Out of the nineteen women on this year's field hockey team there are nine freshmen and no seniors. Normally, this is the kind of situation that would have a coach worried. But head coach Beth Bozman does not seem very worried.
Perhaps her confidence stems from the fact that, as she explained, "these are not your normal freshmen.
"Five of them were high-school All-Americans. Two were on the American national team. Another was on the Canadian national team. This is an experienced group of players."
Or perhaps her confidence comes from the knowledge that she has seven juniors returning from last season's team, including junior captains goalkeeper Kelly Baril and defense Emily Townsend. Both of these experienced players earned second-team All-America honors last season.
Baril and Townsend are not alone, as the stellar early season play of junior captain Beckie Wood and junior attack Ilvy Friebe makes clear.
"The juniors on this team are all experienced," Townsend said, "not only in the intercollegiate arena, but also through their experiences with national training programs."
Whatever the reasons, Bozman seems to be quite certain that this year's team is not suffering in the talent department. This means that the bar set by last year's second round NCAA loss to Maryland will have to be raised as well.
"Last year, given our talent, we had a good season," Bozman said. "We wanted to go undefeated in the Ivy League, especially since we had lost our first league game in six years the previous year, and we managed to do that. In the NCAA's we put up some great showings against really talented teams, pushing national champion Old Dominion to the limit, and coming close against Maryland. This year we are more talented."
Some Tigers are a bit more explicit about the Tigers' ambitions.
"Our goal is first to win the Ivy League and get a berth to the NCAA tournament," Baril said. "Then, we want to win a national championship."
In order to realize those goals, the Tigers will have to make their way through the usual Ivy League obstacles, a task that has given them little trouble in the past.
In fact, such is the rarity of a league defeat that a 1999 loss to Brown, which resulted in a shared Ivy title, seems to have become the team's personal Pearl Harbor. Aside from that day of infamy, the Tigers' have not lost a league game in eight seasons.
But despite their eight consecutive Ivy titles, the Tigers are not resting on their laurels. Bozman knows that past victories will not win the title this year, and so she has the team working hard to peak for the league games, beginning with Yale this weekend.
According to Baril, the hard work is paying off.
"The new and the old are blending well and working together to form a cohesive unit. We all have the same goal, and we are all willing to do the work necessary to reach it."
The Tigers schedule will give them a chance to see just how attainable the goal of a national championship is. In addition to their Ivy League opponents, the Tigers will take on quite a few nationally ranked teams, including second-ranked Maryland and third-ranked Old Dominion.
By the time the regular season is over, Princeton might just have improved on its already impressive No. 5 national ranking.
And so, chronological concerns aside, it looks like the Tigers are in for a long and productive season.
"Despite having nine freshmen, some of whom are being asked to produce a lot for us, I think that our team is capable of almost anything," Baril said.
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