Trombino leads m. lax's new wave

In a program that boasts six national championships and has featured six Ivy League Players-of-the-Year in the last decade, it is rare for an individual to do something that no one in school history has ever done before. But with a goal this weekend in a crucial league contest with Dartmouth, freshman Peter Trombino, an attackman on the men's lacrosse team, will become the first Tiger in history to score a goal in eleven consecutive games to begin his collegiate career.

Not bad for a kid from Huntington Station, NY, who almost ended up throwing a ball around the baseball diamond instead of the lacrosse field.

"When I was younger, kids in my neighborhood were playing [lacrosse], but I was split between baseball and lacrosse," Trombino said. "I think lacrosse won out because it's a little more action-packed than baseball."

Since then Trombino has been fast-tracked to lacrosse prominence, being named All-Long Island, All-League, and All-America as a high schooler last season, leading St. Anthony's High School to a Catholic League state championship in his senior year before slipping into the orange-and-black at Princeton, where he has started every game of his career.

While there have been Tigers before Trombino who have started games as freshmen — four, in fact, in this year's vaunted freshman class alone — only midfielder Lorne Smith '99 has ever scored goals so consistently as a first-year player when he scored in ten straight games in his freshman campaign in 1996.

Trombino matched Smith's mark on Saturday when, late in the third quarter, he took a feed from senior attackman Ryan Boyle and buried it in the back of the net, adding to a Princeton lead the team would eventually relinquish in a 12-11 overtime loss to Cornell.

Trombino would rather talk about the team's successes than individual accolades, but concedes that the talk about records is an honor.

"I'm not much of a stat guy," he said, "but it's nice to be in the record books. I would have much rather had a win [against Cornell] than the record. It's pretty special, though, to have this chance, especially as a freshman."

While he claims that he is too young to merit consideration as the next in a long line of great Princeton attackmen, including Kevin Lowe '94, Jesse Hubbard '98 and current teammate Boyle, such weighty comparisons are not new for the freshman. He attended the same high school as former Princeton standout Sean Hartofilis '03, and now sports the number twenty, the same number Hartofilis donned in his years with the program.

"[Comparisons to Hartofilis] come up all the time," Trombino said. "I'm pretty good friends with him and his family, so all that talk is fun, but I think of myself as a player much different than Sean." Trombino is currently second on the team in assists and third in both goals and total points (24 points on 14 goals and 10 assists).

This season's entering class was widely considered one of the strongest in years for the Tigers, and Trombino and company have not disappointed. Trombino is tied for the Ivy League lead for points among first-year players with Harvard's Greg Cohen. Along with Cohen and Brown's David Madeira (and, some would argue, Princeton teammates Whitney Hayes and Scott Sowanick) Trombino is a leading candidate for the league's Rookie of the Year honors.

Perhaps no one has praised Trombino as highly as Boyle who, like Trombino, stepped into the limelight early in his time at Princeton, leading the Tigers to their last national championship three years ago as a freshman.

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Last week in an interview with Jerry Price of the Princeton Athletic Department, Boyle lauded the Princeton freshman class, insisting that Trombino and Sowanick "both can be better than I am... I expect a lot out of them, and I let them know it. I've tried to show them some things, but they've gone out and made everyone respect us."

Boyle is widely considered one of the best attackmen ever to play at Princeton, as well as one of the best passing attackmen in the game. This season he has become a consummate team leader, helping the young team gel nicely and remain among the top teams in the nation.

"He's a great player and I am flattered that I even have the opportunity to play with him," Trombino said. "On the field, Ryan is by far the best leader I have ever played with. He knows where you are, where he wants you to be, the ups and downs of the game, the time, the emotions, everything."

As for Boyle's claims that Trombino's career may someday eclipse his own, Trombino prefers to wait.

"I don't think it's true," Trombino laughs. "I mean, he's a great player and a great leader. I would like to, of course. It's something you have to really work for."

As the 2004 men's lacrosse season turns the corner toward the postseason, Trombino can start working for it right now.