TigerBlog feels like the coming athletic year starts to get real with four weeks to go until the first event.
That day is two weeks away. If you are good at math, or even if you aren't, that makes today six weeks short of the first event of 2017-18, which would be a home women's soccer game against Monmouth on Aug. 25.
Today? It's a Friday in July. It's about as quiet as it gets around here.
It's right around the midway point from last year to next year. Actually, let's figure that out.
If the last event from last year was the NCAA track and field championships on June 9 and the first event from next year is Aug. 25, then that's a 77-day gap, right? The last 21 days of June, all 31 days of July (which makes 52), and then 25 more in August, taking you to 77.
The halfway point of 77 would be Day 39. The means that the exact halfway point would be July 18, if TB's math is on.
Today is July 14. That means this coming Tuesday would be the exact halfway point. Either way, it's right around the middle.
And that means TigerBlog has very little to say right now. Well, actually, he has a lot of things he could talk to you about, and hey, you're obviously reading this, so maybe you actually want to hear some of them?
Princeton Athletics? Not a lot of that for today.
The English team, which features Olivia Hompe, won its first game at the World Cup for women's lacrosse, defeating Wales 12-6. Tom Schreiber advanced past the first cut to the final 49 players for the U.S. team for the 2018 World Championships, which will be held in Israel. That list of 49 will eventually have to be cut in half, but it would shocking if Schreiber wasn't on the team.
Speaking of women's lacrosse, there's a new assistant coach in town. Her name is Kerrin Maurer, who happens to be one of the best players Duke women's lacrosse has ever had. She's actually second all-time at Duke with 280 points, which left her exactly two short of the number that Hompe put up to set the Princeton career record before graduating this year.
If you want to read the entire story about Maurer, it's right HERE.
The women's hockey team released its schedule, for Season 1 under head coach Cara Morey. Perhaps more ridiculous than the fact that the 2017-18 season begins in six weeks, the women's hockey season begins in little more than three months, with a pair of games against Providence on Oct. 20 and Oct. 21.
That's a winter sport, people. Time churns along.
What else can he tell you today? Hopefully you're not expecting something serious right now. It's a Friday in July. How serious do you expect TB to be?
In fact, he'll leave you with three stories that have nothing to do with anything.
The women's volleyball team also released its schedule. The Tigers, who've won two straight Ivy titles, open Sept. 1. That's seven weeks away.
TigerBlog was at one of Miss TigeBlog's lacrosse events a few weeks ago when he saw the women's lacrosse coach from Vassar. Or at least, he saw a coach wearing a "Vassar" shirt and figured it was her, though he's never met her.
It dawned on TigerBlog that he was wearing a "Princeton Volley" shirt at the time. It could be his most comfortable shirt, a bright orange dri-fit with long sleeves. He loves those shirts.
Anyway, it dawned on him that Sam Shweisky, the head men's volleyball coach, is a Vassar grad. When TB texted Sam to see if her knew the women's lacrosse coach, he replied that he had taken a class she had taught a long time ago. TigerBlog thought about introducing himself and trying to convince her that he was Sam and that he had taken her class at Vassar a long time ago. As he thought it through, he realized that there were a lot of holes in that plan, not the least of which was he didn't know her name, so he said nothing.
That's one. Here's the next:
For TigerBlog, Fridays in July for six years of his youth meant being at a sleepaway camp in the Catskills in New York. For the first five years, it was a camp called Camp Toledo. After a one-year non-camp summer, he then went to a different camp, called Camp Echo, because Toledo had closed down.
He'd spend eight weeks per summer away at sleepaway camp. His first year away was when he was six years old.
As he remembers being told, he and BrotherBlog (who was two years older; actually, he still is) went to camp that summer because their parents were going on a three-week trip the following summer to Japan and Hong Kong and they wanted to see if TB and BB would be okay at the camp without them. The logic was that if they weren't okay, then their parents would be about three hours away that summer, as opposed to a whole world away the next.
In that respect, it was a very nice thing for them to do. Told another way, though, it's possible that they were simply abandoning their kids.
Lastly, TigerBlog was talking to someone yesterday who mentioned that he had heard that U.S. Lacrosse had considered building Tierney Field right in the Inner Harbor in Baltimore before cost estimates and such moved it to its actual location, outside the city. The Inner Harbor would have been a pretty cool location for the facility.
That got TB thinking about the time he stayed in one of the hotels right on the harbor. He was coming up in the elevator holding a bunch of stuff, including a drink in a cup with a lid on it. Before he got to his floor, he bobbled everything and ended up squeezing the cup, which flew out of his hands and spilled everywhere.
TigerBlog felt badly, so he wanted to at least clean up some of the mess. To do so, he went to his room and got a towel. Then he went back to the elevator. Except there were a bunch of elevators, and the one that came to the floor wasn't the one that he'd dropped the drink in. So he tried again, but again the wrong elevator came. TB took that as a sign that he had tried his best, and he got on that elevator and downstairs. You should always follow the signs. And he's pretty sure someone cleaned it up by now.
Why tell those stories now? Because it's a Friday in July and they're just lighthearted stories.
It's the summer. There's not a game in sight just yet. Why be serious today?
Have a great summer weekend everyone.
Friday, July 14, 2017
Thursday, July 13, 2017
The Unstoppable Force
TigerBlog forgot to include one thing in his story about "Sweeney Todd" the other day.
The other four musical couples whom TigerBlog referenced all had the kind of love that most people can only dream about, the kind that endures for all eternity.
Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett? They had the kind of love that endured right up until the part where, after killing a whole bunch of people and baking them into meat pies, Sweeney killed her too.
There's love, and then there's love.
TigerBlog was a bit bummed that he forgot to mention that part the other day, though not as bummed as he was a high school sophomore, when he realized that he'd forgotten to include one page from a chemistry lab in his report, which ended up dropping his grade significantly. It worked out okay, since he still got into Penn.
Another update is from the District 12 Little League baseball tournament. The winner for 2017? Huh-TER-buh. That's HTRBA, who won for the first time in 13 years.
This is from local sportswriter Rich Fisher, who may have the record for most stories written about sporting events that happened in Mercer County:
For those who assumed HTRBA stood for Hamilton Township Recreational Baseball Association, you were seemingly mistaken.
After Mercerville’s 12-year-old All-Stars won their first District 12 title in 13 years with a 7-1 win over West Windsor at Sayen Park Sunday, catcher Joe Lemly put those five letters in proper perspective to describe how the title was won.
“It was about using teamwork,” said Lemly, who went 2-for-3 with a walk and run scored. “We have a motto for HTRBA — hustle, teamwork, respect, balance and attitude.”
That's pretty good stuff. TigerBlog forwarded that on to David Rosenfeld, the one who all those years ago asked the immortal question of "what's huh-TER-buh?" If anyone can appreciate District 12 Little League baseball, it's David.
TigerBlog texted David yesterday and asked him this question: Who would be the best two or three best Princeton men's basketball players since you started watching? Not the ones who had the best careers. The guys you would take over anyone else for one game when they were at their best.
On the women's side, by the way, TigerBlog would take Niveen Rasheed, though he reserves the right to take Bella Alarie in another three years. Bella is currently training with the U.S. U19 team, and she will be keeping a journal for goprincetontigers.com. You can see entry No. 1 HERE.
As for the men? David went with Brian Earl, Chris Young and Spencer Gloger, with the caveat that he hasn't watched the team as much since 2008 and that he's a huge fan of Devin Cannady.
TigerBlog thought of this question when he saw another story on the website about Mason Rocca. The story, which talks about how Rocca has received a Knowles Science Teaching Fellowship, can be seen HERE.
From the story:
Following his pro career, Rocca returned to his hometown of Evanston, Ill., to pursue his master's degree in secondary education at Northwestern with a concentration in math, completing it this year. The Knowles Science Teaching Fellowship is a five-year program intended to provide new math and science teachers with professional development, resources and support. Rocca was an electrical engineering major at Princeton.
Mason Rocca, on his best day, is the most unstoppable force TigerBlog has seen in a Princeton men's basketball uniform. The problem he had was that he didn't have too many best days, since the majority of his career was hampered by injuries.
TigerBlog has written about Mason before. In fact, he went back to look what he had said about him previously, and TB wrote this in September 2015, nearly two years ago:
Mason Rocca is the single most unstoppable force TigerBlog has seen play for Princeton - when healthy.
For the record, TigerBlog wrote this year's sentence before he went back and checked what he had said before. Clearly, there's a consistency to what TB thinks about Rocca as a player at Princeton.
That's sort of weird also. To describe someone twice in a span of nearly 24 months with the exact same phrase?
Mason played 14 professional seasons in Europe as he outgrew the nagging injuries. Had he never gotten hurt at Princeton, Rocca would have been in an NBA uniform at some point. TigerBlog is certain of that.
And, as he also said two years ago, he might have been the missing piece for Princeton to defeat Michigan State in the 1998 NCAA tournament second round, which would have bumped Princeton to the Sweet 16 that year. Rocca was out injured for the end of the year.
David's choices for the best players at Princeton in the last 25 years or so is a great one. There are other names that could be considered, starting from Kit Mueller and going through the present, with Cannady and Myles Stephens, who might be the second most unstoppable force TB has seen here.
Any list for one game, though, has to include Mason Rocca. He had great touch around the basket. He could pass. Any loose ball was his, whether a rebound or on the floor. Looking back, that was probably the reason he kept getting hurt.
With his pro basketball career over, Mason is back in Illinois, where he grew up, ready to start the next phase of his life as a teacher. The fellowship that he received will help him get started down the path in the classroom.
HERE's more on Mason's fellowship. That story includes this:
On the court, Rocca was a proven leader who was known for his creativity and collaboration. Now he’ll take those skills into the classroom, where he will teach high school math and look for ways to reform the system.
That's pretty flattering stuff.
Of course, it leaves out the "unstoppable force" part, but TigerBlog will keep reminding you.
The other four musical couples whom TigerBlog referenced all had the kind of love that most people can only dream about, the kind that endures for all eternity.
Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett? They had the kind of love that endured right up until the part where, after killing a whole bunch of people and baking them into meat pies, Sweeney killed her too.
There's love, and then there's love.
TigerBlog was a bit bummed that he forgot to mention that part the other day, though not as bummed as he was a high school sophomore, when he realized that he'd forgotten to include one page from a chemistry lab in his report, which ended up dropping his grade significantly. It worked out okay, since he still got into Penn.
Another update is from the District 12 Little League baseball tournament. The winner for 2017? Huh-TER-buh. That's HTRBA, who won for the first time in 13 years.
This is from local sportswriter Rich Fisher, who may have the record for most stories written about sporting events that happened in Mercer County:
For those who assumed HTRBA stood for Hamilton Township Recreational Baseball Association, you were seemingly mistaken.
After Mercerville’s 12-year-old All-Stars won their first District 12 title in 13 years with a 7-1 win over West Windsor at Sayen Park Sunday, catcher Joe Lemly put those five letters in proper perspective to describe how the title was won.
“It was about using teamwork,” said Lemly, who went 2-for-3 with a walk and run scored. “We have a motto for HTRBA — hustle, teamwork, respect, balance and attitude.”
That's pretty good stuff. TigerBlog forwarded that on to David Rosenfeld, the one who all those years ago asked the immortal question of "what's huh-TER-buh?" If anyone can appreciate District 12 Little League baseball, it's David.
TigerBlog texted David yesterday and asked him this question: Who would be the best two or three best Princeton men's basketball players since you started watching? Not the ones who had the best careers. The guys you would take over anyone else for one game when they were at their best.
On the women's side, by the way, TigerBlog would take Niveen Rasheed, though he reserves the right to take Bella Alarie in another three years. Bella is currently training with the U.S. U19 team, and she will be keeping a journal for goprincetontigers.com. You can see entry No. 1 HERE.
As for the men? David went with Brian Earl, Chris Young and Spencer Gloger, with the caveat that he hasn't watched the team as much since 2008 and that he's a huge fan of Devin Cannady.
TigerBlog thought of this question when he saw another story on the website about Mason Rocca. The story, which talks about how Rocca has received a Knowles Science Teaching Fellowship, can be seen HERE.
From the story:
Following his pro career, Rocca returned to his hometown of Evanston, Ill., to pursue his master's degree in secondary education at Northwestern with a concentration in math, completing it this year. The Knowles Science Teaching Fellowship is a five-year program intended to provide new math and science teachers with professional development, resources and support. Rocca was an electrical engineering major at Princeton.
Mason Rocca, on his best day, is the most unstoppable force TigerBlog has seen in a Princeton men's basketball uniform. The problem he had was that he didn't have too many best days, since the majority of his career was hampered by injuries.
TigerBlog has written about Mason before. In fact, he went back to look what he had said about him previously, and TB wrote this in September 2015, nearly two years ago:
Mason Rocca is the single most unstoppable force TigerBlog has seen play for Princeton - when healthy.
For the record, TigerBlog wrote this year's sentence before he went back and checked what he had said before. Clearly, there's a consistency to what TB thinks about Rocca as a player at Princeton.
That's sort of weird also. To describe someone twice in a span of nearly 24 months with the exact same phrase?
Mason played 14 professional seasons in Europe as he outgrew the nagging injuries. Had he never gotten hurt at Princeton, Rocca would have been in an NBA uniform at some point. TigerBlog is certain of that.
And, as he also said two years ago, he might have been the missing piece for Princeton to defeat Michigan State in the 1998 NCAA tournament second round, which would have bumped Princeton to the Sweet 16 that year. Rocca was out injured for the end of the year.
David's choices for the best players at Princeton in the last 25 years or so is a great one. There are other names that could be considered, starting from Kit Mueller and going through the present, with Cannady and Myles Stephens, who might be the second most unstoppable force TB has seen here.
Any list for one game, though, has to include Mason Rocca. He had great touch around the basket. He could pass. Any loose ball was his, whether a rebound or on the floor. Looking back, that was probably the reason he kept getting hurt.
With his pro basketball career over, Mason is back in Illinois, where he grew up, ready to start the next phase of his life as a teacher. The fellowship that he received will help him get started down the path in the classroom.
HERE's more on Mason's fellowship. That story includes this:
On the court, Rocca was a proven leader who was known for his creativity and collaboration. Now he’ll take those skills into the classroom, where he will teach high school math and look for ways to reform the system.
That's pretty flattering stuff.
Of course, it leaves out the "unstoppable force" part, but TigerBlog will keep reminding you.
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Summer Laxing
TigerBlog got a picture taken with his daughter Sunday afternoon.
In the moment, though, his focus was divided. Oh, it was on the same spot, and it was on photography and it was on Miss TigerBlog. There was just an 11 year divide to deal with as well.
The occasion this past Sunday was the final summer club lacrosse tournament MTB would ever have. These club teams run through the end of the summer after a player's junior year of high school, and so this was it for MTB and her Ultimate teammates.
Much like TigerBlog Jr. back when it was his turn, MTB has spent a large chunk of her summers playing lacrosse. And it all ended Sunday, on a sweltering field in Malvern, outside of Philadelphia.
TigerBlog has been to summer lacrosse tournaments basically everywhere from Massachusetts to Virginia. There was one earlier this summer in Richmond, on TB's birthday, actually. That's okay. It was a great birthday.
Some tournaments, like the one this past weekend, have been close enough to drive to, though her first game both Saturday and Sunday was at 8:50. You can do the math as to what time you have to get up to be there in plenty of time.
These tournaments follow a familiar script. There are multiple games, usually two or three per day, against teams with creative names and colorful uniforms. Many, but not all, tournaments then have a playoff round, which extends the weekend out should your team make it that far.
There are teams from all over, so it's a chance to see how good the competition is from surrounding states and regions or even from all the country. These club teams are for the more serious players, and they have to be players whose parents are okay with the idea of spending their summer weekends on these fields, with the same families year after year, instead of at a beach or a picnic or something.
They also have to be players whose parents are okay spending vacation money on summer lacrosse, between club fees, travel expenses and everything else.
Both of TigerBlog's children have benefited considerably from their summer lacrosse experience. It made them better players, yes, but it also has helped them learn so many of the lessons that sports can teach - about teamwork, hard work, what it takes to improve, dealing with successes and failures.
TigerBlog Jr.'s first lacrosse tournament actually predated his club experience. It was back when he had finished third grade - yes, that's young - and he was playing rec lacrosse with an organization called Lower Bucks Lacrosse. It was his second year playing, and the first time he was on a team in a tournament.
It dawned on TB in the middle of last week that that tournament, the first for TBJ, was played on the same exact hot, sweltering dusty fields as the one MTB would be playing on this past weekend, in the last one for her. That tournament had been 11 years earlier.
That's a full circle, no?
MTB got dragged to that first tournament for TigerBlog Jr., but she was always a good sport about things like that. In fact, one of the best pictures of MTB that TigerBlog has was taken at that tournament. She was wrapped up in a blanket and lying on the grass, oblivious to the lacrosse being played around her.
Here it is:
That spot of grass is about 10 feet away from where TB and MTB got their picture taken this past Sunday.
With four or five tournaments per summer, and probably 16 summers worth for the two of them combined, that would be, let's see, 16, times, say, 4.5, equals ... well it equals a lot of lacrosse. And that doesn't include winter and fall tournaments, camps and everything else.
The world of club lacrosse is not the only one that is busy this time of year.
The three-day tryouts for the U.S. men's national team for the 2018 World Championships - to be held in Israel - conclude today on Tierney Field outside of Baltimore. Princeton is represented by Tom Schreiber and Tyler Fiorito, and those two plus Zach Currier played in the Major League Lacrosse all-star game last weekend in California.
Currier, a Canadian, has a strong international future ahead of him, though TB isn't sure what the selection process for the Canadian team is.
The Women's World Cup begins today in England. If you're a Princeton fan, you can root for the home team if you like. Olivia Hompe, the all-time leading scorer in Princeton lacrosse history, will be playing for the English team.
If the men's World Championship final next year in Israel figures to be pretty much a lock to feature the U.S. and Canada, the Women's World Cup is a bit more wide open. A bit, at least.
The Americans are the huge favorites, but the Canadians, English and Australians are all thinking about playing in the championship game as well.
If you want to read more about the English team, click HERE and HERE. Both stories have quotes from Hompe.
The second one, by the way, is from the BBC, and it provides an interesting perspective on lacrosse. For an even better one, read THIS story from the BBC, which looks to teach the game to a British audience that might not know much about it.
Lacrosse in England is actually very big, though it obviously is nowhere near what soccer is. TigerBlog has seen the English lacrosse team play Princeton on international trips in 2008 and 2016, and he's been impressed by the stick skills and lacrosse IQ of the English.
There are 25 countries who will compete in England in the Women's World Cup. The top six are the four TB already mentioned, plus Scotland and Wales.
The English play the first game of the tournament, this evening against Wales (that's a 6 pm start there, so that's 1 in the afternoon here, TB believes). The U.S. and England will play in the round-robin phase Saturday.
There will be eight teams in the quarterfinal round, with play-ins from the second division to help set that field. The championship game will be played on Saturday the 22nd, so the tournament moves relatively quickly.
You know. Like the last 11 years.
There is still plenty of lacrosse to be played for both of TB's kids. Just not in the summer club tournament format.
To some, it's everything that's wrong with youth sports and college recruiting. There are some arguments that can be made in that direction.
To TigerBlog?
It's been a really special 11 years, and it's been the source of an amazing connection for him with some great people he's met along the way - but especially with his kids.
And now it's over. He'll be able to sleep late on his June and July weekends from now on.
It's just that they just won't be the same.
In the moment, though, his focus was divided. Oh, it was on the same spot, and it was on photography and it was on Miss TigerBlog. There was just an 11 year divide to deal with as well.
The occasion this past Sunday was the final summer club lacrosse tournament MTB would ever have. These club teams run through the end of the summer after a player's junior year of high school, and so this was it for MTB and her Ultimate teammates.
Much like TigerBlog Jr. back when it was his turn, MTB has spent a large chunk of her summers playing lacrosse. And it all ended Sunday, on a sweltering field in Malvern, outside of Philadelphia.
TigerBlog has been to summer lacrosse tournaments basically everywhere from Massachusetts to Virginia. There was one earlier this summer in Richmond, on TB's birthday, actually. That's okay. It was a great birthday.
Some tournaments, like the one this past weekend, have been close enough to drive to, though her first game both Saturday and Sunday was at 8:50. You can do the math as to what time you have to get up to be there in plenty of time.
These tournaments follow a familiar script. There are multiple games, usually two or three per day, against teams with creative names and colorful uniforms. Many, but not all, tournaments then have a playoff round, which extends the weekend out should your team make it that far.
There are teams from all over, so it's a chance to see how good the competition is from surrounding states and regions or even from all the country. These club teams are for the more serious players, and they have to be players whose parents are okay with the idea of spending their summer weekends on these fields, with the same families year after year, instead of at a beach or a picnic or something.
They also have to be players whose parents are okay spending vacation money on summer lacrosse, between club fees, travel expenses and everything else.
Both of TigerBlog's children have benefited considerably from their summer lacrosse experience. It made them better players, yes, but it also has helped them learn so many of the lessons that sports can teach - about teamwork, hard work, what it takes to improve, dealing with successes and failures.
TigerBlog Jr.'s first lacrosse tournament actually predated his club experience. It was back when he had finished third grade - yes, that's young - and he was playing rec lacrosse with an organization called Lower Bucks Lacrosse. It was his second year playing, and the first time he was on a team in a tournament.
It dawned on TB in the middle of last week that that tournament, the first for TBJ, was played on the same exact hot, sweltering dusty fields as the one MTB would be playing on this past weekend, in the last one for her. That tournament had been 11 years earlier.
That's a full circle, no?
MTB got dragged to that first tournament for TigerBlog Jr., but she was always a good sport about things like that. In fact, one of the best pictures of MTB that TigerBlog has was taken at that tournament. She was wrapped up in a blanket and lying on the grass, oblivious to the lacrosse being played around her.
Here it is:
That spot of grass is about 10 feet away from where TB and MTB got their picture taken this past Sunday.
With four or five tournaments per summer, and probably 16 summers worth for the two of them combined, that would be, let's see, 16, times, say, 4.5, equals ... well it equals a lot of lacrosse. And that doesn't include winter and fall tournaments, camps and everything else.
The world of club lacrosse is not the only one that is busy this time of year.
The three-day tryouts for the U.S. men's national team for the 2018 World Championships - to be held in Israel - conclude today on Tierney Field outside of Baltimore. Princeton is represented by Tom Schreiber and Tyler Fiorito, and those two plus Zach Currier played in the Major League Lacrosse all-star game last weekend in California.
Currier, a Canadian, has a strong international future ahead of him, though TB isn't sure what the selection process for the Canadian team is.
The Women's World Cup begins today in England. If you're a Princeton fan, you can root for the home team if you like. Olivia Hompe, the all-time leading scorer in Princeton lacrosse history, will be playing for the English team.
If the men's World Championship final next year in Israel figures to be pretty much a lock to feature the U.S. and Canada, the Women's World Cup is a bit more wide open. A bit, at least.
The Americans are the huge favorites, but the Canadians, English and Australians are all thinking about playing in the championship game as well.
If you want to read more about the English team, click HERE and HERE. Both stories have quotes from Hompe.
The second one, by the way, is from the BBC, and it provides an interesting perspective on lacrosse. For an even better one, read THIS story from the BBC, which looks to teach the game to a British audience that might not know much about it.
Lacrosse in England is actually very big, though it obviously is nowhere near what soccer is. TigerBlog has seen the English lacrosse team play Princeton on international trips in 2008 and 2016, and he's been impressed by the stick skills and lacrosse IQ of the English.
There are 25 countries who will compete in England in the Women's World Cup. The top six are the four TB already mentioned, plus Scotland and Wales.
The English play the first game of the tournament, this evening against Wales (that's a 6 pm start there, so that's 1 in the afternoon here, TB believes). The U.S. and England will play in the round-robin phase Saturday.
There will be eight teams in the quarterfinal round, with play-ins from the second division to help set that field. The championship game will be played on Saturday the 22nd, so the tournament moves relatively quickly.
You know. Like the last 11 years.
There is still plenty of lacrosse to be played for both of TB's kids. Just not in the summer club tournament format.
To some, it's everything that's wrong with youth sports and college recruiting. There are some arguments that can be made in that direction.
To TigerBlog?
It's been a really special 11 years, and it's been the source of an amazing connection for him with some great people he's met along the way - but especially with his kids.
And now it's over. He'll be able to sleep late on his June and July weekends from now on.
It's just that they just won't be the same.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Summer Swoosh
Sweeney Todd - you remember the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, right? - and Mrs. Lovett had a nice little going way back when.
Okay, okay, in musical theater romantic history, they weren't quite Tony and Maria ("there's a place for us, somewhere a place for us"), Lt. Cable and Liat ("angel and lover, heaven and Earth am I with you"), Curly and Laurey ("sweetheart, they're suspecting things - people will say we're in love") or even Tevye and Golde ("do you love me? I suppose I do").
Still, Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett were in love. At least she was in love with him, as you can tell when she sang this to him: "Me eyelids'll flutter, I'll turn into butter, the moment I mutter I do."
By the way, can you identify the four musicals that TB quoted?
TigerBlog saw the original version of "Sweeney Todd" on Broadway back in 1979, on its way to the Tony Award for Best Musical. Mrs. Lovett was played by Angela Lansbury. Sweeney Todd was played by the guy walking into the restaurant last night as TigerBlog walked out.
Len Cariou, who was the original "Sweeney," lives in FatherBlog's building and hangs in FatherBlog's circle of friends there. TigerBlog found himself at dinner with FB last night, and as they left the restaurant, in walked three of the gentlemen from that circle.
The one in the middle was Cariou. If you didn't see him in "Sweeney Todd," perhaps you know him better as Tom Selleck's father on "Blue Bloods."
FatherBlog introduced TB to the three men, all three of whom TigerBlog has met about 20 times before. Each time, FatherBlog acts as if he's never introduced his son to them before, so he does it again.
TigerBlog had this conversation with Cariou:
TB: "Saw you in 'Sweeney Todd.' "
Cariou: "Yeah? Wow. What'd you think?"
TB: "You were pretty good."
By the way, the musicals TB mentioned were: "West Side Story," "South Pacific," "Oklahoma" and "Fiddler on the Roof." You should hear TigerBlog sing them.
Anyway, FatherBlog is coming up on the 40th anniversary of living in that building, which is right on the Hudson River. TB was in Hoboken earlier, and he made the short drive from there to FatherBlog's place.
The thing is that, after those 40 years, TigerBlog found a new way to get from where he was near the Lincoln Tunnel to his dad's building. He never knew it was there before. It was right along the river. Who knew?
It was actually the second time in a few days that he found himself in that situation.
Clif Perry, the head equipment manager, called TB the other day and asked him to come by and see just how much space the delivery of the new Nike gear for the coming year takes up on arrival. Okay, TB though. Why not?
So he walked down to Clif's office, and Clif then took him to the rooms where the gear was stored. It was down a hallway that TB never knew was there.
TigerBlog is pretty sure his first time in Jadwin Gym was in the 1983-84 range, either for Princeton-Penn basketball (as a Quaker) or the New Jersey high school wrestling championships (as a sportswriter). Since then, he's spent decades in the building, and he was pretty sure he knew every corner of it and Caldwell Field House.
He didn't. There was a hallway there that he never knew existed. Who knew?
Meanwhile, back at the Nike stuff, it was in two different locker rooms, one for the women's stuff, one for the men's stuff. Both rooms were essentially packed from floor to ceiling with boxes.
And these were just the items for the coaches and teams, not the department staff.
TigerBlog has said this before, but it's worth mentioning again. Princeton's partnership with Nike has been among the very best things that he's seen in all his time here.
Before the Nike deal, it seemed like each team went in its own direction, with different shades of orange, different logos, different everything. It made for a lack of consistency in the overall athletic look, which made for a somewhat fractured department. That's not really an overstatement.
Back then, TigerBlog would often see Princeton's athletes on campus wearing different kinds of apparel, and, way worse than that, t-shirts and sweatshirts of other colleges. That was a huge pet peeve of TB's.
Then, along came Nike. Suddenly, everyone matched. Everyone had the same colors. Everyone's Princeton shield or striped "P" was identical.
If you think that something so seemingly small can't have a huge impact, you're underestimating things. The Nike partnership has brought to Princeton Athletics an increased sense of pride. TigerBlog isn't overstating that.
And there was the next generation of Nike gear, ready to be organized and distributed for the 2017-18 season.
With it will again come that sense of pride.
Okay, okay, in musical theater romantic history, they weren't quite Tony and Maria ("there's a place for us, somewhere a place for us"), Lt. Cable and Liat ("angel and lover, heaven and Earth am I with you"), Curly and Laurey ("sweetheart, they're suspecting things - people will say we're in love") or even Tevye and Golde ("do you love me? I suppose I do").
Still, Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett were in love. At least she was in love with him, as you can tell when she sang this to him: "Me eyelids'll flutter, I'll turn into butter, the moment I mutter I do."
By the way, can you identify the four musicals that TB quoted?
TigerBlog saw the original version of "Sweeney Todd" on Broadway back in 1979, on its way to the Tony Award for Best Musical. Mrs. Lovett was played by Angela Lansbury. Sweeney Todd was played by the guy walking into the restaurant last night as TigerBlog walked out.
Len Cariou, who was the original "Sweeney," lives in FatherBlog's building and hangs in FatherBlog's circle of friends there. TigerBlog found himself at dinner with FB last night, and as they left the restaurant, in walked three of the gentlemen from that circle.
The one in the middle was Cariou. If you didn't see him in "Sweeney Todd," perhaps you know him better as Tom Selleck's father on "Blue Bloods."
FatherBlog introduced TB to the three men, all three of whom TigerBlog has met about 20 times before. Each time, FatherBlog acts as if he's never introduced his son to them before, so he does it again.
TigerBlog had this conversation with Cariou:
TB: "Saw you in 'Sweeney Todd.' "
Cariou: "Yeah? Wow. What'd you think?"
TB: "You were pretty good."
By the way, the musicals TB mentioned were: "West Side Story," "South Pacific," "Oklahoma" and "Fiddler on the Roof." You should hear TigerBlog sing them.
Anyway, FatherBlog is coming up on the 40th anniversary of living in that building, which is right on the Hudson River. TB was in Hoboken earlier, and he made the short drive from there to FatherBlog's place.
The thing is that, after those 40 years, TigerBlog found a new way to get from where he was near the Lincoln Tunnel to his dad's building. He never knew it was there before. It was right along the river. Who knew?
It was actually the second time in a few days that he found himself in that situation.
Clif Perry, the head equipment manager, called TB the other day and asked him to come by and see just how much space the delivery of the new Nike gear for the coming year takes up on arrival. Okay, TB though. Why not?
So he walked down to Clif's office, and Clif then took him to the rooms where the gear was stored. It was down a hallway that TB never knew was there.
TigerBlog is pretty sure his first time in Jadwin Gym was in the 1983-84 range, either for Princeton-Penn basketball (as a Quaker) or the New Jersey high school wrestling championships (as a sportswriter). Since then, he's spent decades in the building, and he was pretty sure he knew every corner of it and Caldwell Field House.
He didn't. There was a hallway there that he never knew existed. Who knew?
Meanwhile, back at the Nike stuff, it was in two different locker rooms, one for the women's stuff, one for the men's stuff. Both rooms were essentially packed from floor to ceiling with boxes.
And these were just the items for the coaches and teams, not the department staff.
TigerBlog has said this before, but it's worth mentioning again. Princeton's partnership with Nike has been among the very best things that he's seen in all his time here.
Before the Nike deal, it seemed like each team went in its own direction, with different shades of orange, different logos, different everything. It made for a lack of consistency in the overall athletic look, which made for a somewhat fractured department. That's not really an overstatement.
Back then, TigerBlog would often see Princeton's athletes on campus wearing different kinds of apparel, and, way worse than that, t-shirts and sweatshirts of other colleges. That was a huge pet peeve of TB's.
Then, along came Nike. Suddenly, everyone matched. Everyone had the same colors. Everyone's Princeton shield or striped "P" was identical.
If you think that something so seemingly small can't have a huge impact, you're underestimating things. The Nike partnership has brought to Princeton Athletics an increased sense of pride. TigerBlog isn't overstating that.
And there was the next generation of Nike gear, ready to be organized and distributed for the 2017-18 season.
With it will again come that sense of pride.
Monday, July 10, 2017
Happy Birthday "Coach"
Today will be the eighth time in TigerBlog history that he shares this story with you:
Back on Dec. 28, 1994, TigerBlog found himself in New Orleans, at the UNO Holiday Tournament championship game. It was Princeton against the host team, the Privateers, at the Lakefront Arena.
Before the game, TigerBlog had gumbo and jambalaya. Both were great. Seriously. He did. He remembers that clearly.
New Orleans won, 50-43. As TB looked back at the box score, he couldn't help but notice that no Tiger was in double figures. Three scored nine. Who were they? He'll even give you their initials: JM, RH, SG.
That should make it really easy. He'll give you the answer shortly, though sometimes he forgets to do that. He'll try not to this time.
The night before, Princeton had beaten Texas A&M in the first round of the event. That game went three overtimes before Princeton won 71-66.
Two Princeton players went all 55 minutes - JM and CD.
After that game, Princeton head coach Pete Carril was asked about having to play New Orleans in the final. They're going to be tough, he said. They have big guys.
When a reporter told him that his team also had big guys, Carril answered without flinching this way:
"Yeah, but I didn't go down to the docks to get them."
How did he think of those kinds of things so easily? He was so good at it. TigerBlog should have written down every great line he ever heard from Carril, in actual interviews and then in every day situations. Even without benefit of that, TB can still remember a lot of them, and they are all classics.
Why mention this today?
It's because today is Pete Carril's 87th birthday. That's why.
Happy birthday Coach.
There are a lot of people who played for him at Princeton who call him only "Coach." They wouldn't dream of calling him anything different. No matter how old he gets, he's never "Pete" or "Coach Carril" or anything. He's just "Coach."
Oh, and the initials? You have: James Mastaglio, Steve Goodrich, Rick Hielscher and Chris Doyal.
TigerBlog has written more about Pete Carril than any other subject, he's pretty sure. There's a reason for that.
There has never been anyone on this campus quite like Pete Carril. TigerBlog has often referred to him as the "conscience" of Princeton University, and he thinks it's a great description.
If you're reading this, then you're probably a Princeton fan. If you're a Princeton fan, then you know well his backstory.
He's from Bethlehem, the Pennsylvania steel town. His father, a Spanish immigrant, worked in the mills for 40 years, and it was from him that Carril developed a sense for the work ethic, his own and the one he demanded of those around him.
After playing at Lafayette, including for Butch van Breda Kolff, he started his career as a high school teacher (American government) and basketball coach, first at Easton High School and then at Reading High School, where he had a point guard at Reading named Gary Walters.
From there it was to Lehigh for a year and then to Princeton for 29. He'd win 511 games at Princeton and 523 overall, and he coached the Tigers to 13 Ivy titles, 11 NCAA appearances, the 1975 NIT championship and some of the greatest games college basketball has seen.
His Princeton career ended in 1996, first with the epic Ivy League playoff win over Penn and then the even more epic win over defending NCAA champion UCLA in the NCAA tournament.
When he left Princeton, he was an assistant coach in the NBA for more than a decade. Now he's retired, and he's a frequent visitor to Jadwin Gym.
Back to the "conscience" idea, Carril brought a sense of accountability to Princeton. His players all started out equally, regardless of where they came from, what their high school was, how much money they had or didn't have.
In his nearly 30 years at Princeton, Carril was unconnable, if such a word exists (it doesn't). He couldn't be less impressed by things other than effort, teamwork, hard work, dedication. These weren't just words to him. These were the required, necessary tenets of his world, his team.
Maybe the best thing he said, and he said it a lot, was this: "you can't separate the player from the person." What he was saying was that character is as much a part of the game as talent. He's right.
The conscience.
TigerBlog connected with Carril in the 1980s, first as a sportswriter and later as the last athletic communications contact he had as the basketball coach here. TB was once on the wrong end of a shouting match with Carril, but that was it. And being the basketball contact had its perks; one of Carril's rituals was to buy the basketball contact soup for lunch.
The other perks? They were related to watching one of the game's greatest from a front row seat. TigerBlog hasn't met too many other people who have made an impact on him the way Carril has - and he wasn't even one of his players.
Pete moves slower these days. His body, that is. His mind is still sharp.
There are fewer and fewer people left in the department who were here when he was the basketball coach. He was here for 29 years. In the 21 years since he left, Princeton has had five basketball coaches: Bill Carmody, John Thompson III, Joe Scott, Sydney Johnson and the current one, Mitch Henderson, a player on Carril's last team.
Pete is a Princeton legend. Talk like that always ran contrary to what he was about. Do your job every day. Don't worry about things like talk of legends and that sort of thing. You can't coach to have people be impressed by you. No. You have to believe in something and stay faithful to it.
Carril is in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. TigerBlog is the one who nominated him, and, in the program the night Carril was inducted, there was a four-page feature on him written by TB.
It's one of the two really long features TB has written about Carril, in addition to the millions of smaller pieces. Carril never said one word to TigerBlog about either. Nothing. No feedback at all.
TigerBlog likes it that way. It says a lot about the man himself.
Do your job. Do it the best you can. Your reward is knowing that you didn't cut any corners. If that's not good enough, then you're missing the point of why you did it in the first place.
That's also the lesson. That's Pete's lesson.
And today is his birthday.
Happy birthday to the conscience.
Back on Dec. 28, 1994, TigerBlog found himself in New Orleans, at the UNO Holiday Tournament championship game. It was Princeton against the host team, the Privateers, at the Lakefront Arena.
Before the game, TigerBlog had gumbo and jambalaya. Both were great. Seriously. He did. He remembers that clearly.
New Orleans won, 50-43. As TB looked back at the box score, he couldn't help but notice that no Tiger was in double figures. Three scored nine. Who were they? He'll even give you their initials: JM, RH, SG.
That should make it really easy. He'll give you the answer shortly, though sometimes he forgets to do that. He'll try not to this time.
The night before, Princeton had beaten Texas A&M in the first round of the event. That game went three overtimes before Princeton won 71-66.
Two Princeton players went all 55 minutes - JM and CD.
After that game, Princeton head coach Pete Carril was asked about having to play New Orleans in the final. They're going to be tough, he said. They have big guys.
When a reporter told him that his team also had big guys, Carril answered without flinching this way:
"Yeah, but I didn't go down to the docks to get them."
How did he think of those kinds of things so easily? He was so good at it. TigerBlog should have written down every great line he ever heard from Carril, in actual interviews and then in every day situations. Even without benefit of that, TB can still remember a lot of them, and they are all classics.
Why mention this today?
It's because today is Pete Carril's 87th birthday. That's why.
Happy birthday Coach.
There are a lot of people who played for him at Princeton who call him only "Coach." They wouldn't dream of calling him anything different. No matter how old he gets, he's never "Pete" or "Coach Carril" or anything. He's just "Coach."
Oh, and the initials? You have: James Mastaglio, Steve Goodrich, Rick Hielscher and Chris Doyal.
TigerBlog has written more about Pete Carril than any other subject, he's pretty sure. There's a reason for that.
There has never been anyone on this campus quite like Pete Carril. TigerBlog has often referred to him as the "conscience" of Princeton University, and he thinks it's a great description.
If you're reading this, then you're probably a Princeton fan. If you're a Princeton fan, then you know well his backstory.
He's from Bethlehem, the Pennsylvania steel town. His father, a Spanish immigrant, worked in the mills for 40 years, and it was from him that Carril developed a sense for the work ethic, his own and the one he demanded of those around him.
After playing at Lafayette, including for Butch van Breda Kolff, he started his career as a high school teacher (American government) and basketball coach, first at Easton High School and then at Reading High School, where he had a point guard at Reading named Gary Walters.
From there it was to Lehigh for a year and then to Princeton for 29. He'd win 511 games at Princeton and 523 overall, and he coached the Tigers to 13 Ivy titles, 11 NCAA appearances, the 1975 NIT championship and some of the greatest games college basketball has seen.
His Princeton career ended in 1996, first with the epic Ivy League playoff win over Penn and then the even more epic win over defending NCAA champion UCLA in the NCAA tournament.
When he left Princeton, he was an assistant coach in the NBA for more than a decade. Now he's retired, and he's a frequent visitor to Jadwin Gym.
Back to the "conscience" idea, Carril brought a sense of accountability to Princeton. His players all started out equally, regardless of where they came from, what their high school was, how much money they had or didn't have.
In his nearly 30 years at Princeton, Carril was unconnable, if such a word exists (it doesn't). He couldn't be less impressed by things other than effort, teamwork, hard work, dedication. These weren't just words to him. These were the required, necessary tenets of his world, his team.
Maybe the best thing he said, and he said it a lot, was this: "you can't separate the player from the person." What he was saying was that character is as much a part of the game as talent. He's right.
The conscience.
TigerBlog connected with Carril in the 1980s, first as a sportswriter and later as the last athletic communications contact he had as the basketball coach here. TB was once on the wrong end of a shouting match with Carril, but that was it. And being the basketball contact had its perks; one of Carril's rituals was to buy the basketball contact soup for lunch.
The other perks? They were related to watching one of the game's greatest from a front row seat. TigerBlog hasn't met too many other people who have made an impact on him the way Carril has - and he wasn't even one of his players.
Pete moves slower these days. His body, that is. His mind is still sharp.
There are fewer and fewer people left in the department who were here when he was the basketball coach. He was here for 29 years. In the 21 years since he left, Princeton has had five basketball coaches: Bill Carmody, John Thompson III, Joe Scott, Sydney Johnson and the current one, Mitch Henderson, a player on Carril's last team.
Pete is a Princeton legend. Talk like that always ran contrary to what he was about. Do your job every day. Don't worry about things like talk of legends and that sort of thing. You can't coach to have people be impressed by you. No. You have to believe in something and stay faithful to it.
Carril is in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. TigerBlog is the one who nominated him, and, in the program the night Carril was inducted, there was a four-page feature on him written by TB.
It's one of the two really long features TB has written about Carril, in addition to the millions of smaller pieces. Carril never said one word to TigerBlog about either. Nothing. No feedback at all.
TigerBlog likes it that way. It says a lot about the man himself.
Do your job. Do it the best you can. Your reward is knowing that you didn't cut any corners. If that's not good enough, then you're missing the point of why you did it in the first place.
That's also the lesson. That's Pete's lesson.
And today is his birthday.
Happy birthday to the conscience.
Friday, July 7, 2017
A Little More Summer Hoops
Peter Farrell stopped by TigerBlog's office yesterday.
The former women's track and field coach has literally seen the world since his retirement a little more than a year ago. TB doesn't see him as much as he used to, back when his office was a few feet away.
Still, whenever Peter is around, there are always some good stories to follow. And when TB has little motivation to write something for a summer Friday, Peter always gives him a spark.
Yesterday was no different.
TigerBlog hadn't heard the one, for instance, about the time that Peter's car broke down right at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, on the Manhattan side. He said he seemed to make a lot of friends that day.
Or the one about Lew Alcindor's first high school basketball game. Surely you know who Lew Alcindor is, right?
TigerBlog is guessing you do. Here are three hints if you don't: 1) he hasn't gone by that name in decades, 2) he scored 6,000 more points in the NBA than Michael Jordan did and 3) he recently received an honorary degree from none other than Princeton University.
Lew Alcindor changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1971 and then went on to become the all-time leading scorer in NBA history, with the completely unstoppable sky hook as his main weapon. Jordan, by the way, is fourth. Who are 2 and 3? And what active player has the most?
Anyway, before he was Kareem and before he played at UCLA, where he helped the Bruins to the NCAA title each of his three varsity seasons, he was a New York City legend at Power Memorial High School.
Farrell was another New York City legend. Well, maybe not legend. But he was a year ahead of Alcindor in high school, at Archbishop Molloy, and he was in the gym when Power Memorial and Alcindor opened his sophomore season (Peter's junior season) at Molloy. It would be Alcindor's first varsity season.
Peter also sat next to Alcindor at a banquet when both were still in high school. He saw the name tag for Alcindor next to his at the table and asked his father if he thought he was going to be there. Pointing straight up at the 7-2 Alcindor, Peter's father said simply "yes."
The answer to the question above? No. 2 is Karl Malone. No. 3 is Kobe Bryant. The active player with the most points is Dirk Nowitski (he's sixth all-time; Jordan is four and Wilt Chamberlain is five), with LeBron James not all that far behind.
Since TB is on the subject of basketball, he needs to point out that since the release of the men's basketball schedule two days ago, the dates of two of the games have been changed. That's how it works.
The Cornell-Columbia home weekend has been moved from the end of January to the weekend of Jan. 12-13, before exams start. Also, you may have noticed that there are no Penn games listed yet, but not to worry. TB has been assured that his alma mater will be fielding a team in 2017-18 and will show up twice on the Princeton schedule, as always.
Speaking of basketball, Bella Alarie will be spending the next two weeks of her summer in Colorado Springs, where she and her U.S. U-19 teammates will be preparing for the upcoming FIBA World Cup.
Alarie made the U.S. team in a tryout this spring. If you look at the USA Basketball website, you'll see that a lot of big-time players are alums of the U.S. U19 team and the World Cup.
The event features a 16-country field. Opening tip for the championships is Saturday, July 22. The U.S. is in a four-team group with China, Mali and Italy, who is also the host nation.
Each of the 16 teams will advance to the knockout rounds. The championship game will be Sunday, July 30.
Alarie launched herself on the women's basketball scene this past year, when she was the Ivy League Rookie of the Year and a first-team All-Ivy League selection. She's a 6-4 guard, something that Princeton has never really had before, and she is a complete mismatch on the offensive end while being a total stopper at the other end. Among her freshman year accomplishments: She set the school single-season blocked shots record.
Courtney Banghart, Alarie's coach at Princeton, has finished 10 seasons as head coach of the Tigers. In case you don't know off the top of your head, her career record is 208-87, and her Ivy career record is 113-27.
Those are ridiculous numbers.
Banghart, of course, hasn't done it by herself. She has, through fortune, foresight and both, had great assistant coaches here, especially the one constant from Day 1, Milena Flores.
As she looks back on her first 10 seasons, Courtney will be doing some reflecting over the next few weeks. The first installment in the series is about all of the people who have coached with here here, and it's definitely worth reading, which you can do HERE.
And then when you're done, have yourself a great summer weekend. Only seven more to go before the first event of 2017-18.
The former women's track and field coach has literally seen the world since his retirement a little more than a year ago. TB doesn't see him as much as he used to, back when his office was a few feet away.
Still, whenever Peter is around, there are always some good stories to follow. And when TB has little motivation to write something for a summer Friday, Peter always gives him a spark.
Yesterday was no different.
TigerBlog hadn't heard the one, for instance, about the time that Peter's car broke down right at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, on the Manhattan side. He said he seemed to make a lot of friends that day.
Or the one about Lew Alcindor's first high school basketball game. Surely you know who Lew Alcindor is, right?
TigerBlog is guessing you do. Here are three hints if you don't: 1) he hasn't gone by that name in decades, 2) he scored 6,000 more points in the NBA than Michael Jordan did and 3) he recently received an honorary degree from none other than Princeton University.
Lew Alcindor changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1971 and then went on to become the all-time leading scorer in NBA history, with the completely unstoppable sky hook as his main weapon. Jordan, by the way, is fourth. Who are 2 and 3? And what active player has the most?
Anyway, before he was Kareem and before he played at UCLA, where he helped the Bruins to the NCAA title each of his three varsity seasons, he was a New York City legend at Power Memorial High School.
Farrell was another New York City legend. Well, maybe not legend. But he was a year ahead of Alcindor in high school, at Archbishop Molloy, and he was in the gym when Power Memorial and Alcindor opened his sophomore season (Peter's junior season) at Molloy. It would be Alcindor's first varsity season.
Peter also sat next to Alcindor at a banquet when both were still in high school. He saw the name tag for Alcindor next to his at the table and asked his father if he thought he was going to be there. Pointing straight up at the 7-2 Alcindor, Peter's father said simply "yes."
The answer to the question above? No. 2 is Karl Malone. No. 3 is Kobe Bryant. The active player with the most points is Dirk Nowitski (he's sixth all-time; Jordan is four and Wilt Chamberlain is five), with LeBron James not all that far behind.
Since TB is on the subject of basketball, he needs to point out that since the release of the men's basketball schedule two days ago, the dates of two of the games have been changed. That's how it works.
The Cornell-Columbia home weekend has been moved from the end of January to the weekend of Jan. 12-13, before exams start. Also, you may have noticed that there are no Penn games listed yet, but not to worry. TB has been assured that his alma mater will be fielding a team in 2017-18 and will show up twice on the Princeton schedule, as always.
Speaking of basketball, Bella Alarie will be spending the next two weeks of her summer in Colorado Springs, where she and her U.S. U-19 teammates will be preparing for the upcoming FIBA World Cup.
Alarie made the U.S. team in a tryout this spring. If you look at the USA Basketball website, you'll see that a lot of big-time players are alums of the U.S. U19 team and the World Cup.
The event features a 16-country field. Opening tip for the championships is Saturday, July 22. The U.S. is in a four-team group with China, Mali and Italy, who is also the host nation.
Each of the 16 teams will advance to the knockout rounds. The championship game will be Sunday, July 30.
Alarie launched herself on the women's basketball scene this past year, when she was the Ivy League Rookie of the Year and a first-team All-Ivy League selection. She's a 6-4 guard, something that Princeton has never really had before, and she is a complete mismatch on the offensive end while being a total stopper at the other end. Among her freshman year accomplishments: She set the school single-season blocked shots record.
Courtney Banghart, Alarie's coach at Princeton, has finished 10 seasons as head coach of the Tigers. In case you don't know off the top of your head, her career record is 208-87, and her Ivy career record is 113-27.
Those are ridiculous numbers.
Banghart, of course, hasn't done it by herself. She has, through fortune, foresight and both, had great assistant coaches here, especially the one constant from Day 1, Milena Flores.
As she looks back on her first 10 seasons, Courtney will be doing some reflecting over the next few weeks. The first installment in the series is about all of the people who have coached with here here, and it's definitely worth reading, which you can do HERE.
And then when you're done, have yourself a great summer weekend. Only seven more to go before the first event of 2017-18.
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Opening Tip-Off
Were you out of sorts yesterday?
TigerBlog has a hunch why. If you were in the same distorted frame of mind yesterday that he was, then you spent all day thinking it was Monday, when it was really Wednesday.
The reason is obvious. The Fourth of July holiday was Tuesday, which led to a feeling that it was Sunday, which made yesterday feel like Monday. Now, though, it's suddenly Thursday. It's all very confusing.
It didn't help that the first three songs TigerBlog heard yesterday were "Monday, Monday" by the Mama's and the Papa's, "I Don't Like Mondays" with the Jon Bon Jovi version and "Come Monday" by Jimmy Buffett. Or was it "Rainy Days and Mondays" by the Carpenters?
Okay, he made that part up. In reality, the first song he heard yesterday was a song called "With You," from the musical "Pippin," followed by "When I Look To The Sky," by Train. Neither one of them mentions any days of the week, let alone Monday.
There are a lot of songs about Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. What about the other days? Actually, TB just thought of one, on his iTunes. The song is "Friday I'm In Love" by the wildly underrated British group "The Cure," the same people who brought you "Just Like Heaven."
Okay, Friday gets top billing in the song. And yeah, it's a little harsh on Wednesday - "Wednesday you can break my heart" - and, a verse later Thursday - "Thursday I don't care about you." But hey, it's better than being ignored.
So where was TB? Oh yeah. It felt like Monday yesterday.
Monday. Wednesday. Thursday. It's July. Does it really make a difference?
Odds are really good that you know someone, or a few someones, who is on vacation. It's what people do in July.
As for today, it's a little more than four months since Princeton defeated Dartmouth to end the regular season in men's basketball.
One week from yesterday - that would be next Monday or Wednesday or something - will be exactly four months since Princeton defeated Yale in the championship game of the first Ivy tournament. That day will also be exactly four months from the opening tip-off of the 2017-18 season for the Tigers.
Princeton will enter the new season knowing that it has no chance to do better in the league than it did a year ago. The win over Dartmouth (in case you forgot, Princeton won 85-48 after leading 52-22 at halftime) left Princeton at a perfect 14-0 in the league.
The wins in the Ivy tournament pushed Princeton to 16-0, making the 2016-17 Tigers the first team ever to have to do that - and to actually do that. The 2017-18 Tigers can do no better than match that, though that would be just fine with everyone here.
The 2017-18 season starts in just over four months, as TigerBlog said. The schedule was released yesterday, and you can read about it HERE.
If you're looking for a few words to describe it, you can start with "ambitious" and throw in "exciting" and "challenging."
The first game, on Nov. 12, will be at Butler, in its famed Hinkle Fieldhouse, so Princeton isn't exactly sticking its toe in the shallow end to get started.
Not that it gets any easier for Game 2, which will be the home opener three days later, on Wednesday, Nov. 15. That would be what looks to be the second Jadwin Gym appearance of BYU.
If TigerBlog is looking at the record book right, then Princeton hosted Brigham Young in the 1981-82 season, the last game of a home stretch that saw St. John's and Duke also come to Jadwin. More recently, Princeton was at BYU a year ago, falling 82-73 in the opening game of the season.
There will also be non-league home games against Lafayette, Lehigh and Monmouth.
Princeton will also be making some pretty good trips, if you consider Hawaii at Christmas time and Miami and Southern California in December to be good trips. There are already some games confirmed on ESPN networks, including the BYU game, and full TV information is not yet available.
Princeton was already 3-0 in the league, having played three home games, before first semester exams. TigerBlog assumes the Penn games, not yet finalized, will include one before exams, but that would be it.
As you know, Princeton will be looking to replace Spencer Weisz and Steven Cook, a pair of first-team All-Ivy League picks and 1,000-point scorers who graduated recently. The Tigers do return another first-team All-Ivy selection, Ivy tournament MVP Myles Stephens, as well as Devin Cannady, Amir Bell and a bunch of other really good players.
It'll be interesting to see what the adjustment will be to losing Weisz and Cook. The last time Princeton graduated two 1,000-point scorers from the same class was 1999, by the way, when Brian Earl and Gabe Lewullis both were in the same class.
Anyway, like the release of the men's hockey schedule a week ago, the news of the coming dates for men's basketball serves as a reminder that the games of the next academic year are not that far away. In just a few months, both teams will be playing.
And with that, you can get back to your summer Tuesday. Or is it Thursday?
TigerBlog has a hunch why. If you were in the same distorted frame of mind yesterday that he was, then you spent all day thinking it was Monday, when it was really Wednesday.
The reason is obvious. The Fourth of July holiday was Tuesday, which led to a feeling that it was Sunday, which made yesterday feel like Monday. Now, though, it's suddenly Thursday. It's all very confusing.
It didn't help that the first three songs TigerBlog heard yesterday were "Monday, Monday" by the Mama's and the Papa's, "I Don't Like Mondays" with the Jon Bon Jovi version and "Come Monday" by Jimmy Buffett. Or was it "Rainy Days and Mondays" by the Carpenters?
Okay, he made that part up. In reality, the first song he heard yesterday was a song called "With You," from the musical "Pippin," followed by "When I Look To The Sky," by Train. Neither one of them mentions any days of the week, let alone Monday.
There are a lot of songs about Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. What about the other days? Actually, TB just thought of one, on his iTunes. The song is "Friday I'm In Love" by the wildly underrated British group "The Cure," the same people who brought you "Just Like Heaven."
Okay, Friday gets top billing in the song. And yeah, it's a little harsh on Wednesday - "Wednesday you can break my heart" - and, a verse later Thursday - "Thursday I don't care about you." But hey, it's better than being ignored.
So where was TB? Oh yeah. It felt like Monday yesterday.
Monday. Wednesday. Thursday. It's July. Does it really make a difference?
Odds are really good that you know someone, or a few someones, who is on vacation. It's what people do in July.
As for today, it's a little more than four months since Princeton defeated Dartmouth to end the regular season in men's basketball.
One week from yesterday - that would be next Monday or Wednesday or something - will be exactly four months since Princeton defeated Yale in the championship game of the first Ivy tournament. That day will also be exactly four months from the opening tip-off of the 2017-18 season for the Tigers.
Princeton will enter the new season knowing that it has no chance to do better in the league than it did a year ago. The win over Dartmouth (in case you forgot, Princeton won 85-48 after leading 52-22 at halftime) left Princeton at a perfect 14-0 in the league.
The wins in the Ivy tournament pushed Princeton to 16-0, making the 2016-17 Tigers the first team ever to have to do that - and to actually do that. The 2017-18 Tigers can do no better than match that, though that would be just fine with everyone here.
The 2017-18 season starts in just over four months, as TigerBlog said. The schedule was released yesterday, and you can read about it HERE.
If you're looking for a few words to describe it, you can start with "ambitious" and throw in "exciting" and "challenging."
The first game, on Nov. 12, will be at Butler, in its famed Hinkle Fieldhouse, so Princeton isn't exactly sticking its toe in the shallow end to get started.
Not that it gets any easier for Game 2, which will be the home opener three days later, on Wednesday, Nov. 15. That would be what looks to be the second Jadwin Gym appearance of BYU.
If TigerBlog is looking at the record book right, then Princeton hosted Brigham Young in the 1981-82 season, the last game of a home stretch that saw St. John's and Duke also come to Jadwin. More recently, Princeton was at BYU a year ago, falling 82-73 in the opening game of the season.
There will also be non-league home games against Lafayette, Lehigh and Monmouth.
Princeton will also be making some pretty good trips, if you consider Hawaii at Christmas time and Miami and Southern California in December to be good trips. There are already some games confirmed on ESPN networks, including the BYU game, and full TV information is not yet available.
Princeton was already 3-0 in the league, having played three home games, before first semester exams. TigerBlog assumes the Penn games, not yet finalized, will include one before exams, but that would be it.
As you know, Princeton will be looking to replace Spencer Weisz and Steven Cook, a pair of first-team All-Ivy League picks and 1,000-point scorers who graduated recently. The Tigers do return another first-team All-Ivy selection, Ivy tournament MVP Myles Stephens, as well as Devin Cannady, Amir Bell and a bunch of other really good players.
It'll be interesting to see what the adjustment will be to losing Weisz and Cook. The last time Princeton graduated two 1,000-point scorers from the same class was 1999, by the way, when Brian Earl and Gabe Lewullis both were in the same class.
Anyway, like the release of the men's hockey schedule a week ago, the news of the coming dates for men's basketball serves as a reminder that the games of the next academic year are not that far away. In just a few months, both teams will be playing.
And with that, you can get back to your summer Tuesday. Or is it Thursday?
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
We're No. 48
Among today's subjects will be Gevvie Stone, James Cagney, TigerBlog's high school yearbook and the number 48.
Busy day, no?
Let's start with Gevvie, a 2007 Princeton grad who won an Olympic silver medal in singles rowing a year ago in Rio. She's also a medical doctor and the walking, talking personification of everything that makes Princeton Athletics great.
TigerBlog wanted to post a Fourth of July message on the Princeton Athletics Twitter account yesterday, and he was looking for the right picture. He was going to go online and download a picture of an American flag, but then he decided he'd try to find a Princeton picture with a flag in it.
When he did a search on his computer for any images with the word "flag" in it, he found "Gevvie_Flag." It's the picture he tweeted. You can see it here:
Also on the horizon is the 2018 World Cup, which will be a year from now in Russia. Actually, it'll be a little past the halfway part a year from today. TigerBlog loves the World Cup. It could be his second favorite major sporting event, after the NCAA lacrosse championships.
Anyway, the picture of Gevvie is a great one. In fact, TB would put it in the top 10 of Princeton Athletics pictures he's ever seen. And it was perfect for what he needed it for yesterday, with the American flag and the athlete with the huge smile.
If "A Christmas Story" and "It's A Wonderful Life" are staples of Christmas Eve, then there's one movie TB never wants to miss on the Fourth of July. It's "Yankee Doodle Dandy," of course.
Now that's a great movie. TigerBlog finds it amazing that he can love different movies or shows that are 180 degrees removed from each other. You know, like "Wentworth" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy." There are parts of "Wentworth" that make you need to stay up a little later to do something that gets the image of what you just saw out of your head so you don't have nightmares. You know, something peaceful and calming, for instance, like watching "Yankee Doodle Dandy."
It's hard to say if James Cagney was better in all of those gangster movies or in "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Either way, he's an A+ in both.
For wholesomeness? It's hard to beat Cagney as he sings and dances his way through one breezy show tune after another, all while reaffirming his patriotism and love of country in a time of World War.
Today is July 5, which, among other things, is the day that Miss TigerBlog has to get her high school senior picture taken. Why do they still do this? TigerBlog didn't get the one from when TigerBlog Jr. was a senior in high school. He could just take all the pictures he wants with his phone.
It's a contrast to TigerBlog's own experiences. He remembers getting his senior picture taken on a very rainy day. He also remembers having long hair. The proof is in his high school yearbook, which he glanced through to remind himself of just what it was like back when he used to own a brush.
It's not the picture itself that has TB's attention. It's the fact that MTB is going to be a senior in high school. What the heck?
Speaking of pictures with flags in them, TB, when he did the search for pictures with the word flag in them, came across this one:
That was MTB, back when she was three. And now she's a high school senior? Again, what the heck?
MTB still has a few weeks until her senior year begins. Class of 2018. Time flies.
As for the end of 2016-17, the end of each year isn't official until the final Learfield Directors' Cup standings are released. With the end of the College World Series, the final numbers have been calculated in a competition that uses NCAA championship participation and placing to determine the best overall athletic programs in the country. Again, Stanford is the winner.
Also, again, for the 21st time in the 24 years the Cup has been awarded, Princeton is the highest finishing school in the Ivy League.
Princeton comes in at 48th this year, just behind Indiana and just ahead of Mississippi State and Maryland. There are only two non-Power Conference schools ahead of Princeton: BYU (31st) and Denver (35th).
Princeton's best season in the Cup standings was the spring, when it received points in women's golf, women's lacrosse, women's rowing, women's track and field and softball.
The 48th-place finish means that Princeton has been in the top 50 in 20 of 24 years. The best finish? That would be in 2001-02, when Princeton was 21st.
Maybe most impressively, Princeton has never been lower than 63rd in any academic year.
It's not the kind of success that ever can be taken for granted, of course. And now the slate gets wiped completely clean, with every team back to zero for 2017-18.
Wait, it's 2017-18? But MTB is graduating high school in 2018. How can that be possible.
One last time. What the heck?
Busy day, no?
Let's start with Gevvie, a 2007 Princeton grad who won an Olympic silver medal in singles rowing a year ago in Rio. She's also a medical doctor and the walking, talking personification of everything that makes Princeton Athletics great.
TigerBlog wanted to post a Fourth of July message on the Princeton Athletics Twitter account yesterday, and he was looking for the right picture. He was going to go online and download a picture of an American flag, but then he decided he'd try to find a Princeton picture with a flag in it.
When he did a search on his computer for any images with the word "flag" in it, he found "Gevvie_Flag." It's the picture he tweeted. You can see it here:
That picture isn't quite a year old yet. It made TB think back to how much he liked having the Olympics on last year. Working and watching the Olympics. He can do next do this this coming winter, when the Winter Games are in South Korea.Happy Fourth of July from the Princeton Tigers pic.twitter.com/lRzjylempH— Princeton Tigers (@PUTIGERS) July 4, 2017
Also on the horizon is the 2018 World Cup, which will be a year from now in Russia. Actually, it'll be a little past the halfway part a year from today. TigerBlog loves the World Cup. It could be his second favorite major sporting event, after the NCAA lacrosse championships.
Anyway, the picture of Gevvie is a great one. In fact, TB would put it in the top 10 of Princeton Athletics pictures he's ever seen. And it was perfect for what he needed it for yesterday, with the American flag and the athlete with the huge smile.
If "A Christmas Story" and "It's A Wonderful Life" are staples of Christmas Eve, then there's one movie TB never wants to miss on the Fourth of July. It's "Yankee Doodle Dandy," of course.
Now that's a great movie. TigerBlog finds it amazing that he can love different movies or shows that are 180 degrees removed from each other. You know, like "Wentworth" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy." There are parts of "Wentworth" that make you need to stay up a little later to do something that gets the image of what you just saw out of your head so you don't have nightmares. You know, something peaceful and calming, for instance, like watching "Yankee Doodle Dandy."
It's hard to say if James Cagney was better in all of those gangster movies or in "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Either way, he's an A+ in both.
For wholesomeness? It's hard to beat Cagney as he sings and dances his way through one breezy show tune after another, all while reaffirming his patriotism and love of country in a time of World War.
Today is July 5, which, among other things, is the day that Miss TigerBlog has to get her high school senior picture taken. Why do they still do this? TigerBlog didn't get the one from when TigerBlog Jr. was a senior in high school. He could just take all the pictures he wants with his phone.
It's a contrast to TigerBlog's own experiences. He remembers getting his senior picture taken on a very rainy day. He also remembers having long hair. The proof is in his high school yearbook, which he glanced through to remind himself of just what it was like back when he used to own a brush.
It's not the picture itself that has TB's attention. It's the fact that MTB is going to be a senior in high school. What the heck?
Speaking of pictures with flags in them, TB, when he did the search for pictures with the word flag in them, came across this one:
That was MTB, back when she was three. And now she's a high school senior? Again, what the heck?
MTB still has a few weeks until her senior year begins. Class of 2018. Time flies.
As for the end of 2016-17, the end of each year isn't official until the final Learfield Directors' Cup standings are released. With the end of the College World Series, the final numbers have been calculated in a competition that uses NCAA championship participation and placing to determine the best overall athletic programs in the country. Again, Stanford is the winner.
Also, again, for the 21st time in the 24 years the Cup has been awarded, Princeton is the highest finishing school in the Ivy League.
Princeton comes in at 48th this year, just behind Indiana and just ahead of Mississippi State and Maryland. There are only two non-Power Conference schools ahead of Princeton: BYU (31st) and Denver (35th).
Princeton's best season in the Cup standings was the spring, when it received points in women's golf, women's lacrosse, women's rowing, women's track and field and softball.
The 48th-place finish means that Princeton has been in the top 50 in 20 of 24 years. The best finish? That would be in 2001-02, when Princeton was 21st.
Maybe most impressively, Princeton has never been lower than 63rd in any academic year.
It's not the kind of success that ever can be taken for granted, of course. And now the slate gets wiped completely clean, with every team back to zero for 2017-18.
Wait, it's 2017-18? But MTB is graduating high school in 2018. How can that be possible.
One last time. What the heck?
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Guest TigerBlog: Joseph Janes On The Declaration Of Independence
Happy July 4th, everyone.
TigerBlog has a treat for you today. A guest blog, with the floor turned over to Joseph Janes, whom you know as the official brother-in-law of TigerBlog.
Joe has written a book, entitled "Documents That Changed The Way We Live." In the most rudimentary of ways, it has changed the way TigerBlog has spent the last few days, since he has done more reading of the book than watching TV.
The book is a collection of essays that reference, as the title suggests, famous documents through history. One of the essays is about the Declaration of Independence, and TigerBlog asked Joe if he could reproduced it here for the Fourth of July. It's TB's first book excerpt.
For more information on the book, click HERE. TigerBlog is about a third of the way through it, but he can definitely recommend it. He'd even go so far as to say it has a bit of John McPhee-type storytelling to it.
TB will follow up about the book when he's done, he's sure. In the meantime, here's one of the sections of Joe's book, one that is particularly relevant today:
TigerBlog has a treat for you today. A guest blog, with the floor turned over to Joseph Janes, whom you know as the official brother-in-law of TigerBlog.
Joe has written a book, entitled "Documents That Changed The Way We Live." In the most rudimentary of ways, it has changed the way TigerBlog has spent the last few days, since he has done more reading of the book than watching TV.
The book is a collection of essays that reference, as the title suggests, famous documents through history. One of the essays is about the Declaration of Independence, and TigerBlog asked Joe if he could reproduced it here for the Fourth of July. It's TB's first book excerpt.
For more information on the book, click HERE. TigerBlog is about a third of the way through it, but he can definitely recommend it. He'd even go so far as to say it has a bit of John McPhee-type storytelling to it.
TB will follow up about the book when he's done, he's sure. In the meantime, here's one of the sections of Joe's book, one that is particularly relevant today:
How do you read something that isn’t
there? Well, you can’t, unless somehow
you know it used to be there. There are
lots of examples of the creative process at work in all its messy, myriad
varieties – in multiple drafts of novels, plays, scientific articles and so on,
showing us how works have been tweaked and pruned and sometimes taken apart and
put back together again.
A good example is lawmaking, where the
stakes can be very high, so in a contemporary legislature, meticulous minutes
are kept recording proposed amendments, speeches made, votes taken and so on,
so that the public, and future generations, can, if they care, know how it all
happened and moreover who to thank or blame.
This wasn’t always the case, and one of
our most cherished and fundamental documents underwent a serious of such edits
and revisions from the trivial to the profound.
We are largely in the dark as to how and why, and one piece in
particular, taken out in one of the most pivotal decisions in our early history,
resounds, even – especially - in its absence, today.
1776 is so ingrained in the American
consciousness that it sort of blots out everything else that year. The first volume of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was
published, as was the Wealth of Nations,
Catherine the Great is in the middle of her reign, Louis XVI in the third year
of his, and the Phi Beta Kappa society is founded at the College of William and
Mary that winter. But pride of place
goes to the document drafted by Thomas Jefferson in a second-floor rented
apartment on the corner of 7th and Market Streets in Philadelphia on
behalf of a committee of five members of Congress.
There are many, many stories about the
Declaration, including the early printed copy I nearly sneezed on one winter’s
morning at the Library of Congress, but those will have to wait for another
day. The basics: Jefferson was much more interested in helping
to prepare Virginia’s new constitution and only somewhat reluctantly took on
the task of drafting some sort of statement expressing and crystallizing the
reasons why the American colonies were breaking away from the British crown and
moreover stating as fact that they had; John Adams later claimed he talked him
into it. In a time when anonymous
political writing was commonplace (Poor Richard, Publius, the Federalist Papers
to come), his authorship wasn’t widely acknowledged at the time. Jefferson borrowed
freely from numerous sources, and his initial effort went first to the rest of
the committee, including Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who then made some 47
changes, mostly minor, adding several paragraphs.
There are seven versions and fragments in
Jefferson’s hand, including what’s known as the “original Rough Draft” which
looks like exactly that. It’s got
crossouts, additions, boxes, even a pasted-on flap, showing how the text evolved,
if not the reasons or people responsible.
For example, somehow we got from “We hold these truths to be sacred and
undeniable” to “self-evident.” Who did
that? Franklin, Adams, Jefferson? We don’t know. To this day, research goes on about the
writing and editing processes, including recent sophisticated imaging studies
of Jefferson’s drafts.
Congress debated the committee’s
submission over three days, making a further 39 edits, which seriously annoyed
Jefferson who by now was feeling more than a little protective of the prose,
later calling his colleagues “pusillanimous” in trying not to offend the
British people too grievously. It was
adopted, as amended, on July 4. The
original resolution on declaring independence was passed on the 2nd,
but nobody remembers that. How important
were these words? Just note that the
adoption of the Declaration on the 4th is celebrated as the American
national holiday of independence rather than, as John Adams had predicted, the
2nd, when the decision was actually made.
Anyway, adopted it was, and the committee
took it that night to John Dunlap, their official printer, to have copies
made. 26 of these “Dunlap broadsides”
are known to survive; one discovered hidden in a flea market picture frame in
1991 fetched $2.5 million at auction.
The handwritten engrossed version was signed, first by John Hancock,
beginning on August 2. That has had a
journey of its own, being moved at least 20 times, including sitting in the sun
for about 35 years in the Patent Office, in a State Department library room
with an open fireplace for another 17, and a trip to Fort Knox to wait out
World War II. It has resided since 1952
in the National Archives, now in the rotunda, protected by a monitoring system
designed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and not at all susceptible to being
stolen and rolled up like wallpaper like you saw in National Treasure which I can’t believe they sell the DVD of in the
Archives’ gift shop. Seriously.
The Declaration has been inspirational,
not only for its words and ideas, but as an idea unto itself. Visit the Alamo in San Antonio, and you’re
treated to considerable discussions about the Declaration of Independence – of
Texas – signed in 1836. It’s explicitly
referenced in South Carolina’s 1860 declaration of secession as well. In 1777, only a few months on, a “Petition
for Freedom” from “A Great Number of Blackes” was submitted to the
Massachusetts legislature. Declarations
of independence have been composed over the decades by labor groups, farmers,
women, socialists, and others. Frederick
Douglass asked pointedly, in an 1852 speech to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, “What to the
Slave is the Fourth of July?”
One of the most consequential amendments
removed a section of some 168 words, laying out one of the litany of charges
and accusations against George III, piling up the indictments and thus
justifying the quite novel idea of colonies breaking away. It’s typically known by its opening words as
the “He has waged cruel war” passage, and it accuses the king of perpetuating
the slave trade and by inference slavery itself. Adams said in 1822 he never thought it would
get through unscathed, though his otherwise comprehensive diaries of the relevant
days are silent on what happened.
Jefferson also was sanguine if a bit snippy about it, saying it was
“struck out in complaisance to South Carolina & Georgia, who had never
attempted to restrain the importation of slaves…Our Northern brethren also I
believe felt a little tender…for tho’ their people have very few slaves
themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”
The rudimentary congressional journal is
of no help on what actually happened; it simply records that there was
discussion and debate, as a committee of the whole, and approval, but that’s it. The next order of business concerned the
hiring of a boat from a Mr. Walker.
Much has been written about Jefferson’s deeply
conflicted position as slaveholder and as defender of individual rights. At the time of the Declaration’s drafting, he
owned 180 slaves, rising to 267 by 1822.
He had six children by Sally Hemmings, who was his slave and also his dead
wife’s half-sister, and he did not, as was often the practice, free his slaves
upon his death. There are few clean
hands here; at least a third of the signers were slaveowners, and even in
northern states abolition was gradual; New York didn’t outlaw slavery until
1827, the 1840 census lists seven slaves in Rhode Island, and in at least a few
Union states full abolition wasn’t achieved until 1865. And lest we get too smug about all this, estimates
put the current number of people in forced labor or human trafficking worldwide
today at between 20 and 35 million.
This edit can be seen as the result of ordinary
and unremarkable deliberative mechanics:
provisions are drafted, revised, taken out, added, re-revised, and so
on, all part of the process of discussion and coming to agreement. That original draft was eventually subjected
to no less than 86 edits in all, eventually reducing its length by roughly a
quarter of its words.
For many, though, this is the American
national mark of Cain; the proverbial can that has been kicked down our
proverbial road for nearly a quarter of a millenium. Yes, it’s true, as well as cliché, to say
that progress has been made – including the Fourteenth and Nineteenth Amendments
(to a Constitution that countenances slavery without ever soiling its hands by using
the word outright). You could also point
to civil rights legislation, Supreme Court decisions from Brown to Obergefell, the
Americans with Disabilities Act, and so on.
And yet, well, you know.
Any writer will tell you that less can be
more. Sometimes, however, more is more,
more words, more ideas, more voices, more people. Alloys are stronger for a reason.
This decision has been second-guessed,
criticized and defended since, it seems, day one if not even before; many
believe the Declaration and the new nation would never have worked
otherwise. Quite possibly – though that
doesn’t remove the inherent sting. It’s
hard not to think of this as a missed turning, an opportunity lost.
So, we finish where we started: how do
you read something that isn’t there? There’s
a difference between something that just isn’t there and never was, and
something that’s been removed, intentionally, purposefully. Perhaps knowing how that happened and why and
by whom would be useful, or make a difference, perhaps not; without a more
comprehensive record, we shall never know. Ultimately, this is a story about
grand and noble language and ideas, which have stirred souls for generations,
and, within, a silence, which nonetheless speaks volumes, still.
Monday, July 3, 2017
Hockey Season
TigerBlog had a busy June.
After all, Netflix released the new seasons of "House of Cards," "Orange Is The New Black" and "Wentworth" in June (technically, "House of Cards" was released on the last day of May, but TB didn't watch it until a few days later).
There were 13 episodes of the first two and only 12 of "Wentworth," or a total of 38 episodes for the month. Here, then, would be his mini-reviews of each, with no spoilers, so don't worry if you haven't seen them yet:
* "House of Cards" - Netflix has a really successful series with some great characters. That's the plus side. The downside? It seemed to have drifted just a little too far away from what made those characters great (and hence the show great). The Underwoods, especially Frank, went from wonderfully manipulative and cunning to simply evil. Grade - C
* "Orange Is The New Black" - The first episode was really good. The last episode was great, but it should have been the second episode. The 11 in between were too obvious. Also, the show now has far too many characters. It also isn't sure if it's trying to be funny at any point. Grade - C+
* "Wentworth" - this is the best show on TV right now. If you haven't seen it, make sure you do. Start from Season 1. This is the Australian equivalent of "Orange Is The New Black" in that it is set in a women's prison, but whereas "OITNB" has plateaued or even regressed, this show just keeps gettinb better. The character development has been extraordinary. So too has the risk taking by the writers. Also, the end of the last episode of this season is up there with anything you'll ever see on TV, excluding, maybe, the third-to-last episode of "Breaking Bad." Hurry up and finish it. Grade - A+
Another note - TB will still watch each episode of the first two next season. Shows reach a breaking point where you give up on them; those two aren't anywhere close to that - yet.
Anyway, that's those three shows and June. Now it's on to July.
This of course is July 3. On this day back in 1776, the act of declaring independence from the British had already happened (one day earlier) but the Declaration of Independence had not yet been adopted (that would be the next day).
Fast forward to the present day, and most people aren't sure whether or not today is a work day, what with the holiday tomorrow. Princeton University is open for business today, though TB is guessing today won't be the busiest day of the year.
If you think about it, July is the only month of the year that doesn't have any Princeton Athletic events. June has the NCAA track and field championships. August has the first event of the year - a women's soccer game on Aug. 25.
July? It's all about vacations, summer camps, beaches, planning for the coming year. And heat. Lots of it.
The temps of late around here have touched the 90s. So what sport is TB talking about today?
Hockey, of course.
He'll start with Mike Condon. The former Princeton goalie has had a great start to his NHL career after being tossed into a starting role in Montreal two years ago and Ottawa this past season, each time by circumstances that he couldn't have anticipated, replacing two of the best goalies in the league.
He's responded with some big-time performances and has established himself as a legitimate NHL goalie, one who clearly belongs. Ottawa didn't want to lose him, and so Condon signed a three-year, $7.2 million dollar contract last week as free agency started.
Condon doesn't figure to be the starter in Ottawa just yet. Craig Anderson is the starter, but he just turned 36. Condon appears to have found a really good situation with the Senators.
Taylor Fedun also resigned with his current team, the Buffalo Sabres. From the story on Fedun on goprincetontigers.com:
Fedun played in 27 games with the Sabres in 2016-17 and had seven assists and a team-best +3 on-ice rating. He led the Sabres defensemen in assists per game with 1.16 and was 5-for-5 on shot attempts percentage (53.7) which ranked 23rd among all NHL defensemen with more than five games played in 2016-17. Fedun also appeared in 29 games for AHL affiliate Rochester Americans, where he had 23 points on 18 assists and five goals. His .79 points per game were the most by Amerks defenders and ranked him fifth among all AHL defenders with at least five games played.
Speaking of Princeton hockey, the schedule for the 2017-18 season was announced last week as well. You can see it HERE.
Among the highlights are visits to Hobey Baker Rink by Bemidji State and St. Cloud State and two games at, of all places, Arizona State.
Princeton won 15 games between the 2013-14 and 2015-16 seasons. The Tigers wet 15-16-3 a year ago, including 15-10-2 after an 0-6-1 start, and hosted an ECAC playoff series, in which the team defeated Colgate.
There are some holes to fill - four-year starting goalie Colton Phinney among others has graduated. The Tigers do bring back an army of young players, and this should be a fascinating season of men's hockey at Princeton.
And guess what? It starts in little more than three months. How nuts is that?
In the meantime, enjoy the summer. And have a happy and safe Fourth of July.
After all, Netflix released the new seasons of "House of Cards," "Orange Is The New Black" and "Wentworth" in June (technically, "House of Cards" was released on the last day of May, but TB didn't watch it until a few days later).
There were 13 episodes of the first two and only 12 of "Wentworth," or a total of 38 episodes for the month. Here, then, would be his mini-reviews of each, with no spoilers, so don't worry if you haven't seen them yet:
* "House of Cards" - Netflix has a really successful series with some great characters. That's the plus side. The downside? It seemed to have drifted just a little too far away from what made those characters great (and hence the show great). The Underwoods, especially Frank, went from wonderfully manipulative and cunning to simply evil. Grade - C
* "Orange Is The New Black" - The first episode was really good. The last episode was great, but it should have been the second episode. The 11 in between were too obvious. Also, the show now has far too many characters. It also isn't sure if it's trying to be funny at any point. Grade - C+
* "Wentworth" - this is the best show on TV right now. If you haven't seen it, make sure you do. Start from Season 1. This is the Australian equivalent of "Orange Is The New Black" in that it is set in a women's prison, but whereas "OITNB" has plateaued or even regressed, this show just keeps gettinb better. The character development has been extraordinary. So too has the risk taking by the writers. Also, the end of the last episode of this season is up there with anything you'll ever see on TV, excluding, maybe, the third-to-last episode of "Breaking Bad." Hurry up and finish it. Grade - A+
Another note - TB will still watch each episode of the first two next season. Shows reach a breaking point where you give up on them; those two aren't anywhere close to that - yet.
Anyway, that's those three shows and June. Now it's on to July.
This of course is July 3. On this day back in 1776, the act of declaring independence from the British had already happened (one day earlier) but the Declaration of Independence had not yet been adopted (that would be the next day).
Fast forward to the present day, and most people aren't sure whether or not today is a work day, what with the holiday tomorrow. Princeton University is open for business today, though TB is guessing today won't be the busiest day of the year.
If you think about it, July is the only month of the year that doesn't have any Princeton Athletic events. June has the NCAA track and field championships. August has the first event of the year - a women's soccer game on Aug. 25.
July? It's all about vacations, summer camps, beaches, planning for the coming year. And heat. Lots of it.
The temps of late around here have touched the 90s. So what sport is TB talking about today?
Hockey, of course.
He'll start with Mike Condon. The former Princeton goalie has had a great start to his NHL career after being tossed into a starting role in Montreal two years ago and Ottawa this past season, each time by circumstances that he couldn't have anticipated, replacing two of the best goalies in the league.
He's responded with some big-time performances and has established himself as a legitimate NHL goalie, one who clearly belongs. Ottawa didn't want to lose him, and so Condon signed a three-year, $7.2 million dollar contract last week as free agency started.
Condon doesn't figure to be the starter in Ottawa just yet. Craig Anderson is the starter, but he just turned 36. Condon appears to have found a really good situation with the Senators.
Taylor Fedun also resigned with his current team, the Buffalo Sabres. From the story on Fedun on goprincetontigers.com:
Fedun played in 27 games with the Sabres in 2016-17 and had seven assists and a team-best +3 on-ice rating. He led the Sabres defensemen in assists per game with 1.16 and was 5-for-5 on shot attempts percentage (53.7) which ranked 23rd among all NHL defensemen with more than five games played in 2016-17. Fedun also appeared in 29 games for AHL affiliate Rochester Americans, where he had 23 points on 18 assists and five goals. His .79 points per game were the most by Amerks defenders and ranked him fifth among all AHL defenders with at least five games played.
Speaking of Princeton hockey, the schedule for the 2017-18 season was announced last week as well. You can see it HERE.
Among the highlights are visits to Hobey Baker Rink by Bemidji State and St. Cloud State and two games at, of all places, Arizona State.
Princeton won 15 games between the 2013-14 and 2015-16 seasons. The Tigers wet 15-16-3 a year ago, including 15-10-2 after an 0-6-1 start, and hosted an ECAC playoff series, in which the team defeated Colgate.
There are some holes to fill - four-year starting goalie Colton Phinney among others has graduated. The Tigers do bring back an army of young players, and this should be a fascinating season of men's hockey at Princeton.
And guess what? It starts in little more than three months. How nuts is that?
In the meantime, enjoy the summer. And have a happy and safe Fourth of July.
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