Top 12 Athletes of 2008: #1 Zane Kalemba

The Princeton University Office of Athletic Communications has chosen the top 12 athletes and events from Tiger athletics for the calendar year of 2008. The countdown will appear daily until reaching the top story for each. Only Princeton athletic events and achievements by athletes in Princeton uniforms were considered.

Dec. 15: #12 Jamie Lettire '10 (Softball)

Dec. 16: #11 Mauricio Sanchez '09 (Men's Squash)

Dec. 17: #10 Sarah Peteraf ' 09 (Women's Soccer)

Dec. 18: #9 Meagan Cowher '08 (Women's Basketball)

Dec. 19: #8 Mike Moore '08 (Men's Hockey)

Dec. 22: #7 Katie Reinprecht '12 (Field Hockey)

Dec. 23: #6 Jordan Culbreath '10 (Football)

Dec. 27: #5 Doug Lennox '09 (Men's Swimming)

Dec. 28: #4 Holly McGarvie '09 (Women's Lacrosse & Field Hockey)

Dec. 29: #3 Liz Costello '10 (Women's Cross Country and Track & Field)

Dec. 30: #2 Alicia Aemisegger '10 (Women's Swimming)
Dec. 31: #1 Zane Kalemba '10 (Men's Hockey)

#1 - Zane Kalemba '10

In hockey, the saying goes that you're often only as good as your goaltender. Well, if you're the Princeton men's hockey team, then you're in pretty good shape. Zane Kalemba was simply dominant in 2008 as the Tigers have climbed to heights not yet seen before from a Princeton hockey team.

It all starts almost a year ago as the Tigers, backstopped by Kalemba, went on a second-half stretch that resulted in a Ivy League championship, an ECAC Tournament championship and an NCAA tournament berth. With a record of 6-8 when the calendar changed to 2008, Kalemba went 15-6 over the second part of the season with a 2.00 goals-against average and a .927 save percentage.

He was perhaps at his best down the stretch as he recorded three shutouts and allowed just five goals in five games during Princeton's run through the ECAC tournament. His efforts led to ECAC Most Outstanding Player of the tournament honors and an All-Tournament team selection.

Kalemba finished last season on a roll and despite the summer layoff carried his momentum into the 2008-09 season. He entered the season as a preseason all-league selection and is currently 12-1 with one shutout, a 1.50 goals-against average and a .939 save percentage. He has allowed two goals or less in 12 of his appearances. Meanwhile Princeton is 12-2 overall, is tied for the lead in the ECAC standings, ranked in the Top 10 and atop several computer rankings such as the pairwise, RPI and KRACH.

Combined for the two parts of 2008, Kalemba is 27-7 in the Princeton goals with five shutouts, a 1.81 goals-against average and a .931 save percentage.

#2 - Alicia Aemisegger '10

Junior swimmer Alicia Aemisegger did as much in 2008 alone as most Ivy League women's swimmers have ever dreamed of accomplishing in a career. She set four Princeton and six DeNunzio Pool records and led the Tigers to their third straight Ivy League title.

Aemisegger was named the 2008 Ivy League Championships Swimmer of the Meet after winning the 500, 1000 and 1650 free events by wide margins each. She then led six of her teammates to the NCAA championships, where she earned four All-America honors, including one in the 800 free relay, Princeton's first All-America honor in a relay since 1981. She earned individual All-America honors in the 500, 1650 and the 400 IM. 

Aemisegger had some impressive results beyond Princeton as well, especially at the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials. She reached the 400 IM final, which was televised live on NBC and included U.S. Olympians Katie Hoff and Elizabeth Beisel.

#3 - Liz Costello '10

A three-time first-team All-Ivy League selection, Liz Costello has been Princeton's top cross country runner the past two seasons. Her quality times throughout the season earned the Tigers the No. 4 position in the national poll in week 4, and they would hold on to that ranking through the end of the season.

This year she won her second individual Ivy League Heptagonal title, giving Princeton its third straight team championship. At the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional, Costello was consistently among the top runners throughout the race but came on strong down the shoot to the finish line. She sprinted to pass another runner in the final stretch to take second place, which helped the Tigers to a first-place tie and an automatic bid to the NCAA Championship. She placed 11th at the national championship and helped Princeton a fifth-place finish, its best finish in program history.

Costello earned her second All-America award, but first in the sport of cross country, in November. Her first came during the 2007 indoor track and field season in the distance medley relay.

#4 - Holly McGarvie '09

For anyone who has spent any time at Class of '52 Stadium in either the spring or fall, to see Holly McGarvie's name on this list can not b a surprise. An All-America selection in both lacrosse and field hockey, McGarvie's 2008 was a year to remember.

Her year began in the spring with the lacrosse season. McGarvie led the Princeton women with 35 goals in 18 games and added 11 assists to place third on the team with 46 points as Princeton made its 11th straight NCAA tournament appearance and advanced to the quarterfinals. McGarvie was a two-time player of the week selection, a unanimous first-team All-Ivy selection, a Tewaaraton Trophy nominee and a first-team All-America.

McGarvie continued the calendar year with career highs in goals and points in her senior field hockey season. Her 12 goals and five assists for 29 points ranked her third on the team in scoring as she helped Princeton to its fourth straight Ivy League title and the NCAA quarterfinals for the second time in three years. She was a first-team All-Ivy, second-team All-Region and third-team All-America selection.

#5 - Doug Lennox '09

While Doug Lennox will undoubtedly best remember 2008 as the year he competed for Puerto Rico in the Summer Olympics, this list honors only what Princeton student-athletes did while sporting the Orange and Black. And that was still more than enough to qualify the senior swimming tri-captain.

Lennox was Princeton's top swimmer in 2008 and won the Tigers' only EISL championship when he took the 200 fly in 1:44.36. He had a trio of top three finishes during the championship weekend, including a second-place finish in the 100 fly. But Lennox made his mark at the NCAA championships, when he lowered his EISL mark by an amazing 1.56 seconds to place fourth in the NCAA final. His 200 fly time of 1:42.80 gave him first-team All-America honors and easily set the Princeton record.

And while his Olympic appearance didn't earn him a spot on this list, it is still quite noteworthy. As a member of the Puerto Rican delegation (his mother is a native of the United States territory), he qualified in both breast events and traveled to Beijing to compete in the Games. His blog can be found on the men's swimming and diving page on GoPrincetonTigers.com.

#6 - Jordan Culbreath '10

Jordan Culbreath did plenty in 2008. He became the first Princeton back to win the Ivy League rushing title since 2002. He was one of only two unanimous first-team All-Ivy selections. He posted the best single-game rushing performance in the post-Keith Elias era and the fifth-best in Ivy League history. And he made a lot of Princeton fans quite excited for 2009.

All things considered, it was an impressive stretch for the first-time starter. Culbreath led the league and ranked eighth nationally with 1206 rushing yards this season. He had four games with at least 150 yards rushing and scored 11 touchdowns overall, including 10 on the ground. He had touchdowns in eight games and led Princeton to the No. 1 rushing offense in the Ivy League.

And like a Hollywood thriller, he saved the climax for the end. In the season finale against Dartmouth, when he needed 70 yards to eclipse the 1000-yard mark, Culbreath ran the ball 40 times for 276 yards and a pair of touchdowns. His 276 yards was the second-most in Princeton history, ranking only behind a 299-yard performance from Princeton all-time rushing leader Keith Elias. Ironically, Elias was on the sideline for the Dartmouth game and cheered Culbreath on during his potential record-breaking game.

#7 - Katie Reinprecht '12

Katie Reinprecht entered the fall of 2008 as one of the top incoming freshmen in all of collegiate field hockey. She finished the season as the Ivy League's Player of the Year and a second-team All-America as she helped Princeton to the NCAA quarterfinals for the second time in three years.

Reinprecht and the Tigers were simply dominating from the start of the season. Reinprecht had a goal or an assist in all but one game she played in as she finished the season with 15 goals, 13 assists and 43 points. She scored four game-winning goals and helped the Tigers to a 17-3 overall record and a perfect 7-0 record in Ivy play.

Reinprecht was a two-time Ivy League Player/Rookie of the Week and at the end of the season was honored as the League's Player of the Year and a first-team selection. She was also a first-team all-region and second-team All-America choice.

The only thing that seemed to hold Reinprecht back was the game she missed when playing for the United States at the Junior Pan-Am Cup in Mexico City. That said, Reinprecht and her teammates did win gold.

#8 - Mike Moore '08

Mike Moore is on the list for as much as he did off the ice as he did on. A disappointing 6-1 loss at Minnesota State on Dec. 28 left the Tigers with a 5-8 record and a sense on uncertainty about the remainder of a season that started out so promising.

Enter Moore, the team's captain and leader on and off the ice. He responded two days later with a goal and an assist in a win at Nebraska-Omaha in what his coaches have since described as his best game as a Tiger. Moore set the tone for his team, which went on to win 16 of the next 21 games to win the ECAC Championship and make an NCAA tournament experience.

Moore has as a good a season as a college defenseman could have. He scored seven goals and added 17 assists for 24 points to lead all ECAC defensemen in scoring and rank in the top 10 nationally. All but one of his points came before that game at Nebraska-Omaha and he was a +10 from the game on.

Moore was named the ECAC Defenseman of the Year, a first-team All-ECAC and first-team All-Ivy selection, and, along with teammate Lee Jubinville, a first-team All-America selection.

#9 - Meagan Cowher '08

Meagan Cowher set the Princeton record for points in a season once again in 2008, becoming the first Tiger ever to reach 500 in a season that saw her claim first-team All-Ivy League honors for the third straight year.

Cowher finished with 532 points, scoring double-digits in 28 of Princeton's 30 games with a high of 32 against Lafayette.

Knowing she'd need 544 points in her final season to tie Sandi Bittler ?90 for the program career record, Cowher made quite a run in the season's last few games, scoring 25, 26 and 31 against Columbia, Cornell and Penn, respectively, to finish with 1,671 for her career. It was just 12 short of the record.

By capping her career with another first-team All-Ivy honor, she became the first Tiger to make the first team three times, three seasons after she became Princeton's first player to win an Ivy League Rookie of the Year award.

#10 - Sarah Peteraf '09

Heading into the season, it was anybody's guess as to who would lead the Princeton women's soccer team in goals. Most of the last links to the 2004 College Cup semifinal run had graduated, and the postseason drought stood at three seasons for a program that had reached the NCAA tournament six straight years before.

In stepped Sarah Peteraf.

A midfielder who had scored four goals combined in her first three seasons, Peteraf tripled that total in her final year as a Tiger, leading Princeton to a 12-3-2 record and an NCAA tournament at-large bid.

Her 12 goals weren't piled up against a few weaker opponents. Instead, it seemed that each of them decided a game, and none was bigger than the double-overtime goal at Columbia that gave Princeton a key tiebreaker and a win that likely put it over the top for the at-large NCAA berth.

Peteraf earned first-team All-Ivy League honors and was a solid candidate for Ivy League Player of the Year, tying for the league lead in goals. She also made third-team all-region by the NSCAA.

Princeton finished 5-1-1 in the Ivy League, gaining a share of the league title on another double-overtime goal in the regular-season finale against Penn by Peteraf's fellow senior, Taylor Numann.

#11 - Mauricio Sanchez '09

Mauricio Sanchez dominated the Ivy League like few athletes in any of the 33 league sports last year. Between the second half the 2007-08 season, the 2008 postseason and the first part of the 2008-09 season, Sanchez played against nine Ivy League opponents.

He went 9-0. That alone is impressive, but he never lost an individual game against an Ivy rival either. His 27-0 mark in individual games helped him win the 2008 Ivy League Player of the Year honor (his second in as many seasons) and has given him an early jump on the 2009 honor. He reached the 2008 national semifinal before cramping late in a marathon four-game loss to Trinity's Gustav Detter.

Sanchez guided Princeton to its third straight Ivy League title in 2008 and has already moved the Tigers to 2-0 in the league this season. No Princeton graduating class has won four Ivy League squash titles, but Sanchez could lead the talented Class of 2009, which features Kimlee Wong and Hesham El Halaby, to such a distinction.

#12 - Jamie Lettire '10

When a 15-1 start to the Ivy League season looked like it might not be good enough for even an Ivy South division title, Jamie Lettire pushed the Tigers through in an improbably dramatic way.

Princeton knew it would have to sweep the last two games, both at Class of 1895 Field, of a four-game series against Cornell in order to avoid a one-game playoff and advance to the Ivy League Championship Series, which would then put it two wins from the NCAA tournament.

After the Tigers fell behind 7-1 and 11-6 in Game 3 of the series, Lettire stepped to the plate with Princeton down 11-10 and two out in the bottom of the sixth. She took a 3-2 pitch over the fence to put Princeton ahead, and three outs later, the Tigers were one win closer.

Lettire, however, still wasn't done willing the Tigers to a division title. Princeton had lost a 4-2 lead and entered its last at-bat down by a run. After a Kathryn Welch solo home run to tie it, Lettire homered again, and when the ball cleared the fence, the Tigers had won a division title in a day of softball like '95 Field hadn't seen before.

The next weekend, in the Ivy League Championship Series against Harvard, Lettire pitched Princeton to a 4-2 win in Game 1 and hit a three-run homer in the first inning of Game 2 as Princeton clinched the NCAA bid.

Though the division-title and league-title clinchers were the highlight, Lettire's performance on those days was an indication of her season as a whole. At the plate, she co-led Princeton with 14 home runs and led the team with 41 RBI. In the circle, she was Princeton's winningest pitcher at 8-4 with a team-best 3.46 ERA while going undefeated in the Ivy League at 6-0.

All of that netted Lettire Ivy League Co-Player of the Year honors as well as first team all-region and third-team All-America status, the national honor being Princeton's first in 13 years.

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