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Sports: June 10, 1998
Sports (overview)
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Women's lax bows out in Virginia
On May 9 in Charlottesville, Virginia, the women's lacrosse team was in a familiar position. Its opponents had jumped out to an early lead,
and at 4-1, head coach Chris Sailer had replaced goalkeeper Laura Field
'00 with netminder Amber Mettler '99 for the second time in as many
games. So far, this quarterfinal match-up in the NCAA tournament against
the Cavaliers was duplicating the Tigers' overtime 12-11 win against the
Georgetown Hoyas in the first round a few days earlier. But though the
number- eight Tigers overcame the early deficit to conquer the
number-nine Hoyas, they were about to realize the
difference in playing the top-ranked team in the nation, a difference
ultimately that spelled defeat, 8-7.
Against Georgetown, Princeton had stormed back, scoring five
consecutive goals following halftime to take the lead. But this time,
the Cavaliers were the ones who began a strong second
half, scoring twice to regain momentum. The Tigers
were forced to play catch-up, but goals from attack
Melissa Cully '98 and midfielder Julie Shaner '01 closed the
gap. Virginia's Kara Ariza followed with a score of
her own, but Princeton ran out of time before it could respond.
Midfielder Brent McCallister '98, assessing the situation, said,
"The thing that separates us from the top
teams is our ability to come through in the final
seconds. And the first 10 minutes of the Virginia game killed us.
We came out flat. I think we outplayed them the majority of the game, but they
got the last goal when time ran out." In the first-round match, the Tigers
had pulled even with Georgetown and gotten the last goal; however, the
tying effort came from a surprising source. Though scoreless in her 65
minutes of total playing time this season, Ani Mason '00 replaced Jen Alexander
'99 (who had injured her knee in the first half) and tallied two goals and
one assist to keep Princeton in the game. Midfielder Cristi Samaras '99
didn't fail to capitalize on the opportunity.
With one minute, three seconds remaining in overtime, Samaras
fired in her fifth goal of the game to secure the win and add another highlight
to her already impressive college career. Samaras's 56 goals and 85 total
points are single-season university records. Against Virginia, she tallied two goals.
Virginia advanced to meet Dartmouth in the Final Four and
defeated the Big Green, 10-7, but its luck ran out in the final, when it fell to
the Maryland Terps, 11-5.
During the regular season, on April 25, Princeton fell to Dartmouth,
10-9 in overtime, losing a chance at the Ivy League title. Despite falling
short of some of its season goals, the Tigers' improvement is indisputable
as evidenced by the team's having repositioned itself among the nation's
elite after failing last year to qualify for the NCAA tournament.
"I think we came very far over the season," cocaptain McCallister
said. "We did a lot to bring the program back and really set the stage for
next year."
-- Sarah Slonaker '98
Dismal doubleheader ends baseball year
As though the
rain delays piled on rain delays weren't enough; as though the transfer of
the Ivy League championship baseball series from the
comfortable confines of Clarke Field to uninspiring
Yale Stadium weren't piling insult upon injury, the
Tiger nine was forced to meet Harvard for the League title
on Dean's Day -- May 12. If the academically
stressed Princeton players felt that circumstance was
conspiring against them, well, maybe it was.
Gehrig division champion Princeton advanced to
the Ivy title series for the third year in a row, this
time under rookie head coach Scott Bradley, and lost
to Harvard for the second year in a row. Harvard
won 13-6 and 13-4 in the first two games of a
best-of-three series, to advance to an NCAA play-in against
MAAC champion LeMoyne.
"Harvard is a good, tough, tournament-tested team,
and I think they just made all the plays," said Bradley,
who ends his inaugural season with a 25-14 overall
record. "I just wish that we could have played at home on
the weekend that we were supposed to. I'm not sure
that would have made a big difference, the way
Harvard played, but we would have had 1,500 or 2,000
people there, and that would have been very special."
There was very little that was special about
what Princeton got from its defense in the series.
Starters Joe Machado '98 and Jason Quintana '00 had what
Bradley said were "probably their worst outings of the
year, possibly caused by the long layoff." In the field,
Princeton wasn't too sharp either, committing six errors over
the two games.
In the opener, Harvard came out with three runs
in the first inning. Princeton would match that in the
top of the third, but the Crimson got a fourth run
off Machado in the bottom of the frame, and then
chased out the Princeton starter after scoring three runs on
only one out in what would become a five-run fourth.
Mike Hazen '98 and Justin Griffin '98 provided
some punch in the 12-hit Tiger attack. Hazen, the
senior captain, was 3-for-4 with a double and two runs
scored. Justin Griffin was 2-for-5 with two doubles, a
run scored, and one RBI. Jason Koonin '99 was 2-for-3
with a home run, two runs scored, and one RBI.
In the second game, Quintana held the Crimson to two runs over three
innings before a fourth inning meltdown saw Harvard take an 8-1 lead.
Princeton never scored more than one run in a single inning, while the Crimson
racked up 13 runs on 16 hits and five Princeton errors. Princeton senior Justin
Griffin closed out his career with his fifth home run of the year.
The optimist may have seen a glimmer of hope in that final game:
of Princeton's eight hits, six came from a trio of talented freshmen. Max
Krance improved his team-leading batting average to .411 in a 2-for-4
performance with two runs scored. Casey Hildreth and Andrew Hanson had
two hits and an RBI each.
Bradley certainly sees the possibility of things better than a Gehrig
Division championship in the Tigers' future. "I think it was a very good
year," he said, "not a great year, but a
good year."
-- Rob Garver
Getting
waxed, 15-1, 15-6, 15-4, on national TV is never fun, but for the men's volleyball team -- ranked 12th -- losing to then-No. 1 Pepperdine in
Princeton's first-ever NCAA Final Four meant a lot.
After redeeming a shaky season with a spectacular run through the eastern tournament,
the Tigers (16-9 overall) flew to Honolulu, where they
enjoyed the splendors of the South Pacific and the glory of being the first Ivy League
team in 22 years to face the scholarship players,
hype, and big guns of volleyball's best.
But the Tigers' shanked passes and hitting errors gave the Waves' all-America lineup
no competition. Opposite Scott Birdwell '98 led
the match with 14 kills, and Derek Devens '98 hit an astounding .800, but Princeton needed a
team effort to pull off a miracle. Nevertheless,
the Tigers were proud to extend their season beyond their wildest dreams.
-- Josh Stephens '97
For coach Cindy Cohen, "There's no crying in softball"
Ah,
spring, verdant queen of seasons, whose true harbingers are not crocuses, or tulips, or robins on the
wing, but the crack of aluminum on faux
horsehide. And here, on a March day, is Cindy Cohen,
among the preeminent mentors of the game, softball
branch, gathering her Tigers as they ready for early-season
batting practice on 1895 Field. "Tell you what, ladies,"
she says, "I think I'm going to hold a symposium on
what color nail polish is acceptable on game days."
That's Cohen, 41, a product of the tough-and-tussle
of northeast Philadelphia, the wiseacre women's coach who rallies her
troops with pointed humor. But the smile disappears
quickly at the sight of a mistake.
"Three! Three! Three!" she yells at an outfielder
who has unleashed an errant throw. "Hey, you know
where third base is, right?" Then she turns to me and
offers her philosophy for dealing with the crème de la
Ivy League: "I tell them, 'You may know more
chemistry or Kafka than I do, but I know more about softball.' "
That she does. In 16 seasons as head coach of
the Tigers, Cohen has mounted an imposing record: 12
Ivy League championships and a 513-225 won-lost
record (with three ties). Her scholar-athletes held their
own against the state university powerhouses in the
Women's College World Series in 1995 and 1996. Equally
impressive are the garlands gained by individual
players, who have tended to worship her, even when she
has rankled the living hell out of them: 81 first-team,
all-Ivy picks, 48 regional All-Americas, 12 national
Academic All-Americas, and a Rhodes scholar.
But there's a stain on Cohen's résumé. This
year, despite a 30-16 record, her talented Tigers (for the
second year in a row) fell short of winning the Ivy title.
For Cohen's Tigers to lose a softball title is the
equivalent of those rare, dispiriting years when Pete Carril's
men's basketball teams lost an Ivy League championship.
Cohen draws comparisons to Carril, her friend and guide
until he left Princeton in 1996 after a 29-year reign.
Like Carril, Cohen is a small package of nitroglycerin,
loaded with raspy charm and wielding a wicked tongue.
Sitting in her office in Jadwin Gym, Cohen is an essay
in tightness: tightly hunched shoulders, tightly
bunched black curls capping a tightly focused mind. "I used
to go to Pete all the time," she recalls, "with
recruiting problems, player problems, what have you. He'd sit
me down and say, 'Doll, let me tell you . . .' "
The best college coaches are always savvy
personal counselors. That dictum holds particularly true in
the Ivy League, with its expectations of high
achievement in the classroom and on the field. "If you're not
concerned with the academic progress of your
players," Cohen says flatly, "you don't belong at Princeton."
And she's dealing with female athletes -- a different
game altogether, she says. "I tell my players that I may
care about them from the bottom of my heart off
the field, but that on the field my job is to make them
better athletes. Sometimes they take it personally.
"That's why I've sometimes wished I was coaching guys. I understand it, but
I also stress mental toughness. I tell them, 'There's no crying in softball unless
there's blood or a broken bone.' "
The players are aware of her personal stance: I won't treat you all the same,
but I will treat you all fairly. As Alyssa Smith '98 puts it, "She's very shrewd about
knowing who needs to be yelled at and who won't respond well to it." One player
impossible to yell at is Pam Reeves, a swift, sweet-natured junior outfielder
sidelined most of last year with back problems.
"Coach was always honest with me," Reeves says, "and
very sympathetic. She kept in touch with me and even
went to my trainer to see how I was doing."
Cohen grew up tough, and she ascribes that
toughness to her mother, Mildred. "She always supported
me, Cohen says, "even if playing ball in the street with
the guys wasn't her picture-book goal for me." Cohen's
parents were divorced when she was a child, but she stayed
close to her father, Joseph. "We used to go out to
Connie Mack Stadium together, and we watched Jim
Bunning pitch his perfect game on Father's Day."
She captained her high-school tennis and basketball teams
and played softball at summer camp. Then she went to Temple University on, of all things, a
bowling scholarship. But she wound up playing a mean
third base for the Owls. Graduating in 1978, she took a
coaching assistantship at Trenton State (now the College of
New Jersey) and got a master's in health education while
helping guide the Lions to a national ranking in Division III.
In 1982, she recalls, "I threw my hat into the
ring at Princeton," and won jobs as head softball coach
and assistant women's basketball coach. She dropped
the latter in 1986 as the softball program burgeoned
into one of the nation's finest. Now, in addition to her
duties on the field and on the road, she directs the
Princeton Softball Camp and is a member of the Division I
Women's Softball Committee.
Like many moving into their 40s, her most
pressing personal concern has become looking after her parents. "My dad died in the spring
of 1992. I told him, 'Don't die in the middle of the season.' But he did. We had the
funeral, then I went to Illinois, where we placed second in the National Invitational
Tournament. You do what you have to," she
says softly, "and wear sunglasses a lot."
Last year, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Cohen, who lives in Newtown,
Pennsylvania, hopes her mother will move in with her. "I'm not sure she wants to.
She said, 'I don't even like to telephone you on game days, much less be around you
-- unless I know Princeton has won.' My mom's
cancer put perspective on things for me last season. It was
a tough year. I hated losing, and I still hate to lose.
But you realize it's only a game."
At the moment, it's time to get ready for the
upcoming Ivy season. So here's Cohen back at home plate,
whacking fungoes to the outfield in the cold, waning
sunlight of early spring. "Way to get a ball, Emma Owings!
Nice throw, Jen McCoy!" she shouts. But soon, she must
consign the bat to an assistant and trot over to the
aluminum bleachers, where a hot high school prospect and
about half of her family on both sides are waiting.
"Um, what qualities are you looking for in a
recruit?" asks the prospect's mother.
Cohen smiles tightly. "Good grades," she replies.
"No point in falling in love with someone you can't have."
-- Mark Goodman
This article is adapted from one that appeared in the
Philadelphia Inquirer magazine on March 29.
No horsing around for equestrian team
Hey! hay! The equestrian club finished a stellar year, winning the
team trophy at the All-Ivy Championship at Dartmouth in April.
During the season, the equestrians galloped off with a slew of ribbons, as
shown above. Five riders went to the regional championship, three to the
zone championship, and one, Kira Epstein '98, to the nationals.
New kids in the boathouse
Perhaps it
wasn't foreordained that in the first year of its existence, women's lightweight crew would go into nationals at the end of
May ranked number one, but it wasn't a huge surprise.
"Because of the success of Princeton's crew program, expectations were
high that the lightweight women would do well," says head coach Heather
Smith, who joined the coaching staff last summer. Once situated in the crew's
tower office at Dillon Gym, Smith set about building a team with current
students, some making the move from the open division and many others joining
who had no experience in a boat at all.
"My assistant coach, Andrea Theis, took on the novices, and I
managed the varsity," explains Smith, who
graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1992 and who
most recently worked at Columbia University as a novice coach and physical
education instructor.
With only 19 women in the fledgling program to support a varsity
eight and a novice eight, each boat requiring eight rowers and a coxswain, it can
get tricky if someone can't row. And then there's the weight limit to
consider. Lightweights cannot weigh more than 130 pounds on race day. Women
in the open division have no restrictions.
"We've gone through some pretty precarious moments this year,"
admits Smith. "During the winter I was down to seven people for varsity. I
pulled up a novice rower. And one of the coxswains from the open division
moved to lightweight."
Training for the lightweight crew is not much different from that
for the open division. Athletes row on water for two hours, five or six days a
week during the fall, and work out in the boathouse during the winter.
Winter workouts include ergometer exercises, weight lifting, and rowing in
indoor tanks. The only difference in regimen arises because of the need for the
athletes to maintain weight.
"Is there a problem with eating disorders? That's the $64,000
question," Smith allows, "especially for
a sport with a weight limit. Fortunately on campus, there is an Eating
Disorders Team, with psychotherapists, an athletic trainer, and a physician,
that works with coaches to help us identify and take care of the athletes."
In off-water training, Smith recommends a
lower-intensity workout. "We're trying to keep the weight down.
We go for a lower heart rate and longer duration." Smith says there are
limits on how much she can ask of students, but many of the women will put in
extra time on their own. "It is elective
training, and I work out a plan with those women who
want to do supplementary work."
Competition for lightweights during the fall
are the three-mile head races, involving up to 22 boats. A head
race is one in which the crew rows for time; the
shells cross the starting line at 10-second intervals.
During the spring races, which are 2,000 meters (approximately one and a quarter
miles), the crews compete on the water side by side.
Fitting start-up rowers into a well-established powerhouse such as
Princeton has been less of a problem than might have been expected. Smith
cannot stress often enough how cooperative the other coaches have been.
"Lori Dauphiny, the coach for the open women's crew, helped out a
lot, especially in the fall. She and I ran practices together for a couple
of weeks," says Smith, who is also quick to praise the men's coaches as well
as Dick Prentke '67 and David Covin '91, who have contributed time and
money to the program.
Smith, who is engaged to be married this summer, looks forward to
the fall. "I need to work on growing my team next year," she says. "We
want to add another varsity eight and a novice four. I also need to figure out the
team's relationship with the open-weight women. They have such a long
history of success and their own traditions. As we grow, we'll develop our own."
-- Lolly O'Brien
Princeton's state-of-the-art William M. Weaver
'34 Track and Field Stadium was dedicated May 2. The
Princeton Invitational, held after the ceremony, included
708 athletes from college and club teams.
Baseball
(25-13 overall, 13-9 Ivy)
W at Lehigh, 9-7
W/L at Cornell, 8-6/3-5
L/W vs. Cornell, 1-4/4-3
W at Seton Hall, 9-8
Ivy Championships:
L/L vs. Harvard, 6-13/4-13
M. Volleyball
(16-9 overall, 7-1 eiva)
NCAA Semifinals: L vs. Pepperdine, 0-3
W. Lacrosse
(12-4 overall, 6-1 Ivy)
L vs. Maryland, 11-12
W at Brown, 11-8
NCAA 1st Round: W vs. Georgetown, 12-11
NCAA Quarterfinals: L at Virginia 7-8
Softball
(30-16 overall, 6-4 Ivy)
W/W vs Rutgers, 2-0/5-0
L/W vs. Maryland, 46 /80
M. Heavyweight crew
(9-1 overall, 4-1 Ivy)
W vs. Brown, 5:31-5:39
M. lightweight crew
(7-0 overall, 4-0 Ivy)
W/W vs. Yale, Harvard,
5:38-5:43-5:46
W. Open crew
(9-1 overall, 61 Ivy)
W/W vs. Georgetown, GW, 6:20-6:26-6:35
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