The women's lacrosse season is 16 games long. Princeton lacrosse fans will not have to wait that long to forecast their team's chances to repeat as national champions, however. After a warm-up drubbing of Lafayette, 15-6, Wednesday night, the Tigers quickly get into the meat of their schedule when they take on three of the top 10 teams in the nation in their next three games.
"I think it's good that we have those games coming up," senior defender Rachael Becker said. "It's a great way to challenge ourselves early. Playing tough teams early can only help us later on. We're definitely not settling for one national championship."
Princeton (1-0) hosts its second game of the season this Sunday when the Loyola Greyhounds (1-0) come to Class of 1952 Stadium. Princeton and Loyola are ranked Nos. 1 and 4, respectively, in the Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association poll.
Last season, the Tigers used five unanswered goals to beat the Greyhounds in Baltimore, 10-6. While the Tigers controlled the ground game, picking up seven more ground balls than Loyola, the two teams ran almost a dead heat in shots, caused turnovers and draw controls.
The Greyhounds opened their season Tuesday with a 16-4 thumping of local rival University of Maryland Baltimore County. Junior attack Rachel Shuck poured in four goals and an assist to pace the Greyhounds.
Loyola is also led by senior attack Suzanne Eyler. Eyler, like Princeton's Becker and junior attack Theresa Sherry, is a preseason candidate for the prestigious Tewaaraton Award. The Tewaaraton is awarded to the best male and female lacrosse players in the nation every year.
Eyler is certainly her team's most valuable player, leading the team last season with 51 goals and 13 assists. She is also serving as Loyola's captain for her second consecutive year, providing intangible leadership to the Greyhound squad.
After hosting Loyola, the Tigers will practice for a solid week before they head south to play women's lacrosse titans, Virginia and Duke.
No. 8 Virginia (2-1) has always posed a threat to Princeton, and the Cavaliers came very close to disrupting the Tigers' win streak early last season, one which has since extended into a nation-best 20 game streak.
In the game, played March 17, 2002, Princeton built a 12-7 lead, yet the Cavaliers chipped away until they were within one with five minutes remaining. Princeton's Whitney Miller, this season the team's senior captain, took the game into her hands, scoring an unassisted goal a minute later to seal the win for the Tigers.
The team that the Tigers fear the most in all this is surely Duke.
The No. 2 Blue Devils (3-0) received only four points fewer than the Tigers in the IWLCA ranking, including four first-place votes to the Tigers six first-place votes.
Duke boasts two Tewaaraton candidates to match up against Becker and Sherry, senior attack Kate Kaiser and junior defender Meghan Miller. Kaiser is a three-time Tewaaraton nominee and was a finalist in 2001, the first year that the award was given.
Within the Ivy League, the Cornell Big Red seem to pose the gravest threat to Princeton's continued dominance.
Cornell is ranked No. 6, which is the highest ranking ever for a Big Red team to start the season. Cornell returns five starters and eight letter winners from last year's 16-2 squad that reached the national championship semifinals.
"Cornell was in the final four. Like us, they lost a lot of players, but it looks like they're off to a good start," head coach Chris Sailer said. "Everybody was really touting Notre Dame this year, but Cornell just beat them 13-5. So I think they'll be a legitimate team to beat."
Dartmouth, too, has been a tough rival for Princeton in years past, taking the most Ivy titles next to the Tigers since 1994, a year when, incidentally, Princeton won the national championship.
"Dartmouth is a little younger this year," Sailer said. "They graduated a lot of kids too but I think they got the best freshmen in the league. They're tough, and they go really hard."
In general, while the NCAA tourney more often features the likes of Duke, Maryland, Virginia and Loyola rather than Harvard, Penn, and Yale, the Ivy League is going to be tough this season and cannot be overlooked.
"We're really excited for what lies ahead," Sailer said. "These kids have learned a lot these past couple years about what it takes to be successful, the mentality that you need to compete day in and day out at a high level."
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