Princetonians and Tigers

"I'm just going to take a study break for half an hour, I swear." We've all said that, because that's how Princetonians think. But usually that balloons into an hour and a half, maybe longer. So instead of watching four consecutive "Family Guy" episodes, maybe your next study break should be a Princeton athletic event.

It doesn't matter what sport you see. Odds are that our team is one of the best in its conference, if not America. But it seems to me that the less likely our team is to win, the more ravenously Tiger fans want one.

Take sprint football, for example. Those guys are on a 29-game losing streak and counting. Their season is only six games long, so that's a lot of years of losing. But if you ever go to a game, you can hear all the more clearly the chants that come up from the "student section" of five to 10 guys on the lowest bleacher. It's hard to find more individually visible supporters of the Tigers.

To see if there were more people like these devoted fans at other teams' games, I went to as many home games as I could this Intersession.

The men's basketball game against Southern Vermont last Monday was a joke. We were up 48-18 at the half, much of that thanks to 15 first-half Mountaineer turnovers. The worst culprit was six-foot, 11-inch Jack Wolfinger, who had eight giveaways in the first half. As the game wore on, the sparse Intersession crowd kept yelling, "Give it to Jack!" The professional sportswriters along press row were just as bloodthirsty for a storyline in the laughter. A few were visibly disappointed after the game, since Jack only turned the ball over once in the second half.

At your average Princeton athletic event, if you sit close enough to the action, you can hear not only the crowd but also the players saying things their mothers wouldn't be proud of. Throughout the game, Mountaineers who blew assignments yelled like they had just seen a pile of "number two" on the court — "S—-!" Frankly, it was a better Monday night than listening to Al and John talking about the alacrity with which a team moves down the field.

Friday night, I went to men's swimming's H-Y-P meet. The echo in DeNunzio Pool was epic, so the hundreds of people in the stands, mostly family members and the occasional roommate, sounded more like thousands during the last 25 yards of every race. It also helped that the home team won just about every heat.

After a few events, I walked next door to Jadwin Gymnasium to catch a couple of minutes of women's basketball. The sounds of the court were a little higher in pitch than on Monday night, and the ball came down farther on rebounds, but both teams had better shooters than Southern Vermont. Princeton was unexpectedly crushing Brown, but in the cavernous Jadwin, I wouldn't have been surprised to hear a cricket or two and see a tumbleweed roll across the baseline. The bustling press row from Monday night had been reduced to one guy doing the play-byplay (unenthusiastically) for Patriot 8 TV.

The women's hockey game against No. 2 Harvard was definitely the most entertaining game of the break. It's illegal for the women to check, but you would have been hard-pressed to guess that from this game. It was easily the most physical women's hockey game I have ever seen (though that is a pretty small number to begin with). In a 60-minute game, the teams totaled 50 penalty minutes. The fans in the stands were on their feet the whole game. Not to downplay the excitement of the game, but that was mostly because the seats were literally freezing.

The next day I caught wrestling and squash, which were remarkably similar, despite the opposite images they inspire in one's mind. The fans of both sports spend most of the game explaining the intricate rules to one another. Both have players who wear shoes that have never touched the earth, despite the gritty nature of their jobs. Most remarkably, they both involve the use of bodies as subtle — or not-so-subtle — inhibitors of their opponents' movements.

In squash, this is illegal, and the referees — just squash players who aren't competing at the moment — are constantly assailed by comments from players like "That's a stroke right? He was right in front of me," or "He was in the 'V!' " (Don't worry, I don't get it, either).

If you were to ask your average Midwestern farmer what Ivy League sports look like, he would guess something like squash: a small, strangely shaped court with sweaty Elis in polo shirts running around holding rackets with a funny string pattern. So the farmer might not be that specific, but squash is an interesting mix of snooty sport, vital etiquette and a surprising amount of trash talking thrown in for good measure.

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But don't think it's not an impressive sport. After watching a play for 15 or 20 seconds, you might think that there is a lot of guesswork in each shot, and then suddenly one player is caught with his feet stuck to the ground like quicksand, baffled by a superb stroke while the ball zings by his left ear, and you realize about his opponent, "He meant to do that."

That's the moment I was looking for on my Intersession odyssey. Each sport surprised me, but the most wonderful thing about Princeton sports is realizing that you're watching some of the best athletes in the country for free, and, on top of it, they're representing you. So instead of just being a Princetonian, take a study break some time, support your athletes and be a Tiger.