While I can accept the statistical explanations behind certain chance events — flipping a coin that only lands on heads, birthing five children who are all female — I draw the line with sports.
In college baseball, summer leagues are a good way for ballplayers to get recognized by professional scouts. As far as summer leagues go, the Cape Cod Baseball League is at the top. Conveniently, that’s where junior righthander Dave Hale found himself this summer, throwing for the Chatham Athletics.
The women’s lacrosse team will take the notion of finding strength in numbers to a whole new level in 2009. This season, the Tiger squad will have nine returning players in its indomitable senior class.
For the last few seasons of Princeton men’s lacrosse, Princeton’s defense was paced by goalie Alex Hewit ’08 and defenseman Dan Cocoziello ’08. Teammates since their days together at the Delbarton School in Morristown, N.J., Hewit and Cocoziello graduated as two of the best athletes to play for head coach Bill Tierney.
To say that a team finished in second place in a basketball game is to say that the team lost. But a second-place finish at a track meet, where several squads compete for one trophy, is a different story. The men’s and women’s track teams both came up just short last weekend at the indoor Heptagonal Championships.
Princeton sent 10 players to the national squash singles tournament last weekend, but none of them came away with a national championship.
The No. 19 women?s swimming and diving team came out of the Ivy League Championship meet with nine Ivy League individual titles, six school records and 10 NCAA provisional qualifying times.
For the men’s lacrosse team, 2008 didn’t go exactly as planned. After the 2007 season was characterized by heartbreaking losses, the Tigers sought to send off superstars defenseman Dan Cocoziello ’08 and goalie Alex Hewit ’08 in style. Instead, Princeton finished 7-6.
“Every game is our biggest game,” women’s lacrosse head coach Chris Sailer said. “I think that’s one [defining] thing about our team: We won’t overlook anyone.” Princeton made good on Sailer’s promise in the first test of its season last weekend, as the Tigers defeated No. 13 Johns Hopkins, 13-9. The game was tied at nine in the second half when Princeton scored the game’s final four goals, two of which came from junior attack Kristin Morrison.
As members of the team that won the 2006 Ivy League title, the current seniors on the baseball team know what it’s like to win big. Those memories are providing motivation as they prepare to lead the squad through a season they hope will end with another Ivy title and a trip to the NCAA regional tournament.
Last year, the softball team relied on something old: veteran Kristen Schaus ’08, a three-time All-Ivy first-team selection and one of the most dominant pitchers in Princeton history. The team also benefited from something new — rookie head coach Trina Salcido. The Tigers borrowed a winning formula from the power-hitting 1927 Yankees, and by the end of the Ivy League season something was (black and) blue: Harvard’s bruised ego following a Princeton sweep in the Ivy League Championship Series. In all, Salcido’s pairing with the Tigers proved to be a match made in heaven.
It was a good weekend for Princeton tennis, as the women’s team swept Virginia Commonwealth and William & Mary, and the men’s team followed suit with consecutive victories over St. Johns and the College of Charleston.
If you looked at the fourth-set score from Saturday’s men’s volleyball game, you could be forgiven for thinking it was perennial power No. 3 Penn State visiting Dillon Gymnasium. It wasn’t. It was Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (EIVA) rival Springfield College.
In its toughest weekend so far this season, the women’s water polo team posted only one win in three games, defeating Harvard 13-6 but falling to No. 15 Hartwick 8-6 and No. 14 Michigan 12-5 at the Elite Six Invitational in Lewisburg, Pa.
Nothing is quite as sweet as revenge, and the men’s basketball team knows it. Two weeks ago, Princeton (12-12 overall, 7-4 Ivy League) suffered devastating double-digit losses to both Brown (7-19, 1-11) and Yale (12-14, 7-5), so this weekend’s sweep of those same Ivy foes at Jadwin Gymnasium was all the more satisfying.
No. 9 Princeton (2-0 overall) returned to Baltimore for its third engagement with Hopkins in the Konica-Minolta Face-off Classic on Saturday and blasted the No. 6 Blue Jays 14-8 (1-1).
Despite the best efforts of the Tigers (18-13-2 overall, 15-8-1 ECAC Hockey), Rensselaer (20-13-4, 13-8-3) posted a 1-0 victory as goalie Sonja van der Bliek stopped every shot the Tigers sent her way. Van der Bliek was aided by a little luck, as Princeton’s best chance in the third period, a slap shot from freshman forward Julie Johnson, rang the left post.
Power-play goals were the difference makers this weekend, as Princeton dropped both of its games on its final road trip this season. Dartmouth (14-12-3 overall, 11-9-2 ECAC Hockey) and Harvard (9-14-6, 9-7-6) both scored game-winning goals on the man-advantage.
Tied at nine, No. 8 Princeton (1-0 overall) responded with a vigorous intensity, tallying four straight unanswered goals in the last 11 minutes to secure a 13-9 victory in its season-opener against No. 13 Johns Hopkins (1-2) on Saturday afternoon at Class of 1952 Stadium.
Coming off hard losses last week, the women’s basketball team proved its resiliency with victories over Brown and Yale on the road this past weekend.
