Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Golf Teams to Head to Saucon Valley for the Ivy League Championships
April 21, 2015 | Men's Golf, Women's Golf
Above: Video with Quinn Prchal, Jordan Lippetz, Alex Wong and Alex Dombrowski as the Tigers prepare for the Ivy League Championships.
Men's Live Scoring | Women's Live Scoring
The Princeton men's golf team has challenged itself against nationally ranked opponents from coast to coast. The women have collected wins and runner-up finishes going back to the fall season.
But when the two Tiger fives hit the Grace Course at Saucon Valley Country Club in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for Friday's first round at the Ivy League Championships, all those results will count for are experience and some confidence.
The Ivy League Championships will run Friday through Sunday with 18 holes each day. Princeton's women will begin teeing off Friday from the first hole at 10:55 a.m., and the Tiger men will start Friday at 10:50 a.m. on the 10th hole. Eric Mitchell, Alex Dombrowski, Marc Hedrick, Michael Davis and Quinn Prchal will represent the men, while Caroline Araskog, Tenley Shield, Alexandra Wong, Jordan Lippetz and Hana Ku will represent the women.
For the women, the run of first-place and second-place finishes couldn't have started at a more fortuitous place for this year's Ivy meet. After starting the fall season with a 13th-place finish in a challenging field at Vanderbilt's Mason Rudolph Invitational, the women climbed the leaderboard to fifth at Penn State's tournament and fourth at the annual Princeton Invite before winning the team title at the Lehigh Invitational on the same Grace Course at Saucon Valley.
Since then, the women won the Low Country Intercollegiate in South Carolina and finished runner-up at Seton Hall's Pirate Invitational and the Brown Invitational. Along the way, Princeton has encountered every Ivy opponent, and the results suggest the Tigers will be in the mix this weekend. The Princeton women have finished ahead of Brown, Dartmouth and Penn a combined seven times in as many chances across the tournaments last fall and this spring, and while Columbia, Harvard and Yale have finished ahead of Princeton more often than the reverse in 2014-15, the Tigers have come in ahead of Columbia and Yale, both at Seton Hall's event this spring, and its only chance against Harvard was back at the Penn State tournament in the fall.
Both Tiger teams are young, with the lineup including no seniors for any tournaments this spring for either squad. Sophomore Ku has led Princeton three times, the same as junior Wong. Sophomore Prchal and freshmen Mitchell and Davis have led Princeton's men two times apiece between the fall and the spring seasons.
Hoisting the Ivy trophy would be new to any of the women's team members and a first for much of the men's team. Prchal and junior Matt Gerber were part of Princeton's five at the 2013 Ivy Championship, and though the women are aiming for their first Ivy title since 2005, no team has come closer to unseating three-time reigning champ Harvard than Princeton. In 2013, Princeton was a single stroke behind the Crimson out of more than 900 before Harvard put 21 strokes between them and the runner-up Tigers a year ago.
Princeton's men have faced every Ivy team between the fall and spring except Columbia, and have finished ahead of Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth and Penn 10 times in 10 chances. Princeton has encountered Harvard and Yale twice each and the Crimson and the Bulldogs were in front of the Tigers each time.
The men are coming off their highest finish of the spring at the annual Princeton Invitational, which took place this year at Aronimink Golf Club and Merion Golf Club where the Tigers finished fifth. It was the only tournament of the spring that Princeton was in the field with any other Ivy foes, as the Tigers went south (Georgia, Texas A&M) and west (Stanford) earlier in the spring, putting themselves alongside several nationally ranked opponents.
All of that provides a background for the Princeton men's and women's golf teams as they head to Bethlehem, but all that counts toward hoisting the trophy Sunday afternoon is what happens over 54 holes beginning Friday.