TFH ’23 - Preseason No. 10 Nationally, Ivy League Favorite

As the Princeton field hockey team prepares for the start of the 2023 season, it does so as the No. 10 team in the preseason NFHCA coaches' poll and as the preseason favorite in the Ivy League according to the media poll.

Princeton received 12 of 14 votes in the Ivy poll, which featured two voters from each of the Ivy League locations, to finish with 123 points, seven ahead of Harvard, who had 116 points and the remaining four first place votes. The winner of the Princeton-Harvard game has gone 7-0 in the league while the loser has gone 6-1 each of the last five years, with three wins for Princeton.

The 2023 season marks something new in Ivy League field hockey, and that's a four-team tournament to determine the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. If the preseason poll holds true, then the other two teams in the tournament would be Penn and Cornell, who were picked to finish third and fourth. After that, it goes Yale, Brown, Columbia and Dartmouth.

Princeton opens its season Friday, Sept. 1, when it takes on Louisville at Penn in the annual ACC-Ivy League Challenge. Princeton will also play defending NCAA champion North Carolina Sunday, Sept. 3, on the second day of the event; Penn will play North Carolina and Louisville in reverse order.

UNC is the preseason No. 1 team, while Lousivlle is No. 9. Princeton will also play three other teams in the Top 10 — No. 2 Northwestern (Sept. 24 in Evanston), No. 3 Maryland (Sept. 14 in College Park) and No. 8 Syracuse (Oct. 8 in Princeton). The TIgers also play Harvard (No. 13), UConn (No. 15) and Rutgers (No. 16).

Princeton comes off a season in which it won its 27th Ivy League title, which is two more than the rest of the league has combined. Princeton fell in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Syracuse.

The 2023 Tigers will have a considerably different look than a year ago, as eight seniors, all of whom were starters, graduated. In addition, Beth Yeager, a two-time first-team All-American, will be out this season as she plays with the United States national team in its Olympic qualifying. She will be back next year with two seasons remaining.

Princeton's leading returning scorer is Grace Schulze, who had six goals and 10 assists last year as a junior. Schulze is one of three Tiger captains, along with returning All-Ivy League goalie Robyn Thompson and Academic All-Ivy selection Sam Davidson, who had seven goals a year ago.

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