After five Princeton teams won Ivy League titles last weekend, the women’s basketball team is in prime position to wrap up a sixth.
For the men’s lacrosse team and its head coach, Chris Bates, the season is moving at the speed of sound.
Senior utility player Jamie Lettire was a second-Team All-Ivy selection for the softball team a season ago. A first baseman and pitcher, Lettire led the Tigers with eight home runs and a 4.04 ERA last year. After suffering a disappointing season last year, Princeton looks to return to the form that saw it win the Ivy League title two years ago and compete in the NCAA tournament.
The No. 9 women’s lacrosse team fell in their home opener last night, losing a nail-biting match 12-11 against Rutgers. It was just the third time in history the Knights (3-0) have defeated Princeton (1-1). The match was the team’s first at Powers Field, which is replacing Class of 1952 Stadium as Princeton’s home turf this season.
Dan Barnes was throwing smoke. During last year’s spring break, the baseball team traveled south to face top-ranked North Carolina, and the then-sophomore starter was hardly intimidated by the competition. Barnes struck out the first batter he faced, and after a lengthy 10-pitch battle, sent the second down swinging as well. But on his first pitch to eventual No. 2 MLB draft pick Dustin Ackley, things took a sudden turn for the worse.
For the first time in baseball head coach Scott Bradley’s 12 years at Princeton, it seems like the Tigers will field a brand new team. Between graduation and the professional draft, six members of the starting lineup and two starting pitchers left the Tigers after last season.
The baseball team finished with an 18-19 overall record last year and went an even 10-10 in Ivy League play. Head coach Scott Bradley, in his 12th season, will look to the addition of eight freshmen to his returning crew to finish atop the Ivy League.
Every member of the softball team has a word taped to the inside of her locker. For senior second baseman and co-captain Collette Abbott, that word is “camaraderie”; for senior outfielder Kelsey Quist, it’s “commitment.”
Sarah Hoffman is a junior on the women’s tennis team. She plays doubles with senior Mellissa Saiontz. Last season, the pair went undefeated and helped guide Princeton to an Ivy League title. This season, the Tigers hope to get continued production out of the pair as they aim for another championship.
The softball team starts off its 2010 season with a tournament this weekend at Maryland. It is looking forward to a campaign that will improve on last year’s season and add to its record of winning the Ivy League championship five times in the past eight years. Princeton’s last Ivy championship was in 2008 — two years ago — and this year’s team shows a lot of potential.
On sunday evening, Brad Schroeder — like most other Canadians — was on the edge of his seat. In a game where the stakes could not be higher, Canada and the United States were battling in overtime of the Olympic gold-medal matchup for men’s hockey. And like most other Canadians, Schroeder rejoiced when Sidney Crosby scored the game-winner for Canada.
Last week, a 36-year-old man won his 10th and 11th career Winter Olympic medals, giving him the second-highest career medal count of all time. If he returns to the Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in 2014 (and he says he wants to) he stands an excellent chance at breaking the record of 12, set by his countryman between 1992 and 1998 before said countryman’s career ended in a roller skiing accident at age 33. The aforementioned man is generally considered to be the greatest of all time in his sport. And sadly, most Americans do not know who he is.
The Ivy League championships start on Thursday, and for the men’s swimming and diving team, it almost looks too good to be true. The Tigers have not lost an Ivy League meet in two years. They have won Ivies three of the last four times. And to top it off, this year they have home-pool advantage.
For the first time in nine years, the fencing team brought home both the men’s and women’s Ivy League championship titles. Princeton wrapped up the twin titles on Sunday after a two-weekend-long Ivy League tournament.
If serving an ace feels good, winning a whole match on an ace must feel even better.
Just hours before the United States would have its heart ripped out by Sidney Crosby in the Olympic gold-medal hockey game, the women’s water polo team suffered a similar defeat. No. 17 Princeton (5-2) fell one goal shy of an ECAC Championship, losing to No. 20 Brown (8-1) 10-9 in the finals on Sunday at DeNunzio Pool.
The women’s squash team was rested and ready for this past weekend’s national championship tournament. It had confidence that it could beat its first-round opponent, Yale, since it had already done so in the regular season. The seniors knew what it felt like to win it all, having done so the previous three seasons. This year, however, No. 4 Princeton (9-5 overall, 4-2 Ivy League) would not bring home the Howe Cup for a fourth straight year. The Tigers fell to No. 5 Yale (10-6, 3-3) in the quarterfinals of the tournament. Princeton followed the loss with wins over No. 8 Williams (15-9) and No. 7 Stanford (8-7) to take fifth in the consolation bracket.
The men’s volleyball team split two games at Dillon Gymnasium this weekend. Princeton (5-5 overall, 1-2 Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association Tait Divison) completed a thrilling 3-2 comeback over St. Francis (8-7, 1-3) the day after its tough 3-0 loss to No. 7 Penn State (13-2, 5-0). Comebacks are always fantastic, and Princeton’s win over St. Francis was made a little more special by the fact that it gave the Tigers their first Tait Division victory of the season.
After a hard-fought loss at Cornell last Friday, the men’s basketball team rebounded with a victory over Columbia on Saturday night. It was the second time this season the Tigers (17-8 overall, 8-3 Ivy League) lost to Cornell (24-4, 10-1) by three points and posted a double-digit victory over Columbia (10-16, 4-8) in the same weekend.
With its season having ended earlier than it would have liked, the women’s hockey team came home after a disappointing weekend at No. 4 Harvard in the first weekend of the ECAC quarterfinals.
