Amy And Merrily

The First 50 Podcast With Merrily Dean Baker And Amy Campbell

TigerBlog is pretty sure that most goalies get started the same way.

The coach of the team of little kids is at practice one day and says they need a goalie. Is anyone interested?

And only one hand goes up. And so is born another goalie.

It's a thankless position. TigerBlog can tell you from first-hand experience that it can be brutal to be the goalie's father. As he's said before, every time a goal is scored, everyone looks at you like if you'd done a better job raising your child, the ball or puck would not be in the goal.

Okay, maybe that's a bit harsh. Still, it's a tough position to play.

On the other hand, it usually means a chance to play. And that's all that Amy Campbell was looking for when she put her hand up at the first day of field hockey tryouts for her college team.

Campbell told that story when she appeared on the second episode of "The First 50" podcast, a bi-weekly conversation devoted to the celebration of the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton.

The podcast is hosted by Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan, and by TigerBlog. The guests on the second episode were Amy and Merrily Dean Baker.

Campbell was one of Princeton's top athletic administrators from 1988-99. Baker, of course, was the one who started the women's athletic program 50 years ago.

TB has known Campbell for several decades. He only met Baker back in January, though he knew a lot about her - and especially the extremely high regard in which she has always been held by everyone who has ever mentioned her.

Campbell and Baker both were athletes in the pre-Title IX era, when opportunities for girls to play sports were limited. In fact, it often was a function of where you happened to grow up, since some areas were way ahead of others when it came to providing those opportunities.

The two of them spent their careers working to expand those opportunities, both in compliance with the law itself but more so because it was the right thing to do. At Princeton, they both made dramatic impacts.

The conversation with the two and with Mollie lasts more than 50 minutes.

TB was timing it as they went along, and he kept alerting Mollie about the time every five or 10 minutes. As was the case in the first podcast, with Margie Gengler Smith and Helena Novakova, he couldn't believe how quickly time was flying by.

Campbell and TB worked together for many years at Princeton. Among TB's first memories of his time in the department is the extreme professionalism with which Campbell always handled herself and the high standards that she set, both for herself and everyone else there.

She was a huge believer in equity, and she had no tolerance for those who did not see the reasons why that was. 

Her personality comes out really well in the conversation. She's always been very laid-back and very thoughtful, and a deep-thinker on top of that. She can be very soothing and comforting, with a great empathetic quality to her.

As for Baker, she is sort of the original Mollie, or what Mollie would have been like if the charge had been hers to start women's athletics at Princeton. They actually have much in common, most notably their unbridled energy and their focus on staying true to the task and the mission at hand.

Every time TB hears Baker talk about what she did in the early 1970s to get the women's programs off the ground, he can see Mollie's having done it pretty much the same way.

The conversation they have on the podcast showcases that. Baker has just turned 78, but she has lost nothing off her fastball. And she certainly has lost nothing off her verve, which is one of her most defining characteristics.

The first two episodes of the podcast have been exactly what TB was hoping it would be. It's the story of women's athletics being brought to life, and not just in a way that says what event happened when.

It's more about the people who took it from its origins and made it into what it is now. And it's about the lessons that Princeton Athletics, and athletics in general, have taught the people who have been most involved in them. 

TB hopes you enjoy this episode. 

It's with two women who deserve an extraordinary amount of credit for what Princeton women's athletics is today.

Missing Heps

Well, this weekend would have been the Cornell home weekend for football, men's and women's soccer and field hockey.

TigerBlog isn't sure what the women's volleyball schedule would have been, but it's possible the Tigers would have hosted the Big Red there as well. 

What else would have been coming up on the athletic schedule? The Ivy League Heptagonal cross country championships, which would have been tomorrow.

TB assumes they would have been at Van Cortlandt Park in New York City. Either that or in Princeton.

Because Princeton football played at Cornell on a Friday evening a year ago, TB was unable to attend the Heps cross country meet. The cross country races would have been at 11 and noon at Van Cortlandt, and it would have been cutting it too close to get to Ithaca on time. 

TB considered it, but then the kickoff moved from 7 pm to 6 pm, which made it impossible. As a result, TB had to miss the meet, for the first time in a long time.

There are few sporting events TB enjoys more than the Ivy League Heptagonal cross country meet. It seems a little more special when it's at Van Cortlandt Park, at least once you've found one of the rare parking spaces in the area.

It's a huge party, with eight women's teams and eight men's teams, not to mention eight tents. And a huge number of fans.

The races go off within an hour of each other. There is so much pageantry to the start and so much misery at the finish, as racer after racer gives every ounce of energy he or she has. 

Maybe misery isn't quite the right word, but TB can't really think of a better one.

Each year as TB watches, he stands by the start, sees the runners go off, talks to the million people he knows there from all the different schools as the runners make their way around the course, sees them briefly if the course has them come by the start again and then eagerly awaits the finish. 

As the runners start to head to the chute, he tries to calculate the team scores in his head, but that's not an easy task at all. He's never successfully done it.

It's a fascinating dynamic, as the runners try to improve their positions at the finish and in doing so provide crucial team points, even to teams other than their own. The runner from Team A who just edged out the runner from Team B? That pushed Team C above Team B in the standings.

Maybe it's that the races do not take very long. Maybe it's that it's an entire Ivy League championship season condensed into one day.

Whatever it is, the meet is always exciting and always dramatic, and, from TB's perspective as a non-runner, always fun. It's a big athletic party. 

The weather for Heps always seems to cooperate. Well, almost always. 

TB checked the weather for this weekend to see what it might have been like, and tomorrow's forecast suggests rain and temps in the mid-40s. That would have been less than ideal for spectating, but he would have gone anyway.

And no matter what, it's hard to imagine that the weather for Heps will ever be tougher than it was nine years ago today at the West Windsor Fields course at Princeton.

If you remember that day in 2011, it was snowing. Big-time snowing. There was a rare October snowstorm in Central New Jersey, one that left around four inches of snow on the ground.

It made the football game that afternoon into a snow bowl in a game that Cornell won 24-7, despite two big performances by Princeton freshmen, as Chuck Dibilio ran for 158 yards to break his own freshman single-game record and Quinn Epperly ran for 96 yards of his own.

Their paths would be much different after that freshman year, as Epperly would win the Bushnell Cup and lead Princeton to an Ivy League title in 2013 while Dibilio would suffer a stroke and never play football again. Dibilio's recovery from the stroke was chronicled beautifully by TB's colleague John Bullis in a documentary entitled "When The Game Ends," which you can see HERE.

As for the cross country races that day, they were contested in the ridiculous conditions that the snowstorm created. The Princeton men won the team race, while the women came in third.

It was the kind of day that stands out among all of the gamedays TB has experienced at Princeton. It's hard to believe it was nine years ago already.

As for the 2020 Heps that wasn't, TB can't wait for his next chance to go and watch one.

Another Molly

Mollie Marcoux Samaan has gone running 23 times this fall, she says.

How does she know that it's exactly 23 times? It seems that she's been listening to a Molly Fletcher podcast each time she runs, and she's listened to 23 of them.

Given her interest in what Fletcher has to say, Marcoux Samaan jumped at the chance to have men's tennis coach Billy Pate reach out to her, as the two are friends, and have her speak to the entire department, something that she did yesterday.

The first takeaway is that people named Mollie or Molly seem to have a lot of energy, regardless of how they spell their first name.

Fletcher, who certainly brings all kinds of energy to her talks, is a motivational speaker and author, as well as a former sports agent. Her background certainly includes interactions with some of the biggest names in the sporting world, and she told a few stories about them along the way.

As for her own background, she played tennis at Michigan State, and in fact she was there when Merrily Dean Baker was the Spartan AD.

When Fletcher mentioned a story involving Michigan State men's basketball coach Tom Izzo and an act of empathy he showed toward a player after a tough outing, TigerBlog texted Marcoux Samaan to mention that in fact it was Baker who had hired Izzo at Michigan State.

She had also hired Nick Saban to be Michigan State's football coach, by the way. That's not a bad resume item: "hired Tom Izzo and Nick Saban."

Before she was the Michigan State AD, Baker spent 12 years at Princeton, beginning as a 27 year old who was charged with starting women's athletics at Princeton 50 years ago.

Marcoux Samaan mentioned Baker to Fletcher, and it led Fletcher to tell the story about how she had contacted Baker when she was a Michigan State student for some advice on how a woman could get into athletics as a career. She asked Merrily for 15 minutes, and she got an hour and a half instead.

As for Fletcher's talk yesterday, she certainly is right out of the "Be A Tiger" mold. She talked about essentially all of the values that Marcoux Samaan holds so dear for the department, even referencing the acronym at one point.

Fletcher is all about being growth-minded. She's all about accountability. Her talk certainly reflects that.

She talked about leadership and the lessons that successful leaders have talked to her about during her podcasts. One of the best moments of her talk, at least to TB, was when she mentioned her podcast with Holly Rowe, the ESPN reporter, who said that nobody should remember who the interviewer was, only what the questions were and how the subject answered them.

In other words, it's not about you; it's about the person being interviewed. That's how TB was taught a long time ago, and it's something that seems sadly to have all but vanished by now.

Early in her talk yesterday, Fletcher mentioned three main points of emphasis in life. They are:

* lead with love
* stay curious
* prioritize what matters

She asked if everyone on the call to take five pieces of paper and write down the five most important things in his or her life, one on each piece. That's a really, really tough question, right? How would you answer that?

It certainly got TB thinking.

Then, after the five things were identified, the next part of the exercise was to essentially rank them by crumbling up the one that you'd eliminate, and then the next one and so on.

Then she asked everyone if they were devoting proper energy to the most important thing, or things, every day. 

In the end, Fletcher spoke for over an hour, taking questions as well. She certainly brought a lot of energy, and it seems likely that she has plenty left over for the things on her list of what's most important to her.

She was entertaining. She was thought-provoking. She was inspiring, as was her message. The hour-plus seemed to fly by. 

There's not much else you can ask for from a motivational speaker.

Kicking It

Okay, there were three extraordinary highlights from the recently completed football weekend.

TigerBlog isn't sure which is the most incredible.  

He'll start with Todd Gurley of the Atlanta Falcons and the touchdown for which he apologized.

.@TG3II crosses the goal line to give the @AtlantaFalcons the lead!

📺: #DETvsATL on FOX
📱: NFL app // Yahoo Sports app: https://t.co/MIIkbfUwYk pic.twitter.com/X1UPU3RXGH

— NFL (@NFL) October 25, 2020

To set the scene, Atlanta trailed 16-14 but was in a near-perfect position to win the game, being in chip-shot field goal range and having Detroit with no timeouts. As a result, Atlanta could have taken the clock down near zero and then kicked the easy game-winner for the 17-16 win.

Instead, Gurley scored, giving his team the lead - but giving the ball back to Detroit. Matthew Stafford then led the Lions down the field with no timeouts and scored the winning TD on the final play, so it's not exactly all on Gurley.

Also instincts are instincts, and getting into the end zone is the whole point. Well, almost always. 

Maybe the most insane part of the clip is the way the Detroit defenders signal touchdown, while Gurley agonizingly tries to stay out of the end zone. TB has never seen that before.

Then there was D.K. Metcalf of the Seattle Seahawks. If you remember earlier this year, Metcalf, a second-year wide receiver, cost his team a touchdown by slowing down and holding the ball in celebration before getting into the end zone and subsequently having it knocked away.

If he needed that as a lesson in the importance of hustle, it seems he got the message. 

DK Metcalf is FREAKY FAST. @dkm14

📺: #SEAvsAZ on NBC
📱: NFL app // Yahoo Sports app: https://t.co/FSTZl0ocgC pic.twitter.com/WSuLjzfIl3

— NFL (@NFL) October 26, 2020

TB has watched this clip a thousand times, and it gets more impressive each time Metcalk looks like he's chasing down someone slow, as opposed to an NFL defensive back who had a huge head start.

The best part is that the tackle saved a sure touchdown, and Arizona didn't even get a field goal on its possession. The Cardinals did win the game in OT, though.

Still, that's one of the greatest individual plays in NFL history. That's how impressive it was.

Then there was the play in college football this weekend. Which one? This one:

So that kick, to potentially win the game, hit the goalposts four times before bouncing away. What the heck? Is that even possible?

How about the reaction of the refs under the goalposts? They just calmly waited for the play to end and then said "no good."

The quadruple-plunk attempt reminded TB a little of a 2001 Princeton game, when Taylor Northrop's potential tying field goal from 57 yards hit the crossbar. It didn't just hit the crossbar. It hit the backside of the crossbar and yet somehow came back to the field, as opposed to dropping in.

What TB also remembers about that play was that the field goal would have been from 20 yards closer had it not been for a sack and two penalties.

TB also remembers being surprised that Northrop's kick was no good. That's how strong a leg he had.

When Northrop graduated in 2002, he held the Princeton record for career field goals with 38, something that's been broken by Derek Javarone (45) and Nolan Bieck (39).

When Northrop was Princeton's placekicker, he drew a regular crowd of NFL scouts to the games. TB is really surprised that he never got a chance in the league, not only because of his field goal ability but also because of how deep his kickoffs routinely were.

He was also a very thoughtful, very soft-spoken person. He had the perfect mentality for a placekicker, and he was a first-team All-American in 2001, as well as a unanimous first-team All-Ivy League selection as a placekicker and second-team All-Ivy as a punter.

These days, it appears that Northrop lives in Florida, where he works as a financial advisor. At least that's what a quick search turned up.

He also is married and has two kids of his own. There was a picture of him on his company website, and he doesn't look all that much different than when he played nearly 20 years ago.

Nearly 20 years already? 

Anyway, his kick that day was only one plunk off the crossbar, as opposed to four. Either way, it still stung in the moment.

On the other hand, he did make a lot more than he missed, and he is one of the greatest ever to play his position at Princeton.

The Football Podcast

Henry Byrd was a second-team All-Ivy League offensive tackle in 2019.

As an offensive tackle, he stands 6-5 and just short of 300 pounds. Can you picture of man of that size tap-dancing?

Byrd spoke about his high school, Ensworth High School in Tennessee, and the art requirement it had for every student, on the most recent "First In Football" podcast. Byrd and the moderator, Cody Chrusciel, spoke about how the big lineman started out and then advanced in tap, and, ultimately how it helped make him a better football player by helping his footwork.

The podcast includes three interviews - with assistant coach Chris Zarkoskie, then Byrd and then former player Marc Ross. It's a little more 30 minutes, and it's entertaining throughout.

You can listen to it HERE.

If you did listen, it won't be hard to figure out the part that TigerBlog liked the most. Hint - it came when Ross mentioned him.

Cody asks Ross about his former Princeton teammate, Keith Elias. Before Ross answered, TB paused the podcast and thought about the word he'd use to describe Elias. Then when he restarted it, Ross used the same word: Intense.

Listening to Ross talk about Princeton football when he played certainly took TB back to those teams. And to Elias especially.

If any player at Princeton since Elias graduated in 1994 can even scratch his level of intensity, it was John Lovett. And this isn't a knock on anyone else who has played football at Princeton since. It's just that those two are just a bit different.

It was also Lovett who beat Elias' record for rushing touchdowns in a season, something Lovett did when he had 20 in 2018. Elias had set the record with 18 as a junior in 1992 and then broken it with 19 as a senior a year later.

Actually, the Lovett/Elias comparison is a pretty good one.

When TB thinks about Elias, he doesn't think about the records, the 20 or so he still holds. He doesn't think of Lovett in terms of statistics either.

He thinks of both of them for the way they simply imposed their will on every game they played. He thinks of the way that they had that rarest quality, where every time they touched the ball, the entire crowd waited to see if something special was about to happen.

They both used that intensity and their intangible qualities to carve out places in the NFL as players. Elias played for five NFL seasons. Lovett is in his second, after now earning regular playing time with the Green Bay Packers as a fullback after winning a Super Bowl ring with Kansas City a year ago.

Ross told a few stories about Elias that TB knew and one that he didn't know, that Elias liked to greet the visiting teams at Palmer Stadium by standing outside their locker room when they arrived. 

Ross used the word "ferocity" to describe Elias. It's a word that TB has used before to describe him as well, and it fits really well.

Ross also said how the other team knew Elias was going to get the ball the majority of the time and that he never took a play off. Neither did Lovett.

Elias and Lovett are probably the two best Princeton football players of the last 40 or 50 years. TB respects other opinions, and a case can be made for some others, but that's how good those two were.

As for Ross, he was a great player in his own right as a wide receiver and punt returner, and he still holds records of his own.

He's gone on to a long career in the NFL in scouting and player personnel, and he has two Super Bowl rings with the Giants' teams he helped build into champions. 

These days he's doing a lot of television work, and he's excellent at it. TB supposes he still wants to get back into an NFL front office, hopefully as a general manager.

For this week, it was great to hear him on with Cody.

Thanks for the shout out, and thanks for taking TB to a really fun time to be around Princeton football.

More On The First 50

TigerBlog remembers the first time he ever saw the Princeton women's basketball team play.

Apparently, he remembers it well.

The way he's always remembered the game, from the 1983-84 season, was that the women's game was the opening game of a doubleheader with the men at the Palestra. TB was a Penn student then. 

As he recalled, the game went into overtime, and as such, it ran to the point where most of the full house that was coming to watch the men's game was already there when it ended. He remembered that Princeton won the game, and he had memories of a Princeton woman who made a huge foul shot with the Penn fans waving their arms and yelling "Choke, Choke, Choke."

For the record, TB was not one of the ones doing such a chant. Perhaps back then there was something already inside of him that recognized that there was much more Orange and Black in his future than Red and Blue.

As it turns out, the woman who made that foul shot was Ellen Devoe, whose steal and layup at the end of regulation tied the game and forced the overtime in the first place.

It was a conversation that TB had yesterday with Karen Konigsberg, Class of 1986, that sparked the memory of that game. Konigsberg was a member of that Princeton team, and she remembered it pretty much the same way.

TigerBlog was talking to Konigsberg as part of his work on the book he's currently writing on the first 50 years of women's athletics at Princeton. 

As part of the 50th celebration, you can read excerpts from the book on the goprincetontigers.com/50years page. The first excerpt is already there, from Chapter 1, the story of Merrily Dean Baker.

You can read that HERE.

It's an excerpt, so it's not the entire chapter on Merrily. Her story is Chapter 1, and longtime Princeton women's track and field coach Peter Farrell was correct when he said that telling the story of women's sports at Princeton is impossible without starting with Merrily. 

TigerBlog spent a few days in Florida speaking with her back in January. She told him so many great stories about her time at Princeton and her own life and experiences that he was excited to get the book going.

From there, that excitement has only grown, as woman after woman TB speaks with is incredibly amazing.

Konigsberg, who scored two points in that game at the Palestra, is one of the very short list of women who lettered in three sports at Princeton, as she played field hockey and softball in addition to basketball. She also went on to Harvard Law School and, as a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York would help root organized crime out of the Teamsters' union.

Did you want to take on the mob? And what does she say helped prepare her for that? Her athletic experience at Princeton. 

That was yesterday. 

Earlier this week, TB spoke with Cathy Corcione, who at the age of 15 - before women were even allowed at Princeton - was a member of the U.S. Olympic swimming team at the 1968 Games in Mexico City. She told TB the story of how she went from being too young to swim on the local swim club team to the Olympics in nine years. She talked about how she was adopted, how she reconnected with her birth family, how she witnessed first-hand the way the country changed in 1968, how she became a national collegiate swimming champion and how she and only five teammates led Princeton to a third-place national team finish.

There was also Deborah Saint-Phard, another Olympian. 

Saint-Phard was born in Haiti and left when she was six months old, fleeing the terror of Papa Doc. It wouldn't be until she was almost a Princeton grad that she would be able to return.

In the meantime, she moved so many times that TB thinks he lost track, but she lived in New York City, outside of Washington, D.C., and in Kansas (twice), Alabama and Louisiana. 

She became a world class shot putter, and she represented her native country in the 1988 Olympics. She even carried the flag in the opening ceremonies.

Today? She's a sports medicine doctor in Colorado and a strong advocate for the health of women and girls in sports. 

There was Amie Knox, who also lettered in three sports, including one, squash, that she had never played before arriving at Princeton. Did that stop her from becoming the No. 2 player in the country at one point? Nope.

It's one story after another like these. Pretty much all of them could fill a book.

TB is about 40,000 words into the project. He has a long way to go, and a lot of stories to tell.

He's very happy about where the book is going. And he's positive of what the main takeaway will be.

There aren't too many more people anywhere more impressive than the women who have played or coached at Princeton.

Princeton Pets

If you have a very young child in the three or so age range and you want to give yourself hours of laughs, teach the child to say the word "octopus."

There are few things in the world funnier than hearing how they say that. 

Also, there's the name of the city where the NFL's Colts play. That one is pronounced "Indian Apples" by your average toddler.  

Ah, but even that isn't as good as "octopus." 

Perhaps TigerBlog should be writing a book on child-raising, complete with a chapter on how to maximize laughs with your young ones? Tip - get them hooked on cartoons you liked as a kid. There's no excuse for raising a child who doesn't understand that Bugs Bunny is the cartoon GOAT.

Speaking of your average octopus, TigerBlog watched the movie "My Octopus Teacher" on Netflix the other day. 

If you've never heard of this, it's a documentary set in South Africa - or in the Atlantic Ocean off South Africa more precisely. It's the story of a documentary filmmaker and environmentalist named Chris Foster who meets an octopus while diving in waters that appear to be much colder than TB would be able to tolerate.

Foster decides to visit the same spot every day in an effort to see what sort of relationship can be built between the human and the octopus. He originally leaves an underwater camera nearby to see how the octopus interacts with it, and eventually it appears the octopus realizes that he is no threat to it and sort of befriends him.

Foster mentions that an octopus has an intelligence level slightly above that of a dog or a cat, which is somewhat hard to imagine. Still, it does appear from the movie that he and the octopus become friends.

The movie itself bounces back and forth between the underwater footage and commentary from Foster. The interviewer is never seen or heard, and the only other human involved is Foster's son, who comes to dive with him.

The best part of the movie is the extraordinary quality of the underwater video. It does get you to think about just how amazing nature can be. The pace is a bit slow, and Foster isn't exactly next in line for a stand-up comedy special on Netflix. In fact, the octopus was much funnier.

Still, it is well worth your time to check this one out. It's worth it for the footage alone. It's not quite as good as "March Of The Penguins," but it's a fascinating 83 minutes. Like TB said, the idea of what goes in on nature is fascinating, and it's depicted so forcefully in this movie.

Speaking of dogs, cats and the occasional octopus, you may have noticed on Princeton Athletics social media that a new feature entitled "Princeton Pets" has sprung up.  

It's a cute series. It's basically taking current Princeton athletes and featuring their pets.

Another edition of #PrincetonPets features @Pwaterpolo's Nicole Kresich's Bruno!

Bruno loves the beach 🏖, but thinks the ocean 🌊 can take a hike!

Bruno also has a very boopable nose.

Boop.

🧡🖤🐶 pic.twitter.com/e3jwbgD9Hb

— Princeton Tigers (@PUTIGERS) October 20, 2020

The latest one features Bruno and his "boopable" nose. 

So far the series has featured dogs, with names like "Georgie" and "Prince" and "Tank." The dog named "Prince" by the way is named for Princeton.

Bruno seems like an amiable dog. TigerBlog learned some things about his owner yesterday.

For one, Nicole Kresich, from Mater Dei High School in California, had a 16-goal, 26-assist freshman year, and last spring she was off to a six-goal, 10-assist start through nine games when the season was postponed.

More than that, TB also found out that Kresich is an English major who wrote for her high school newspaper. And one of the stories she wrote for that high school newspaper, which is called "The Scarlett Scroll," was the story about her Mater Dei classmate, Wyatt Benson, and his commitment to Princeton.

Benson has played two seasons of water polo for the Tigers. He has 60 goals and 12 assist in his career to date. 

There are so many great stories involving Princeton's athletes. The Princeton Pets series is a way to introduce you to some of these amazing young people.

Turning 91

TigerBlog can't begin to imagine how many emails he's received on his Princeton email account since he first started there.

It was his first email account. He didn't even understand how it worked. His first question was how much did it cost to send one.

Little did he imagine the impact that email would have on his job and the ability to transfer information quickly and easily, as opposed to the existing way of putting everything in the mail. 

He still remembers having to get prints made of head shots of all of Princeton's football players and then put them in the United States mail to the legendary Kathy Slattery at Dartmouth for her football program. It was an arduous project, and Kathy didn't get the pictures until just before she needed them. 

When TB had to send the same pictures to Rick Bender at Dartmouth a year ago for program in advance of the game at Yankee Stadium, the entire thing took about two minutes. 

TB has kept a few emails through the years. Most of the ones he gets he deletes without ever opening. How did he end up on so many lists? 

One of his favorites is from Sept. 9, 2003. That would be more than 17 years ago already. Wow.

It came from his former colleague and longtime friend John Cornell, who had been the publications director for the Office of Athletic Communications. That was back when there were a lot of publications, there was a separate OAC position to design them. There were only two people who ever had the title of publications director, and John followed Mike Zulla in the position.

By September of 2003, John was working for the state of Maryland's Division of Natural Resources, where he came up with the slogan "saving the bay one fish at a time." Well, at least he joked about it anyway. Funny guy, John Cornell.

The email TB saved was sent to seven people, and it was entitled "You know you worked in the OAC in 2001-02 if ..." Then it listed a whole bunch of inside jokes.

Reading it back yesterday, TB couldn't help but laugh out loud. They're hysterical, actually, but, hey, you know, you had to be there to appreciate them.

And of course, they took TB right back to 2001-02. There were a few references to the fact that once upon a time, everything that had to be printed, produced, copied or anything had to have a job number, and the list of job numbers was kept in the OAC. Anytime anybody anywhere in the department needed to do any of those jobs, they had to first call the OAC and get a number while also giving the OAC person the account number for which to bill the work. 

It was a huge pain.

Anyway, you'll have to take TB's word for it. The list is still great. 

To that list, TB could have added three simple words: You love Yav.

Everyone in the OAC back then loved Yav. He was an almost-every day part of doing business at Princeton then.

Yav is the nickname for the great Harvey Yavener, a longtime local sportswriter at the Trenton Times (and briefly before that at the Trentonian). Yav was the one who got TB started on the Princeton beat back in 1989.

Yav stopped writing around 10 years or so ago, a combination of age and the changing landscape of the newspaper business. He was, without a doubt, a classic old-school newspaper guy, and he never would have been able to, or wanted to, be part of what sportswriting has evolved to these days.

Nope. He was all about the longform feature, and the epic postgame story. And the wrap  - his one-man crusade to give as many column inches as possible to every single college event on any given day played by Princeton, Rutgers, Rider, the College of New Jersey (then Trenton State College) and Mercer County College. 

Yav had a notebook, in which he write in pencil, every event coming up. On the busiest nights - "killer wraps," he'd call them - there could be 30 or 40 events in his notebook.

His best things were his ability to get a great story from any subject, often taking an hour to interview an athlete where others might only take 15 minutes, and his commitment to gender equity long before anyone else in the newspaper business - especially a man - ever considered it. 

Yav turned 91 yesterday. TB spoke to him to wish him a happy birthday. He's still sharp, even if his hearing isn't very good and he moves slowly. He mentioned how he never thought he'd live this long, let along live this long and still be mentally where he is.

If you remember Yav, then you remember Polly too, his longtime companion (more than 60 years together without ever having actually gotten married). Polly, herself a saint, passed away two years ago.

Yav is still going strong though. 

TB thinks the last Princeton athlete he ever interviewed was Alicia Aemisegger, who graduated in 2010. If you came around after that, then you don't remember him.

And that's a shame. He was such a huge part of Princeton Athletics for so long. And, for TB, he's been one of the most special people who has ever been a part of his life.

So happy 91st birthday Yav.

Hopefully there are many more to come.

Doc And Jack

So Doc Emrick announced that he was retiring yesterday.

The legendary hockey broadcaster is 74 years old, so he's earned it. There haven't been too many big hockey moments in the last few decades where he hasn't been behind the mic, whether it was the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Winter Classic or the Olympics.

Back when TigerBlog was a kid, every announcer sounded like Doc Emrick did. Somewhere along the line, "hip, edgy and highly emotional" replaced "folksy and respectful" as the sportscasting norm.

To that end, TB has always liked the way Emrick calls a game. He's not making himself bigger than the event, or, for that matter, even part of the event. He never seemed to be driven by ego.

He also didn't go down the path that so many current broadcasters, even the really good ones, do. He never used a lot of words to say what could be said in a few words, or fancy words to say what could be said in simpler terms. 

He could be a little overly folksy, 

The key to being a good play-by-play announcer is preparation. In this regard, Emrick was beyond impressive, and that was never clearer than during the Olympics.

When he did NHL games, he would see the same players over and over, so there wouldn't be that many newcomers to have to research. In the Olympics, there would be a ton of non-NHL guys, many with difficult names to pronounce, and Emrick would know who they were and everything about them as if they all were his neighbors.

According to something TB read, Emrick did more than 3,750 hockey games. It made TB wonder how different venues there were in which he called a game.

TB does know one where Emrick did a game. Hobey Baker Rink.

It was in 2013, and it was a game between Princeton and Union. The game was televised by NBC Sports.

This game happened to fall during the 2012-13 NHL lockout, which began in September and then ended when the new collective bargaining agreement was ratified on Jan. 12, 2013.

The Princeton-Union game was played on Jan. 11, 2013. Because there were no NHL games to call, NBC Sports gave some college games to its top announces. Princeton was lucky to have Emrick on the game from Baker Rink. 

TigerBlog chose not to go to the game and instead to watch it on TV, just to hear Emrick do the game. He spoke about both teams, again, as if they were all his neighbors. He even found time to wish a happy birthday to Princeton's then-hockey contact Kristy McNeil, as if she was a cousin of his. 

That game, TB thinks, was Emrick's only encounter with Princeton Athletics. He could be wrong about that.

He does know that Jack Scheuer saw a ton of Princeton games, the overwhelming majority of which were not in Princeton.

Scheuer was a staple at the Palestra for, well, for long before TigerBlog ever walked in the building. He was the AP reporter for Big Five basketball forever, and TB would see him any time he was there for a Princeton-Penn game.

He was as much a part of the building as anyone. Maybe the only person TB can associate more with the Palestra than Jack Scheuer was his late friend John McAdams, the wonderful longtime public address announcer in the building (and for a million other buildings, including when he did Princeton football games at Powers Field at Princeton Stadium).

TB didn't know Scheuer as well as he know McAdams. He did know Scheuer well enough to say hello and have a quick chat every time he saw him. He knew him well enough to be saddened by the news that Scheuer passed away last week, at the age of 88.

Mike Jensen wrote a great piece about Scheuer in the Philadelphia Inquirer last week. It mentioned how Scheuer played in pickup games into his 80s at the building, and how he still shot the same set shot he did when he played at Frankford High, graduating in 1949. As he read that, TB pictured Pete Carril as he shot that same shot in his own pickup games in Jadwin Gym.

You can read Jensen's story HERE. 

So congratulations to Mike Emrick on his incredible career, and the best to him in retirement. And RIP to Jack Scheuer, another gentleman who had another great career. Walking into the Palestra will be a little different from now on.

5 For 5

TigerBlog ran his streak with his colleague Cody Chrusciel to five straight weeks.

Of what? 

Of texting each other somewhere around the time that the Princeton football game of that weekend would have figured to be starting. The two are now five for five on the season.

If you think that the people who work in Princeton Athletics are glad that there are no games this fall, and therefore less work, well, this is Exhibit 1,000 that you're incorrect. 

This weekend would have been the game between Princeton and Brown. The game would have matched Princeton head coach Bob Surace against his former offensive coordinator - and current close friend - James Perry. 

The last time Brown came to Princeton was during the perfect 2018 season. That was the game that John Lovett missed due to injury, and in his place Kevin Davidson made his first career start. That made Brown the lone team against which Davidson made two career starts.

If you couple that game with the game last year in Providence, then here are Davidson's numbers in his two starts against the Bears: 

53 for 74, 678 yards, nine touchdowns, one interception. Combined score of the two games: Princeton 113, Brown 32.

It's safe to say that had the game been played, Brown would not have missed Davidson. 

Speaking of Lovett, he made a great play on the kickoff coverage team for the Green Bay Packers against the Tampa Bay Bucs yesterday:

We 👀👀 you #45!!#WinTheKeyGround pic.twitter.com/fmw722FbYN

— Princeton Football (@PrincetonFTBL) October 18, 2020

Lovett, keep in mind, is a two-time Bushnell Cup winner as a quarterback. Well, sort of as a quarterback. He was more of a physical imposition on the other team who could do everything, so calling him a quarterback sells him short, even though he was a great quarterback at Princeton.

Anyway, to those who saw him play at Princeton, it's not a surprise that he's doing well on special teams in the NFL.

Speaking of former Princeton quarterbacks, Jason Garrett got his first win as the offensive coordinator with the Giants yesterday in a 20-19 win over Washington. 

TigerBlog is torn in a few ways here. First, he's rooting for Garrett to do well with the Giants and then get another NFL head coaching job. Or, possibly, to give up coaching and instantly become the next Tony Romo on TV, a job for which he is a complete natural, with his voice and his personality. 

TB has heard a lot of public speakers in his time at Princeton. No. 1? That's Dick Vitale, the Dick Vitale in his prime who spoke at the Meadowlands at halftime of a 1997 Princeton basketball game against Wake Forest in the Jimmy V. Classic. Jason, though, is really, really close. 

Great public speaking is about addressing the audience from your heart. That quality is what makes Jason Garrett an extraordinary public speaker, as good as it gets.

Assuming that he wants to stay in coaching, to get another head coaching spot, Jason needs an offense that can put up points. To do that in the NFL, he needs a good quarterback.

Is Daniel Jones the answer for the Giants? It's Year 2 for him. Is he showing signs of  being the long-term answer?

There seems to be universal agreement that Clemson's Trevor Lawrence will be somebody's long-term answer. TB has seen enough of Lawrence to be on the same page. Would the Giants give up on Jones so quickly and draft Lawrence with the No. 1 pick, should they get it?

Jones, you might remember, was originally a Princeton commit before going to Duke. Can you imagine having added him to the group with Lovett, Davidson and Chad Kanoff? 

Another thing from the Giants game yesterday is that Princeton head coach Bob Surace knows that TB salutes Washington head coach Ron Rivera for going for the two-point conversion in the final seconds and for the win that would have come with it. For TB, that is always the right move. You've just scored. You have the defense on its heels. Go for it right there.

Of course, it takes a coach who is willing to be second-guessed if it doesn't work, like it didn't for Rivera. That's a rarity in the NFL.

This coming week for Surace and the Tigers would have been the game at Harvard. 

TB is assuming he and Cody will get to six for six.