Princeton University Athletics
Thursday TigerBlog - Hockey At Home — And An Important PSA
October 30, 2025 | Tiger Blog
TigerBlog is here today to save your life.
Literally.
TB recently found out that he has malignant melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer. Left untreated, it would spread to his lymph nodes and from there throughout his body, ultimately killing him.
Because it was caught early, it'll be removed surgically and that'll be that. No spread. No follow-up treatment. No big deal.
It wasn't caught because it looked like anything suspicious. It was just a freckle on the top of his foot. It's been there forever.
It was caught early because he goes to get regular dermatology check-ups every six months. His dermatologist saw it and said that it had gotten a little bigger since the last time, and so she scraped some of it off and had it biopsied. It came back as melanoma.
It's very likely that this all started way back around 1990 or so, when his foot was badly sunburned — painfully sunburned. Since then, he has been diligent about putting on sunscreen, especially on his foot. And yet all these years later, there you go.
If you think you're too young to worry about this, one of the leading groups who at a high risk for melanoma are women under 30.
So let that be a lesson to you. Go to the dermatologist. Get checked regularly. Always use sunscreen.
You can thank TB later.
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There will be a lot of hockey on Princeton's campus this weekend, of all kinds — men's, women's and field.
TB will start with field hockey. The last game of the regular season comes up Saturday at noon at home against Columbia. After that, Princeton will be at Harvard next weekend for the Ivy League tournament, with the NCAA tournament the week after that.
Princeton is currently ranked fifth in Division I in the NFHCA coaches' poll and third in RPI, with an astonishing eight wins over fellow RPI Top 20 teams. Being in the NCAA tournament is an almost certainty. The question is whether or not the Tigers will be one of the four host teams for the first two rounds.
Princeton takes an eight-game winning streak into the game against the Lions Saturday. The Tigers will also have the reigning Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week (sophomore Izzy Morgan) and reigning Ivy Defensive Co-Player of the Week (Ottilie Sykes).
You know all about Beth Yeager, the Olympian who is one of the greatest players in Princeton history. What you might not realize about this team is that Yeager is its only senior starter.
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By the way, if you run into a member of the field hockey team, ask her about TigerBlog's performance of "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" during Bus Karaoke on the way back from Brown last week.
Other highlights were senior tri-captain Ella Hampson's rendition of "Someone Like You" (Hampson can really, really sing) and Yeager and fellow senior Helena Große's duet of "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart." It's really their song now.
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Baker Rink will be the home for four hockey games this weekend, with a pair of doubleheaders tomorrow and Saturday.
The weekend will begin with the women against RPI at 3 tomorrow, and the men will play Alaska-Fairbanks at 7. The teams will have the same start times Saturday, with the women against Union and the men against Alaska-Fairbanks.
Courtney Kessel pick up her first career win as Tiger head coach last weekend, with a 4-2 win at Brown. RPI and Union were both swept in their ECAC openers last weekend.
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The Princeton men are opening their regular season and doing so against a team that flew 4,318 miles to get to Baker Rink.
When TB went to the website for Alaska-Fairbanks (which was the coaching stop for Guy Gadowsky before he came to Princeton), he was distracted by the lead story, which was of the Nanooks' shooting team and its third-place finish at Air Force. Which two teams finished 1-2? How about Georgia Southern and TCU? Seems very random.
Meanwhile, over on the men's hockey page, Alaska-Fairbanks is 2-6-0 on the young season, but don't be mislead. The team split two games against Quinnipiac (in Arizona, of all places) and against Michigan Tech, and was swept by Minnesota-Duluth and Wisconsin in games that were hardly one-sided.
Princeton won its exhibition game 2-0 last week against Simon Fraser.