Like a fine wine...

If men's lacrosse head coach Bill Tierney scores his years at Princeton like he does his games, he might have to call it soon. Now in his 18th season, he is just one shy of his limit for goals he allows his team to score in a blowout game: 19.

"When I was at Hopkins ... [the band played] this waltz when you hit 20, and even when I was coaching there, I always thought it was a little bit condescending to the people who were at the losing end," Tierney said.

Moreover, his famous "19 rule" was strongly influenced by his early experiences on at Princeton. Those first few years weren't always so glorious for the Tigers.

Tierney recalls being down 17-2 going into the fourth quarter of a particularly rough game, one the Tigers ended up losing, 23-5.

"There's a certain point where you have to think about the kids on the other team, the coaches on the other team, [and] about sportsmanship," Tierney said.

The quintessential sportsman, the man who has led the Tigers to six national championships and who has become practically as synonymous with Princeton sports as Pete Carril, once didn't expect to be here but a few years.

"When I came, I had never been on any job more than three years, and when I got here, [I thought] it was going to be a 'three years, turn it around, [and] hope to get the Virginia or Hopkins job," he said.

Fortunately for the Tigers, and despite his "19 rule" in games, Tierney has no plans for retirement soon. In fact, he now perennially faces the teams he once hoped to coach as rivals in the NCAA tournament.

Tierney started out after college as a high school football coach at his Long Island alma mater and also coached high school lacrosse. He made the jump into collegiate athletics when he landed the head coaching job for lacrosse at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Ironically, it would prove to be a fortuitous move not just because of lacrosse but for a much more benign reason: his officemate was the soccer coach.

Tierney gained plenty of exposure to soccer, at least on paper. It came in handy when he again tried to move up in the lacrosse world, as an assistant coach for Johns Hopkins.

"I had to be the soccer coach at Hopkins to get the job and I had to tell a little white lie that I had some soccer experience, but I really didn't," Tierney recollects.

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It didn't matter in the end, though, because Tierney did with the soccer team what he does best: he coached and coached until he had the whole team "on the same page." Though the team he inherited hadn't had a winning season in half a century, he turned the program around and propelled his squad to the NCAA tournament in both his second and third seasons with the Blue Jays.

But the most valuable experiences Tierney had in Baltimore came as he absorbed the Blue Jay ways of lacrosse.

"I learned a lot there about how to go about coaching at the highest level — we won two national championships in my three years there — and just the dedication that it took, the intensity that it took and the hard work," Tierney said.

Noting how thankful he was to be the assistant coach on such an accomplished team, Tierney mentioned that he had his Tigers play at Hopkins ten years in a row as a challenge that would be beneficial to the team.

His experiences with the Blue Jays set him up for what has become an incredible 18 years for the Tigers. When Tierney came to Princeton, the Tigers were terrible at lacrosse: their last Ivy League championship had been two decades ago. But in 1990, Princeton played in the NCAA tournament for the first time.

In 1992, the Tigers won their first national title in a 10-9 double overtime win.

"The first one is always [special, so] it's hard to overtake that one," Tierney said.

That "first one" wasn't a fluke. The Tigers won again in 1994, and then pulled off a three-peat in 1996, 1997 and 1998 with the help of superstars like Jesse Hubbard '98, Jon Hess '98, and Chris Massey '98.

Except for the 1997 and 1998 titles that were won by blowout margins — the Tigers hit the 19 total in the 1997 game against Maryland — every other game was won in overtime, a testament to Tierney's ability to win close, thrilling and memorable games. Tierney can distinctly recall every championship and even the most specific details about the team that won it.

Coach T's most special championship, though, came in 2001 when he won with two of his sons on the field, goalie Trevor Tierney '01 and attack/midfielder Brendan Tierney '02.

"I have to tell you that the 2001 one with Trevor and Brendan on the field ... was special — that's a pure dream," Tierney said.

A dream, indeed, that no one could have forseen upon his hire in 1987: 12 Ivy League titles and six national champions. But that isn't what it's all about for Tierney.

"Sometimes, I count doctors more than I do championships, and we're up to 10 and it's really special to see those guys," Tierney said.

The rare coach who turns out people when many college machines create mere athletes, Tierney is as successful in fostering the personal development of his players as he is at winning games. And with the talent that Tierney has on this year's team, he'll definitely have what he needs to do what he does best.

It looks like the Tigers just might flirt with Tierney's 19 rule one more time.