Maybe you've heard of varsity sprint football. You might have cracked a joke about how Princeton lost to Navy 98-0 last year. Or perhaps you've heard that, before last season's victory over VMI, the team endured a 40-game losing streak.
But have you ever stopped to ask why the team has struggled?
"Without a doubt, the poor performance of the team has been a result of the program's inability to attract, keep and properly utilize talent," senior captain Zach McKinney said. "In past years, we would get plenty of high school football players interested in the program, but when they'd come out to practice, they wouldn't like what they saw and they'd quit."
New head coach Thomas Cocuzza, hired in April, intends to turn around the program. His first step was installing a new pass-oriented offense.
"Under the new coaching staff, this problem [of attracting players] has been alleviated dramatically," McKinney said. "But the residual stigma still seems to have kept a handful of talented players away from the program."
The Tigers sport a small 44-man roster. Because their rivals boast 60- to 100-man rosters, the team feels it must recruit more players to improve.
"We are trying to get the best athletes within the confines of our campus that are not playing other sports," Cocuzza said. "If we can do that, we will be successful."
The shortage of players could spawn from the team's recruiting process.
"With no help from the Admission Office, all of our athletes are walk-ons, and many of them don't even know about sprint [football] when they arrive on campus," McKinney said. "We do our best to make ourselves visible to freshmen during orientation week, but our recruiting efforts basically boil down to staking out freshman events and blindly soliciting the program."
Indeed, many players on the team did not intend to play sprint football.
"I would say that a majority of the student-athletes on the team only heard about sprint football after they were admitted," senior captain Andrew Lapetina said. "[This could be] because of the low profile of the sport on a national level."
The team's small roster poses several problems.
"Our limited numbers do hurt us on the practice field, where it becomes difficult to simulate game conditions," McKinney said. "We can't afford to lose guys to injury or because we simply don't have enough players for our offensive and defensive first strings to work against each other."
Some suggest that the student body is to blame for the small roster.
"Many people at Princeton are far too interested in themselves and cannot devote time and energy towards a team goal," senior captain Andrew Lapetina said. "This causes a lot of great athletes at this school to either play a club sport with smaller sacrifices, join a dance group or to sit on their butts and waste their lives."
Others think the old coaching staff was partially responsible.
"Last year, one of our biggest problems was that we would never change," sophomore defensive back Kadir Annamalai said. "The old system wasn't working, but we were not adjusting on a week-to-week basis. We were not making ourselves better."
But Cocuzza does not point any fingers.
"I have not attempted to judge or even assess the previous staff," Cocuzza said. "I have had too much work to do installing our [new] system."
Regardless of the origin of the struggle, the stigma surrounding the team does not help.
"In the end, guys are hesitant to come out because of all the negative things they've heard about the program," McKinney said. "In turn the team suffers from a shortage of talent, which just serves to perpetuate the problem."
Despite these shortcomings, the team remains optimistic.
"How do we turn things around?" Mckinney said. "Simple. We win games. Under the new coaching staff, all this program needs is to gain a little momentum."
Beyond the team's record of wins and losses, Cocuzza offers a different perspective on success.
"I don't think the program has struggled in the past few years," Cocuzza said. "I had the opportunity to meet some of our alumni this past weekend. They are all successful in the game of life. Some of this success is derived from the lessons they have learned playing football."
The Tigers face Cornell at home Friday at 7 p.m. in their first game of the season.
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