Andrew Song: A Rarity On The Lacrosse Field
May 25, 2021 | Men's Lacrosse
From a distance, looking down on a lacrosse field, they are an army in Princeton helmets, distinguishable only by the different numbers on their jerseys. Number 32 stands out.
Number 32 plays with tenacity and ferocity mixed with grace and skill, which is a combination that is hard to miss. He gives maximum effort at all times. He is always in the middle of the storm. He checks off every box you could want from a longstick, the lone exception being that he is 5-10, 185 pounds and not five inches taller and 40 pounds heavier. Other than that? He’s the complete deal.
Ability to cover one on one? Check. Ability to play off ball? Check. Great positional player? Check. Versatile? Can play longstick midfielder or close defense? Check? Great on the face-off wings? Check. Turns defense to offense? Check. He’s one of the best – and one of the most underrated – ever to play his position at Princeton.
“I truly think Andrew is one of the best players in the Ivy League, if not the country, and I can't wait to see him get his proper recognition next year,” says Number 17, his Princeton teammate, roommate and best friend, not to mention a first-team All-American defenseman himself. “He is vastly underrated, in part because he is so smooth and makes plays so effortlessly.”
To give you a sense of how Number 32 plays the game, you need to go only so far as to his second game ever at Princeton, back in his freshman season of 2018. Princeton was at Virginia, down three goals in the second quarter. It was then that Number 32 made one of the greatest plays a Princeton longstick has ever made.
Coming off the wing on the face-off, he ran towards the middle of the field. When the play came his way, he made a 180-degree turn and scooped the ball away from a Cavalier who was draped all over him. Now facing the sideline, he turned back towards the goal, splitting to UVa players to do so. Instead of slowing and looking for an outlet, he accelerated and sprinted towards the crease, where he was challenged by three Virginia longsticks. He dipped his stick just enough to get his hands free and then dove parallel to the goal line, ripping the ball into the top of the net as he did.
“Watching Andrew score that goal in the first half against UVA in Charlottesville is one of my all-time favorite moments,” Number 17 says. “The goal itself was incredible, but it also inspired our entire team seeing a young freshman make that type of play in such a big game.”
That was the breakout moment for Number 32. The only thing that has stopped him from standing out on a lacrosse field since has been a global pandemic. Number 32 also stands out, albeit in a much different way, when they all take those helmets off.
Nobody else looks like he does.
Number 32 on the Princeton men’s lacrosse team is named Andrew Song. The son of Chinese immigrants, he and his sister Catherine, Princeton Class of 2021, are first generation American citizens. He is the only Chinese lacrosse player at Princeton now and one of few who have ever played for the Tigers, and he has dealt with the positives, and sadly, the negatives that have come along with being an Asian-American athlete. On the negative side, he has heard it all. Every slur. Every stereotype. Every insult. He’s especially heard them throughout his athletic career, on the ice and on the field.
How does he handle it?
“I get support from a stable family around me,” Song says. “My parents have always told me to let my play speak for itself. No matter what anyone says to me, don’t get caught up in that. I’ve definitely dealt with the presence of racism growing up. That’s persisted and been there through the years. I’ve had things said to me and done to me that weren’t great.”
Then he pauses. As he does, it seems like he’s reliving all of those moments. And, at the same time, he appears to be reminding himself of all of the people who have been there for him, and with him.
“My actual family,” he finally says. “And my Princeton lacrosse family.”
If you mention the goal against Virginia to his coach, then you’ll get to see Matt Madalon reenact it, walking first toward an imaginary sideline and ending with an imaginary dive across the front of the crease, all with a little commentary along the way.
“I love the guy,” Madalon says. “He’s just an amazing player and an even better person.”
As for Number 17, that would be first-team All-American defenseman George Baughan, Song’s best friend from Day 1 at Princeton, when they were randomly assigned to the same residential college. Like Song, his motor is always going on the lacrosse field.
“I was fortunate to have been placed near Andrew basically since our Princeton experience began,” Baughan says. “We were randomly assigned dorms on the same hallway freshman year, and we also were placed on the same Outdoor Action trip. We spent a week in the cold and rainy woods of Central Pennsylvania, and I saw firsthand how Andrew connected with everyone easily. He is a guy everyone in our locker room looks up to and respects. While he is typically the smartest guy in the room, he is also the most humble and is always willing to consider the ideas and opinions of everyone around him. Hard work underlies all of Andrew's success and he serves as an inspiration to me and many others on the team.”
Andrew Song’s parents met on a train in China. They would get married and move to the United States, while every other member of his family on both sides stayed in China. Once in this country, they settled outside of Boston, where his mom works in the pharmaceutical industry and his father is a software engineer.
They were also active, though not in organized athletics. And when their children were little, they saw how different the youth sports scene was in the United States.
“They would run, ski, hike,” Song says. “From the moment they immigrated, that was what they pursued. There weren’t a lot of rec sports in China, but once they settled down and saw and heard about all the sports opportunities, they thought we should try them all. They taught me to ski and skate when I was two. I remember long hikes with my parents and sister. Any time I said that I saw these kids playing this or that, they’d encourage me. They signed me up for soccer, tennis, hockey and lacrosse.”
He first excelled at hockey, but he realized lacrosse would be his path to college athletics. He’d been handed a pole in seventh grade, and he took to it immediately. By his senior year at Roxbury Latin, he was a US Lacrosse All-American.
“I remember his first day of practice,” Madalon says. “He told me that I just needed to tell him what to do and he would do it the best he could. I said ‘we’re not going to have any problems with him.’ He’s been such a valuable part of our program since he first walked into our lockerroom. He’s a great player, but he brings so much more with him every day.”
In hockey, he was a goal scorer. In lacrosse, he’s a defender. The intersection of the two sports can be seen in his ability to pick up ground balls. He’s been Princeton’s leader in ground balls by a longstick each of his first two full seasons plus the five-game pandemic-shortened 2020 season. He often will steer the ball, hockey style, to open space on the field, where he will pounce on it and start the other way
He has scored five goals – on five career shots. He scored in three consecutive games his sophomore year, something there is no record of any other Princeton longstick ever doing. He’s also the only longstick in program history to have a game with at least one goal, one ground ball, one face-off win and one caused turnover, something he did in the Virginia game his freshman year, earning Ivy League Rookie of the Week honors and catching the attention of Virginia head coach Lars Tiffany.
“A possession player,” says Tiffany, whose Cavalier teams routinely lead the nation in ground balls. “Is there anything more valuable than an athlete that continuously gobbles up more than his fair share of loose balls? Unfortunately for us, for three years, we have witnessed first-hand Number 32 Andrew Song swoop in and secure ground balls on face-off wings and the Tigers’ defensive end.”
Song has started a few games on close defense, but he’s mostly been the No. 1 longstick midfielder in all three of his seasons. He was an honorable mention All-Ivy League selection as a sophomore, and he was headed to league and national postseason honors through five games of his junior year, all of which were Princeton wins, including a 16-12 win at Virginia, who won the NCAA title in 2019. Princeton was ranked in the top three of every national poll, and the team was headed for a big May run when the season was yanked away by the pandemic.
“Thinking back to last March, we were obviously extremely sad and disappointed,” Song says. “We were having a great year. We’d been going through our metamorphosis. To not have that pan out and have that chance to grow into what we knew we could be, that was so disappointing. I hope we would have been playing on Memorial Day weekend. But Coach Madalon always says to control the controllables. You can’t control a pandemic. As a team, we moved forward.”
All but one of the would-be seniors took off the 2020-21 academic year, to give themselves another year to play together. They’ve lived together in groups during their year off, working out on their own to be ready for next season.
“It shows how committed we are to staying part of the family,” he says. “What we were in the process of doing last year was special. We wanted the chance to continue to forge those relationships and move forward to do something special together.”
Song has embraced his Chinese heritage as much as he has his place on the Princeton men’s lacrosse team. He represented his parent’s native country in the U-19 World Championships in British Columbia in 2016 and then again in the 2018 World Championships in Israel.
“Getting a chance to represent China was awesome,” he says. “Lacrosse in China is growing. It’s not really that big yet, but they’re in the process of trying to make it more popular. Playing for China was a way to be able to connect with my heritage and my roots while doing something I love. I made a lot of good, lasting friendships with that. I got a chance to play with guys who look like me.”
There are not many great lacrosse players who do. In fact, there were none he grew up idolizing, the way the current generation of Black players grew up idolizing players like Johns Hopkins’ Kyle Harrison and Princeton’s Damien Davis. Also, like Davis has said many times, Song recognizes that there are players out there now who are looking up to him as their own role model.
“There were times in high school when I’d second-guess myself and think that it would be great to have a mentor,” he says. “Because there weren’t a lot of Asian lacrosse players, I looked to the world of Asians in all sports to find Asian players. For me, watching Jeremy Lin be a superstar was awesome. In soccer, there was Son Heung-min [Tottenham Hotspurs]. Even though I didn’t see many Asians in lacrosse, and not really many in football and hockey, it was always great to see Asians in other sports. As for me, it means a lot to know that there might be kids who look up to me. I love getting messages on Instagram or texts from guys and talking to them and helping them. I want to see Asian-Americans to play sports and excel at them. I hear from Asian-American kids who want to know I came to Princeton, how I came to play lacrosse. I want to be supportive and a sounding board.”
He relishes this role, something that’s not been lost on his teammates. Up next for Song is his delayed senior year and final lacrosse season at Princeton. He spent the year off first in Park City, Utah, and then at home with his family before coming to Princeton in February. He’s worked for a start-up digital marketing agency and then started an internship with a technology focused private equity firm. An economics major, he’ll be working in investing in business and tech, possibly in China.
“It has been great to watch Andrew grow closer to his Chinese heritage throughout his time at Princeton,” Baughan says. “He has taken multiple Chinese language and culture courses throughout his time at Princeton and is fully fluent now. Andrew isn't the type of kid to let an opportunity go to waste, and he recognized the importance of learning the language. On our team, we are very welcoming and very inclusive of all races, religions and ethnicities. It has been great for our team and me personally to learn more about his heritage and see firsthand him embrace it through studies and extra-curriculars at Princeton. I can't say more about how much Andrew has meant me, this team, and this program over the past few years.”
When Princeton takes its next face-off, Andrew Song will be on the wing, set as he always is, ready to pounce. He is a rare player on a lacrosse field, distinguishable by his play, and by his looks. There is great meaning in both.
- by Jerry Price
