Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
The Last 42
March 20, 2009 | Men's Lacrosse
The first picture shows four well-dressed men in Jadwin Gym. The young one, younger by decades than the other three, is smiling broadly.
His name is Greg Seaman, and he always seems to be smiling. He's smiling in the second picture as well, this one featuring nine young men, the nine seniors on the Princeton men's lacrosse team, as they stand together in Ireland during last year's European trip.
These two pictures go a long way to tell Greg Seaman's story.
The first shows his place in Princeton athletic history. The second shows his place with the current men's lacrosse team.
In the first, Seaman is flanked by Bill Bradley '65 and Dick Kazmaier '52, arugably the two greatest athletes ever to play at Princeton. The occasion is the retirement of the No. 42 that Bradley and Kazmaier both wore as undergrads at Princeton, Bradley as he led the men's basketball team to the NCAA Final Four a decade after Kazmaier won the Heisman Trophy as college football's top player. John McPhee '53, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, is also in the picture, as he was the featured speaker in the ceremony.
Why is Seaman in the picture? With the decision to retire the number across all sports, Seaman has become the last Princeton athlete ever to wear No. 42. When he graduates this spring, No. 42 goes with him.
“I was able to get a jersey signed by both of them,” Seaman says. “My mother framed it for me for Christmas. People have been joking about how I'm getting my number retired. A few of my friends were like ?you didn't do anything.' I try to argue a little.”
The second picture also speaks volumes about Seaman. The nine seniors stand on the shore of the Upper Lake at Glendalough, about 90 minutes outside of Dublin. It would be a waste of time to try to describe the sheer beauty of the lake and the mountains that surround it. What's more important here is where Seaman is in the picture. He stands dead in the center, with four teammates to his left and four to his right.
“I always knew he'd be a captain here someday,” says Princeton coach Bill Tierney.
Seaman is not the best player on this team, but his outgoing nature and innate leadership ability put him in the center of the team, literally as in the picture and figuratively as a tri-captain.
Those two pictures say a great deal about Seaman. There's a third picture that would be needed to tell the whole story, and it probably exists somewhere, hidden away in a drawer or a basement.
The third picture would show Seaman as a baby, with his proud father Tony and Tony's friend Bill.
Tony Seaman is the men's lacrosse coach at Towson. Tony's friend Bill is Tierney. Between them, they've won more than 500 Division I games and made 16 NCAA Final Four appearances (including one against each other, when Princeton defeated Towson in the 2001 semifinals). Tony Seaman is the only coach ever to take three teams to the Final Four, as he did so while at Penn and Johns Hopkins before going to Towson.
“I've known Greg since the day he was born,” Tierney says. “My relationship with his dad goes back to a coaches' meeting in 1974, when I had just become the coach at Great Neck South and Tony was the coach at Lynbrook. He talked me into playing them by saying they had a freshman goalie. They did. And he shut us out, and they won 15-0.”
Tierney and Tony Seaman have been extraordinarily close ever since. It has put Greg Seaman into a position that no other player at Princeton under Tierney has ever experienced, though two have come close.
“This is nothing like when he coached his sons,” Greg Seaman says. “But I can joke with him and get away with things other people couldn't. I know I can joke with him, and that bothers him. At the same time, he's certainly not afraid to yell at me.
“I met him before I can ever remember. I grew up around Coach [Dave] Cottle [the Maryland coach], Coach T and my dad. I'd be at a game or a camp or something, and he'd come up behind me and grab me. The other kids would be ?wow, it's Bill Tierney,' but I always knew him. I remember going to his house when I was a really little and watching a Disney movie with his kids. I think it was Bambi that we saw.”
Seaman may be right that this is different than when Tierney coached his own sons, , Trevor '01 and Brendan '02. At the same time, Tierney's relationship with Seaman is different than it is with any other player he's had at Princeton in 22 seasons other than Trevor and Brendan.
“He really reminds me so much of Brendan,” Tierney says. “He's able to say things to me and do things that the other guys might not. I always knew Princeton was right for him. I was more worried that I might not do right by him.”
Long before Tierney recruited Seaman, he grew up around his father's teams.
“I spent every Saturday going to my dad's games and watching the team play and cheering for them,” Greg Seaman says. “When I got old enough, I would go on the bus to away games. It was the best thing. I got to hang out with the players, be on the sidelines.”
Tony Seaman coached at Hopkins until 1999, when he was let go by the Blue Jays, something that has left Greg Seaman with some bitterness towards the school. Tony immediately went to Towson, and two years later he had the Tigers in the Final Four.
“It was kind of weird,” Greg says. “At least we didn't have to move. We stayed in the same house, and I went to the same school. It was actually a closer commute for him to work. He took them to the Final Four. I think the old man's done a pretty good job.”
The 2001 semifinal between Princeton and Towson came down to the wire before Sean Hartofilis' fourth goal won it for Princeton.
“I remember being on the sideline rooting hard against Princeton,” Greg says. “It's funny. The last time Princeton won, and I was avidly rooting against them. It's funny when I meet some of the older guys, like Jon Hess or guys like that. I rooted against them too.”
Like the Tierney boys, Seaman took up his father's sport ? “there's no way you cannot play,” he says ? and he became part of an MIAA “A” championship team at St. Paul's in Baltimore.
As a senior, he had 25 goals and 20 assists and was a top-flight face-off man, and Tierney outrecruited Seaman's dad to get him to Princeton.
“My dad sent me recruiting letters,” Seaman says. “It would have been a hard situation to play for my dad. I know Coach T did it, but it's hard on the players and the coach. It can be weird for the other players. It would have been hard for me to turn down a chance to go to Princeton.”
Seaman came to Princeton primarily as a face-off man, but he moved away from that spot to spend his time on attack or in the midfield. He has seen time on man-up offense.
This year he scored a goal against Hopkins at M&T Bank Stadium during Princeton's 14-8 win in the Konica Minolta Face-Off Classic, marking the second straight year he has scored against the Blue Jays. He works on the second midfield unit and man-up offense, and he has helped the Tigers to a 4-1 start and No. 5 national ranking.
“ It's been great being here,” he says. “It's been frustrating not having our season end the way we obviously want it to. The Georgetown overtime loss [in the 2007 NCAA tournament]. Losing last year to Dartmouth and Brown was the worst end to a year we could have had. Then, it's halfway through the summer, and you realize that this is going to be your last year. You can't say you're just a sophomore or just a junior. You have one year left, and you have to take advantage.”
Princeton's senior class features nine players, one of whom has been hurt for all four years (Tim Novick) and eight others who have been strong contributors for four years. They have mixed with a strong group of younger players to put the Tigers in the Top 5, though it is less than halfway through the season.
“Our trip to Europe was great,” Seaman says of the 11 days Princeton spent in Spain and Ireland. “It was a great opportunity to have a fun team trip. You don't always get that chance to spend time with your teammates like that, and it also gave us a chance to wash away the feeling from the end of last year. It made a fresh start happen faster. I think we've carried that loose attitude forward. It's a great honor to be a captain of this team.”
Whatever happens, Seaman does have his one place in history secure. He wore No. 24 in high school, but he couldn't get that number as a freshman, so he reversed it and took 42. Then he stuck with it when 24 became available the next year.
Now he'll be the last at Princeton to wear it. McPhee introduced him to the audience in Jadwin Gym last October as part of the ceremony, pretending to call on Bradley and mentioning Seaman instead.
It made the crowd laugh, and it left Seaman with a wide smile, as most situations do. It doesn't matter if he's mixing with Princeton athletic royalty or hanging out with his lacrosse buddies.
Or, for that matter, messing with his old family friend Bill Tierney.
- by Jerry Price