCAA track and field championships, which got under way yesterday.

For Princeton fans, the highlight was clearly the men's pole vault, where the Guttormsen brothers were to compete for the final time as Tigers. Sondre was looking for his fourth NCAA title; Simen was looking for a third All-American finish.

As it turned out, it wasn't their night. 

The pole vault is a tough event, mentally and physically. It takes a definite toll over the course of a competition. 

Forget just the pounding of the sprints, the vaults and the landings. There are also the questions of when do you go, when do you pass?  

TB watched the coverage on ESPN+, which, like a year ago, had a camera trained on the event with only some background crowd noise and no commentators. 

Many of the names were the same as a year ago as well. TB has watched the NCAA pole vault finals so often now that he recognizes the other vaulters.

This time around, Simen Guttormsen no-heighted, which eliminated him from the competition after three misses at 17-4 1/2. Sondre cleared 18-4 1/4 on his second attempt, passed at 18-8 1/4 and then was unable to clear 19-0 1/4 on any of his three tries.

As a result, Sondre's quest for a fourth NCAA title fell short, though he still earned All-American honors once again. Both are great, charismatic athletes who have been incredible representatives of Princeton track and field and Princeton Athletics.

It was a tough way to see their careers end, or at least their Princeton careers. There are many days ahead for both, on that same track even, as they will compete next year as grad transfers at the University of Texas, not to mention internationally for Norway.

Their legacies as all-time Princeton greats were secure before last night's competition, which was probably of little consolation to them as the night wore on but which they will come to realize sooner rather than later.

As for the rest of the championships, there are still two Princetonians to compete. The first is today, when Kate Joyce competes in the women's javelin, beginning at 7:45 Eastern Time. Then it will be Nicholas Bendsten tomorrow at 10:55 pm Eastern time in the 5,000 meters.

And that will be it for the 2022-23 athletic year at Princeton.

The end has seen an eerie darkness come over Princeton, but make no mistake. 

The sun shone on the Tigers for much of this extraordinary year, with its 16 league championships and countless other great moments.

NCAA Pole Vault Night

There are somewhere around 1,000 Princeton varsity athletes each year, give or take a few.

Of this academic year's group, all but four have started down their summer plans, whether that be travel, internship, research or, in the case of the graduates, moving on with their post-Princeton lives.

If you take a stroll around Instagram, you'll see how many of those seniors are currently in Europe with their now-former teammates, by the way. Or how many current or recently graduate athletes have seen Taylor Swift.

By the way, TigerBlog cannot name too many Taylor Swift songs, which he takes as a generational thing. He does know that the singer performed at Lincoln Financial Field right before the stadium hosted the NCAA men's lacrosse championships and that the press box was sold as a suite. The only problem was that the windows had to be removed so that those in the suite could hear, and they were then replaced with brand-new windows for the lacrosse.

How much do huge brand-new windows cost? Also, the people who sat in the press box left a huge mess, though it was 100 percent immaculate by Saturday's start of the lacrosse (though not by Friday, when TB went down to sync his computer and the scoreboard).

As he just said, there are four Princeton athletes who are still competing. By this time tomorrow, there will only be two left.

The NCAA Track and Field Championships begin today in Austin, Texas, and two of Princeton's four competitors will be competing. Those two would be the Guttormsen brothers, Sondre and Simen, who are certainly among the biggest names in the entire event, let alone their event, the pole vault.

Simen has two fourth-place finishes, both last year (indoors and outdoors), and he is competing this time around after missing the indoor championships due to injury. Sondre, of course, is chasing his fourth NCAA pole vault championship, after having won indoors and outdoors a year ago and indoors this year.

As a bit of a subplot, the two will be graduate transfers this coming academic year at Texas, which is this week's host for the NCAAs.

Sondre is the second Ivy League pole vaulter to win the NCAA outdoor championship in the event. Who was the other? That was Yale's Truman Gardner. Is his name not familiar? That's because he won (or tied, actually) for the first NCAA pole vault championship, back in 1921. His winning height? That would be 12-0.

Gardner, as an aside, was a United States Amateur golf champion in addition to his pole vaulting.

Sondre's winning indoor vault this past March was 19-8 1/4 feet, which tied the all-time NCAA record. He also had only other vaulter within a foot of him, and that was Zach Bradford of Kansas, who was four inches away.

Bradford, now of Texas Tech, won the West Regional two weeks ago, sort of. He finished in a nine-way tie for first at 17-8 1/4, which means absolutely nothing, since it was all about qualifying and the competition ends when there are only 12 athletes remaining in the two regions. That was the same qualifying height for Simen in the East, while Sondre actually qualified at 17-4 1/4.

The winning vault tonight will be much higher.

Bradford, by the way, has won five straight Big 12 titles between the two schools. Most of the top 10 finishers from a year ago are back into the finals this year.

The men's pole vault begins at 7:30 Eastern tonight and can be seen on ESPNU. If you're looking for the Guttormsens, you won't see them quite that early. The bar starts at five meters, which is 16-4. Given that each vaulter wants to limit the number of jumps as much as possible, it'll be a while before either Guttormsen makes his first attempt.

Once the pole vault is over, which will be around 11 or 11:30 Eastern time, the two remaining Princeton athlete will be Kate Joyce in the women's javelin tomorrow at 5:30 Eastern and then Nicholas Bendsten in the men's 5,000 meters Friday at 10:55 Eastern.

In the meantime, there's the pole vault. It may keep you up late, but it'll be well worth watching. There is history on the line.

A Streak Ender

TigerBlog saw the story on the website this week about the Ivy League football television schedule.

If you missed it, there will be six league games that will be broadcast on one of the ESPN networks, and Princeton will be in three of them. This doesn't count the ESPN+ games, where you can see all of the Ivy League games and most of the non-conference games (TB isn't sure about the game at San Diego).

Princeton's games at home against Columbia (Sept. 29) and at Dartmouth (Nov. 3) will be moved to Friday nights and seen on ESPNU. The home game against Yale (Nov. 11) will be on an ESPN network to be determined.  

The announcement of the football television schedule immediately made TB think of two things. 

First, there was his 10-minute or so walk back to the parking lot after Princeton's loss to Penn in the Ivy League baseball tournament championship round. TB, who was wearing his Princeton gear, was walking with a man he'd never met before, and of course they got to talking about the game.

The stranger asked TB if he was a Princeton alum, and TB said that actually, no, he was a Penn alum but he'd spent the last 34 years with the Tigers. Then TB asked the stranger if he was a Penn grad, to which the stranger said no.

When TB asked him what his connection to Penn one, the stranger said "I'm the head football coach."

Oh yeah. That's right. TB knew he looked familiar. It was Ray Priore.

TB, of course, told Priore that he had to be one of a very, very small group of Penn alums who were not happy with the ending of last year's Princeton-Penn game. Priore laughed. 

By the way, during his walk with Priore, TB mentioned that he was friends with Priore's college roommate, whose son played lacrosse growing up and in high school with TB's son. It was a very nice, pleasant conversation. Priore seems like a pretty good guy. When they parted, they shook hands, and TB said that he'd see him again in November and that he'll be the Penn guy rooting against him.  

The other thing that TB thought of when he saw the story was "c'mon, it's only the beginning of June. This athletic year isn't even over yet."

Yes, it is June. Princeton's football game at San Diego to open the 2023 season kicks off on Sept. 16. That's 14 weeks from Saturday. 

Is it really time to think about football? 

As TB said, his conversation with Priore came after the Quakers won the Ivy League's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament by taking the first Ivy tournament. TB was at the men's lacrosse championships as the baseball selections were announced and Penn was matched with Auburn, and his longtime friend and Penn colleague Mike Mahoney said something along the lines of "more Tiger hunting," something that turned out to be prescient.

TB watched a lot of the NCAA baseball regionals this weekend, and some of the games were just epic. Maybe the best was Rider's 11-10 win over Coastal Carolina in the first round, a game followed by another great one, Rider's 2-1 loss to Duke in the next game.

Penn also played two some great games, first with more Tiger hunting, taking down the Auburn Tigers 6-3 in 11 innings by bunting the home team crazy to get the winning runs. After that, Penn advanced to the regional final by beating Samford 5-4. 

If you missed that game, you missed a crazy, crazy ending as the Bulldogs tried to rally from 5-0 down. It was just your basic 6-3-5 put out at third base that withstood a video review. 

TigerBlog wrote this after the Ivy tournament, but it's nearly impossible to lose the first game of a four-team double-elimination baseball and come all the way back through. Of the 32 teams who lost their opener a year ago, none advanced to the Super Regionals.

This time around, 30 of the 32 teams who lost their opener were eliminated before the final day, which was yesterday The only two who reached yesterday were Coastal Carolina, who came all the way back from the Rider loss, and Southern Mississippi, who came all the way back to play Penn yesterday. 

Unfortunately for the Quakers, Southern Miss ended the long streak of teams who lost their first game. The final was 11-7 in favor of the Golden Eagles, whose season keeps going in hopes of joining Mississippi State and Ole Miss to become the third straight College World Series champ from the state of Mississippi.

For Penn? It was a trip back to Philadelphia, and the knowledge that the team had left the Ivy League and all Penn fans — and even one ex-patriot alum — proud of the effort.

A Great Weekend On The Water

There's a giant picture on the wall of Princeton's Shea Rowing Center that was taken a few minutes after the Tigers swept the 1998 men's lightweight and heavyweight national championships at the IRA Regatta.

There are somewhat younger versions of Princeton's current head coaches, Greg Hughes with the heavyweights and Marty Crotty with the lightweights, in that picture. Crotty was a senior on the heavyweight team, and Hughes was just starting out his coaching career after graduating in 1996 after having won a national championship as a lightweight rower himself.

TigerBlog remembers that picture well. He was there for the event, and he stood on the bank of the Cooper River in South Jersey to see both Tiger boats cross the line first, about 15 minutes apart. When that picture was taken, TB was next to the photographer.

Fast forward to the present, or at least this past weekend, and you have the best day of racing at the IRA Championships for the two Princeton men's teams since that day in 1998, as the lightweight men won the IRA national championship while the heavyweights came in third. Not since 1998 (when their combined finishes added up to two) had the two teams had their respective finishes add up to four or less.

Hughes and Crotty are extraordinary in so many ways, as coaches, alums and people. To see them have such a great weekend makes everyone across every sport at Princeton happy.

The long weekend of racing on Mercer Lake ended with the women's lightweight finals, the men's lightweight finals and then the men's heavyweight finals. The Princeton women's lightweights also dominated, winning the first varsity 8, the varsity 4 and the doubles while also taking the team trophy.

The lightweight women won their third straight IRA championship, and they did so in overwhelming fashion. After 500 meters, the lead was already two seconds. By the midpoint of the 2,000 meter race, Princeton was up by six seconds. The final margin was officially 6.2 seconds, over second-place Stanford.

The lightweight men spent almost the entire season ranked No. 1 in the country, and they certainly acted the part this weekend. Princeton destroyed the field, taking the first varsity 8, the second varsity 8 and the team trophy. 

If you were paying attention last week, you know that this is only the second time ever that one school has won the women's and men's lightweights, after Harvard/Radcliffe did so in 1997.

Unlike the women, the men were pushed the entire 2,000 meters in the first varsity 8 race. The Tigers actually trailed slightly (very slightly, at 0.2 seconds) after 500 meters, and even after they took the lead in the middle of the race, they never really shook the field.

Not that it mattered in the end. When it was over, Princeton men won by 1.8 seconds, giving the program its first IRA first varsity 8 lightweight men's title since 2010. The overall points championship was Princeton's sixth ever and also first since 2010.

Also if you were paying attention last week, then you know that TB was rooting for the University of Washington to come in second in the men's heavyweight rowing final. If you're wondering why and you didn't read it, TB ran into five U-Dub heavyweight rowers outside of Jadwin Gym during the Department of Athletics picnic and ended up giving them a quick tour. They were here, of course, for the IRA championships.

As it turned out, the Huskies did indeed finish second. Perhaps TB should have been a bit clearer. He was rooting for the Huskies to finish second and Princeton to finish first.

Instead, in the men's heavyweight first varsity 8, it was California repeating as champion, followed by Washington and then Princeton in third. It might not have been a championship, but it was a great showing for Hughes' team.

The last time Princeton's first varsity 8 heavyweights had a better IRA finish was in 2006, with a second-place. The 2015 and 2016 teams also won bronze. 

Princeton finished fourth overall in the points standings.

With the end of the great weekend on Mercer Lake, Princeton's 2022-23 athletic year comes down to four track and field athletes who will compete at Texas in the NCAA Championships this week. 

TB also wrote last week that it would be more surprising if Princeton didn't come out of these last two weekends without at least one national title than it would be in Princeton won multiple national titles. After this weekend of rowing, that statement proved to be prescient (TB thinks that means he was right).

Some Boys In The Boat

The Princeton Athletics end-of-year picnic was starting to wind down yesterday afternoon in front of Jadwin Gym when five "Boys in the Boat" walked by.

If you read the book, you get the reference. If not, "The Boys In The Boat" was about the improbable run to an Olympic gold medal by the 1936 University of Washington crew.

The "boys" who walked by the end of the picnic were obviously not from that boat. They were clearly from Washington, though, as all five of them were dressed in purple with some sort of U-Dub branding. 

Knowing that the Intercollegiate Rowing Association championships are taking place this weekend at Mercer Lake, about seven miles or so from Jadwin, it was fairly obvious that these guys were rowers. That, plus the fact that they certainly looked the part. 

When TigerBlog saw them, he walked over to them — somehow managing to tear himself away from Jon Kurian's croquet match — and introduced himself. Actually, the first thing he said was "you guys must be rowers."

After they confirmed that, TB mentioned that BrotherBlog was a law professor at the University of Washington law school. This immediately bonded TB and the rowers.

It's TB's nature to ask a lot of questions, and so he asked them where they were from, if they'd ever been to Princeton, what they thought of the campus. As it turned out, one of them was Michael Thiers, whose sister Katie is on Princeton's women's basketball team. 

After about three or four minutes, Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack walked by. The first thing he said? "Rowers?" It's always good to have the same thought process as the AD.

The five rowers asked TB if they could go inside Jadwin and check out the arena. When TB said of course, they followed him into the building and up the stairs to the balcony level. They were all suitably impressed, especially after TB explained that the temporary stands come out on game nights to create a very intimate atmosphere.

After that, it was out to Princeton Stadium and onto Powers Field. Again, the Huskies loved the feel of the building.

If you're ever been to Seattle, you know that Washington's football stadium sits on the shore of Lake Washington, and there are tailgate parties on boats on the water. Princeton Stadium doesn't quite have that geography, but it's still a pretty impressive structure if you've never seen it before.

The U-Dub Five asked a lot of questions about the campus, the athletic facilities and the town. TB pointed them across Washington Road and then up to Nassau Street, and then it was five really firm handshakes and some nice "thank yous" for TB's time. They were incredibly nice, polite young men, that's for certain.

After their time checking out Princeton, it's now time for the Washington rowers and everyone else to get serious about the weekend. As TB said, it may have been an end-of-year picnic, but there's still the matter of the final five Princeton teams, all of whom have competitors searching for national championships and All-American honors. Next weekend it's the NCAA track and field championships at Texas.

First, though, it's the IRA championships on Mercer Lake. All three of Princeton's teams who are there will be in search of at least a trip to the podium, if not the biggest prize.

The women's lightweights and the men's lightweights are both ranked No. 1 in the country. Has one school ever swept the men's and women's lightweight championships at the IRAs? Yes, but only once. That was back in 1997, the first year of a women's lightweight national championship race, when Harvard and Radcliffe both won.

The women's lightweights and men's lightweights both won the Eastern Sprints championships. The women's lightweight 1V boat has not lost a race since the 2019 final at IRAs, where Princeton finished second. The Tigers won the 2021 and 2022 national titles. The men's lightweights have spent most of the season ranked No. 1, though they do have a loss to Cornell on the regular season record. 

Can the 2023 Tigers match the 1997 Crimson?

That's one possible storyline.

There's also the men's heavyweights, who are ranked third nationally. The Tigers will look to overtake defending champion and top-ranked Cal and spoil the final race for Yale coach Steve Gladstone, who is retiring after this weekend. Gladstone has already won 14 IRA national championships, with six at Cal, five with Brown and three with Yale.

The schedule for the entire weekend can be found HERE. 

As the Washington rowers said more than once, it figures to be a great weekend of racing in Mercer County. 

TB will be rooting for the Huskies he met yesterday — to come in second.

A Forever Team

TigerBlog stood on the sideline at Lincoln Financial Field Monday just as the NCAA Division I men's lacrosse game reached halftime. 

Next to him was Jon Hess, Princeton Class of 1998, who was holding the championship trophy that he and his teammates won. Actually, make that one of the three championship trophies that he and his teammates won, in 1996, 1997 and 1998.

Each year, the NCAA honors the Division I champion of 25 years earlier at halftime of the current year's title game. For most teams who are fortunate to be there, it's a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. For that matter, it's a zero-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the overwhelming majority of Division I men's lacrosse players.

For the Princeton Class of 1998, this was the third time being honored — and it would been four had it not been for the pandemic. Four times from three championships? The 1997 team was honored in 2015 after being voted the greatest team of all time (that was Princeton's 15-0 team), but the 1996 team was not honored due to the pandemic. Instead, Princeton's 1996 team and Syracuse's 1995 team were included in the 2022 ceremony.

In fact, since Princeton won those three straight championships, no team has been able to match it. Before that, it had only been done twice, once by Johns Hopkins (1978-80) and once by Syracuse (19880-90).

As Hess and the rest of the team prepared to heat out onto the field, all around him and TB were happy, smiling, energetic guys in their 40s, a group of guys with kids and mortgages, a goup with varying amounts of hair, a group where some look like they could step right on the field and play against — and more than anything a group of people who as college students accomplished something unique and special.

Right when halftime started, TB may have said the wrong thing: "Can you believe it's been 25 years?"

TB first caught up with them Monday at their pregame tailgate. It's hard to describe the emotions of when they all get together, but it's something hard to miss.

It's been a quarter century since they went out on their own, almost universally to accomplish great things post-Princeton. The bond that they share, though, is as unbreakable as any that has been forged during their playing days.

It all starts with Hess, of course. The 1997 Most Outstanding Player at the Final Four and one of the greatest feeders college lacrosse has ever seen, Hess is just a natural leader. Every member of any team he's ever played on has simply been drawn to him and followed his lead. The older he's gotten, the more he's developed that skill, though it was abundant from the day TigerBlog first met him back in 1995.

TB has always thought a sign of that was the fact that the attack line he played on his final three years is always, always referred to as "Hess, Hubbard, Massey." Yes, that's alphabetical, but TB has always considered that nobody would ever start with anyone else, even guys in various Halls of Fame.

Hess, Hubbard (that's Jesse) and Massey (that's Chris) started on attack in 1996, 1997 and 1998. For their careers they combined to score an insane 618 points in 60 games, a figure that would have been about 100 or so higher had it not been for the all the blowouts they found themselves watching from the sideline in the fourth quarter. If you're counting only the final three years, that's 534 points in 45 games.

They also scored 127 points in 11 career NCAA tournament games, going 10-1 in the postseason. They were 43-2 overall in their final three years, with the aforementioned three NCAA titles.

They were hardly a one-man (three-man) show, of course. In fact, the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four in 1998 wasn't one of them but goalie Corey Popham, who was also there Monday. The 1998 team had eight All-Americans that year; all eight were in attendance. In all, there were six members of that team who would at some point of their careers be first-team All-American, and all six were there as well.

They took their 1998 trophy with them out on the field at halftime, joined by their head coach Bill Tierney and offensive coordinator David Metzbower. It would be hard to calculate the number of pictures they too and all of the different combinations who were represented. It's clear that this was a moment they all wanted to remember.

There are other memories they all share as well, back before you could take pictures on a cell phone. There was the loss to Virginia in Week 2 to end a 29-game winning streak and inject maybe the slightest bit of doubt about a three-peat. There were the rallies from the same 8-4 third-quarter deficit in the third quarter in the quarterfinals against Duke and semifinals against Syracuse, which also saw first-team All-American defenseman Christian Cook (who was there) go down with an ACL tear.

And then there was the first half of the final against a Maryland team that Princeton defeated 19-7 in the 1997 final, when the Tigers employed Tierney's 19-goal rule and passed the ball around for the final five minutes. 

This time, it was 3-3 at the half. If ever there was a time to be nervous, this was it. 

TigerBlog's biggest memory of that day was after Tierney didn't a quick TV interview before heading into the lockerroom at Rutgers Stadium. As he and TB walked along, TB didn't say anything. Tierney then looked at him and said "we'll be fine."

Maybe he was talking himself into it. Maybe he knew all too well who was in that lockerroom waiting for him. Maybe he knew Hess would make sure everyone knew what was at stake.

Final score? Princeton 15, Maryland 5. History made.

That's the kind of team it was. And now it's 25 years, gone in a blink. Gone, but never to be forgotten, and always to be remembered, celebrated and held in the highest of awe. 

The 1998 Princeton men's lacrosse team. It's not just a championship team.

It's a forever team. 

 

Caps, Gowns, Competitions

The population of the town of Princeton essentially doubles during Reunions.

On an average day, the population is around 30,000. For Reunions and Commencement, that's about how many non-residents flock here.

It's loud, energetic and packed, starting on Thursday. The momentum builds and builds, through Reunions and Class Day and then finally to Commencement. 

And then? Everyone leaves. The campus goes from all that jazz to something of a ghost town. 

Each time TigerBlog experiences it, he has the same sense. It's eerie. 

Princeton celebrated its 276th Commencement yesterday. This is from the program for the event:

Princeton traces its founding to a royal charter granted on October 22,1746, by King George the Second of England. The first Commencement Exercises were held in 1748, in Newark, then home of the College of New Jersey, as Princeton was originally called. Six students were graduated at the first Commencement. One of Princeton’s first graduate students was James Madison 1771, later the fourth president of the United States. He remained at the college after graduation to continue his studies with President John Witherspoon, who was the only college president as well as the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. Systematic graduate instruction began in the 1870s, and the Graduate School, as it is known today, was formally organized in 1900. Princeton’s Commencements have been held in late spring only since 1844. Before then the ceremony took place in the fall because
the College was in session all summer long. Since the College moved to Princeton in 1756, Commencement has been held in a variety of locations on or near campus, including Alexander Hall,
the First Presbyterian Church, and Nassau Hall. From 1922 until 2019, the front lawn of Nassau Hall (known as front campus) was the site of Commencement, weather permitting. Commencement was held for the first time in Princeton Stadium in May 2021.

It was back in the football stadium yesterday. The processional began at 9:30; by mid-afternoon you couldn't tell that anything had happened on campus, as all of the grads headed into the next chapters of their lives. 

Actually, make that almost all of the grads. Graduation may have come and gone, but the 2022-23 athletic year at Princeton still has some big moments left.

There are still five teams who are competing for national championships: men's heavyweight rowing, men's lightweight rowing, women's lightweight rowing, men's track and field and women's track and field. Out of those groups, it would be far more shocking if no Princetonians won national championships than if they did.  

The Intercollegiate Rowing Association has its national championships from Friday through Sunday on Mercer Lake. The three finals, all of which Princeton figures to reach, will be held Sunday morning in less than one hour, beginning with the women's lightweight final at 10 and followed by the men's lightweights at 10:20 and men's heavyweights at 10:40.

The IRA championships website, which has any kind of information you might want about the racing, can be found HERE.

The women's open team competed this past weekend at the NCAA championships, which were on the Cooper River in South Jersey. Princeton came in third, behind Stanford and Washington, giving the Tigers a second-straight third-place finish in the overall team sports standings. 

The Princeton women's lightweights are the two-time defending champion and are unbeaten on the year. The two men's crews will be right in the mix as well.

Then there is the NCAA track and field championships, which will be held at the University of Texas June 8-10. Princeton has qualified four athletes after last week's regionals.

On the women's side, Kate Joyce will be back in the finals in the javelin, looking for her second-straight All-American performance. Joyce, a junior from Connecticut, was the 12th place finisher at the East regional, making her the final athlete from that group to advance to Austin.

On the men's side, Nicholas Bendtsen finished fourth in his heat of the 5,000 meters to advance. Bendtsen, also from Connecticut, was fourth at Heps in the 5,000.

Of course, there are also the Guttormsen brothers, Sondre and Simen, who are back for the final go-round as Princeton Tigers, though not in their final collegiate seasons. In fact, the Norwegian pole vaulters will be competing on the same track that will become their home next year, when they join Texas as grad transfers.

Sondre is chasing his fourth NCAA pole vault title, having won twice indoors and once outdoors. Simen finished fourth indoors and outdoors last year and didn't compete this year indoors due to an injury.

The End Of The Road

 A wise man once wrote this about Reunions at Princeton University:

Reunions at Princeton is a time of shared joy between the institution and the people who attended it. It's nearly impossible to walk anywhere on this campus during the three days of Reunions without seeing people laughing and hugging — but if you do, you'll see people who are lost in the total fondness that they have for Princeton University itself.

What really makes it special is the way that each class is almost its own organism, an independent entity with its own unique features and mannerisms. Nothing sums that up like the Reunion jackets themselves. When you throw in all of that color and pageantry, and it ratchets up the emotion even more.

Okay, that wise man was TigerBlog, who wrote that a year ago. It's true, of course — there is nothing quite like Reunions. 

If you were anywhere around Princeton this weekend, you saw it. You don't even have to go into one of the Reunions tents. You can just walk around the campus, or even just on Nassau Street, and you'll be overwhelmed by the school spirit. 

TigerBlog has also said this before, but it's also remains true (he paraphrases himself, if such a thing is possible): There is no place else that does Reunions like this.

TB has been to about two hours of alumni days at his own alma mater in the four decades since he went there. It's not because he didn't like it there. It's not even that school spirit doesn't exist there, though TB is probably not the measuring stick for Penn school spirit. 

Again, it's simply that Princeton seems to breed loyalty better than any other place.

It starts from Day 1, or pre-Day 1, with acceptance letters and orientations. They all stress that you are now part of a class, and that you and that class will grow together. 

You are constantly reminded of your class. At last week's Gary Walters Princeton Varsity Club Banquet, TB's nametag had his name and then "P ’22," something in which he takes enormous pride — and he didn't do any of the work.

It's a long ride from getting an acceptance letter to Princeton and the euphoria it brings and Graduation Day. There is a lot to be done along the way, and each and every Princeton student has that moment, or moments, where getting to Graduation Day seems so far away, so out of reach.

Today is Graduation Day for the Class of 2023. Like the other classes affected by the pandemic, this class had to deal with yet another curveball that other classes never dreamed of dealing with in their days. There are quite a few grads today who started out in the Class of 2022 whose time to put on a cap and gown was delayed for a year when they took a gap year. 

TB hasn't missed too many Graduation Days in his years at Princeton. He's always loved to watch the processional and recessional and see all of the athletes he's watched through the years make the walk back together. 

A year ago, TigerBlog was a parent at Graduation. To all of the parents of all of the grads, you cannot even begin to be prepared for the kind of pride you're going to feel as you watch the ceremony. It was as emotional a moment as TB has ever experienced.

To everyone in the Class of 2023, congratulations on what you have accomplished. You are part of an extraordinarily special group of people, a small club of Princeton University graduates. 

It's not an easy accomplishment. Princeton has very high standards and expectations, and they are not up for debate. You cannot coast your way through Princeton University as a student.

And now you've cleared all of those hurdles. It's something that can never be taken away from you. 

It's the end of a long weekend of love for Princeton, by Princetonians of all ages and classes, all of whom come together under the one gigantic Orange and Black umbrella. 

It ends today with something very, very special.

Celebrating The Athletic Class of 2023

The nearly 700 attendees at last night's Gary Walters Princeton Varsity Club Awards Banquet in Jadwin Gym walked past this on their way into the building:

In fact, so did the thousands and thousands of others who passed by Jadwin on their way to and from the tents and parties that Reunions offers. 

It's a testament to what the Class of 2023 accomplished during its time at Princeton, though it's only a partial testament. The actual numbers are fairly staggering.

A year ago, Princeton won 16 league championships. This year, Princeton won 16 league championships. 

Princeton's Class of 2023 produced 45 team national tournament appearances, 63 All-Americans, 55 individual conference championships and 57 team league championships. There were 11 national championships between teams and individuals.

That's pretty crazy.

Even crazier it this note: Every Princeton senior athlete was part of a team that either won a league championship or appeared in the postseason, other than women's rugby, which only became a varsity program this past year.

When Princeton recruit its athletes, the goal is to give them a well-rounded experience. Part of that, though, is definitely a championship experience, and Princeton has been doing just that for decades now.

Many of the members of the Class of 2023, of course, started out as members of the Class of 2022. Like their predecessors a year ago, these athletes were faced with an unprecedented decision — to stay enrolled a miss a year of athletics or withdraw for a year and maintain their undergraduate eligibility.

There was no right or wrong answer. Each of them had to do what they felt they needed to for their own situations. 

The ones who withdrew had to watch a year ago as their original classmates, and in many cases best friends, graduated. It wasn't easy for anyone.

Those days were very much in the rearview mirror last night at Jadwin. Whether they started in the fall of 2018 or 2019, there they were last night, together once again, to start the six-day run of Reunions/Class Day/Graduation. It's as festive as it gets.

As for the banquet, the big winners were women's tennis player Daria Frayman, who took home the von Kienbusch Award as the top senior female athlete, and Sondre Guttormsen, the Roper Trophy winner (Sondre accepted the award via a pre-taped video as he is on the road competing).

Frayman's win made her the fifth women's tennis player to be the von Kienbusch winner, and the other four were all in the 1970s. Their names: Helena Novakova (1972), Margie Gengler (1973), Louise Gengler (1975) and Aimee Knox (1977). 

As for Guttormsen, he emerged from as deep a field of Roper finalists as TigerBlog can remember, and all of them had extraordinary careers here. This choice, similar to the 2017 von Kiensbusch Award, was not an easy one to make (Ashleigh Johnson, the top water polo player in the world, was the winner, but you had multiple Olympians, national champions, and all-time leading scorers who did not win). 

The other four nominees were a national champion wrestler (Pat Glory), a nine-time All-American swimmer (Raunak Khosla), the leader of a basketball team that reached the Sweet 16 (Tosan Ebvuomwan) and a sixth-round NFL draft choice who was also a track and field All-American (Andrei Iosivas).

The banquet featured a great video that took four athletes — field hockey player Claire Donovan, football player Uche Ndukwe, fencer May Tieu and men's hockey player Liam Gorman — and showed them pictures throughout their connection to Princeton. They then spoke about what they saw, and did so in a way that was grippingly emotional.

TB's favorite part of all of these banquets is the senior slide show at the end.

Not every senior wins an award. Not every senior gets to be All-Ivy League, or even a starter. Maybe they all hope that will be the case when they start out here, but that's not everyone's destiny. 

They all have different stories to tell. Maybe they were a starter but got beaten out by someone younger. Maybe they were hurt and never made it back. Maybe they worked as hard as they could every day but just couldn't crack the lineup.

Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack called it a "shared experience, and a unique experience," and that's a great way to put it. 

Whatever their story, they all take something from this experience that will stay with them forever. And they all stuck it out, made it all the way to the end, because it was that important to them.

And for that, they all get their moment in the sun, or at least on the big video screens, as their name and picture appear, two at a time, until every senior has been recognized. They smile. Their friends applaud. 

It's a little thing, but it's also a big thing. It's little, in that it only takes a few seconds. It's big, in that it is a validation of all of the years of hard work, doubt, growth, physical challenges and everything else that goes with being a Princeton athlete. 

Every single one of them earned that moment.

Banquet Night

Judging by all of the responses that TigerBlog got from yesterday's entry, he is not the only one who thinks highly of Jon Kurian.

Pretty much every email or text said the same thing: "Love that guy." 

It was good to get that sort of feedback. It shows you just how many people have come into Kurian's orbit during his time here and how many have come to the same conclusions that TB has. 

One of the people who reached out was Ford Family Director of Athletics Emeritus Gary Walters, who offered this to both TB and Kurian:

"Congrats. Lorin is smiling."

Gary, of course, was referring to Lorin Maurer, for whom the award that Kurian was presented with last week at the final Department of Athletics staff meeting for the academic year. As TB wrote yesterday, the award is given: to that member of the Princeton Athletics family who best reflects the passion, dedication and infectious enthusiasm that defined Lorin Maurer’s character and her inspiring impact on colleagues and friends. Awarded in the memory of Lorin Maurer h78, 1978-2009.

Speaking of namesakes, Gary himself is the namesake for tonight's big event, the Gary Walters PVC Awards Banquet. It's an event that Gary himself originated back in 1998, as a way of presenting the major departmental awards.

That first banquet was held in the lobby of Jadwin Gym. Since then, it has grown from a handful of people to nearly 700, complete with awards, highlights, video tributes and a massive celebration of the graduating athletes.

It also corresponds to the opening night of Reunions, and so there is an incredible party vibe everywhere at Princeton. The Walters Banquet has persevered through thunderstorms, different venues and even a pandemic that forced it to be online twice, but it remains what Gary envisioned it would be: A jewel of a celebration of everything that is great about Princeton Athletics.

There is the Citizen Athlete Award, given to an alum for outstanding contribution to sport and society. The winner tonight will be General Mark Milley, a hockey player fro the Class of 1980 and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which makes him the nation's highest ranking military member.

The is also the Marvin Bressler Award, named for the longtime sociology professor who served as the inspiration for the Princeton Athletic Fellows program after Walters' undergraduate experience with Marv when Walters was the point guard on the basketball team in the 1960s. The Bressler Award goes to "that member of the Princeton family who, through heartfelt support of the University’s student-athletes and coaches, best embodies a belief in the lifelong lessons taught by competition and athletics as a complement to the overall educational mission in the spirit of Marvin Bressler, a Princeton professor of sociology from 1963-94."

Tonight the Bressler Award will be given to Kathleen Mannheimer, who has assisted so many Princeton athletes in her role at the University's Center for Career Development.

Mostly, though, the banquet is about the seniors. The von Kienbusch Award will be given to the top senior female athlete; the Roper Trophy will be given to the top senior male athlete. The 1916 Cup will be presented to the graduating athlete in the highest academic standard.

There is also the Art Lane Award, which is the undergraduate version of the Citizen Athlete Award. This year, there is also the debut of the Chris Sailer Leadership Award, named for the Hall-of-Fame women's lacrosse coach who retired at the end of the 2022 season.

There have been finalists announced for all of those awards. The envelopes will be opened at the banquet. 

It starts with a cocktail hour in which the seniors get to spend some time together, as teammates and classmates. It ends with a video that includes a photo of every senior from every team. 

After that, there is the presentation of the letter sweaters — and then several thousand pictures or so.

When you come to Princeton as an athlete, you're taking on a great challenge. It's not an easy one. The ability to work with the best academically and athletically never is. 

It is, though, a challenge well worth the effort. It may seem overwhelming that first year, but as time goes along, each and every Princeton athlete gets to see the benefit of their experience and learn things about themselves that they probably never realized before. Finally, finally, the end of that experience is here.

Tonight is about of all of that.

Every senior there has more than earned the right to be celebrated.