Sprint Football: Midshipmen roll to 62-13 victory

This past Saturday, the sprint football team faced Navy at Princeton Stadium. While the game ended in a 62-13 loss, the Tigers continued to show improvement as a group.

In the first quarter, senior running back Sean Conrad put the Tigers on the scoreboard with a touchdown, Princeton’s first score against Navy in eight years. However, the Midshipmen managed to score off the ensuing return, and Princeton failed to make it back to the Navy end zone for the remainder of the half, which ended with the score at 41-6.

When the Tigers came out after halftime, they huddled up to a chant of, “What’s the score? Zero-zero!” Princeton kept the second-half score that way for a while, shutting out Navy completely in the third quarter.

All in all, the Tigers put together a much better performance over the final 30 minutes, scoring a second touchdown on a fumble return by sophomore Nick Barnett. Navy scored only 21 of its 62 points in the second half.

“At halftime, we made a couple adjustments. The coaches pointed out what we do wrong, changed how we approached the game,” Barnett said. “We were more aggressive. We went for interceptions.”

“In the second half, we played smarter football,” senior receiver Ross Cadman said. “We regrouped in the locker room and tried to eliminate turnovers and improve on special teams. The defense was solid throughout the game, and we just tried to play our game regardless of the score ... With the score the way it was, it would have been easy to give up in the second half, but we played hard the entire game.”

The improvement in the second half reflected the Tigers’ dedication to improving as a team and turning around their recent fortunes.

“The goal is always the same — going in trying to get wins,” Barnett said. “Obviously we haven’t had a win in a long time, but we want to get that win. And we want to win more than one game.”

The Tigers face Cornell next weekend in their first road game, and they have high hopes for what’s to come. The Big Red is 2-0, though both victories came by only one possession, including a six-overtime victory over Penn in its opener.

After facing Cornell, Princeton will return home to face its two youngest opponents — Post University, which began playing sprint football in 2010, and Franklin Pierce, which picked up the sport this year.

“We need to learn from each of these games and work to improve all three phases of the game. We know that as an underdog we need to win on special teams,” Cadman said. “The team believes that we can win at Cornell, end this winless streak and take control of the Ivy League.”