Princeton University Athletics
Wednesday TigerBlog - National Champ, Again
January 28, 2026 | Tiger Blog
So Bill Belichick will not be a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer?
Apparently not, if the stories that TigerBlog saw yesterday are true. To the list of reasons that were speculated upon in these stories TB adds this: Stiff Princeton associate head field hockey coach and huge Patriots fan Dina Rizzo on a picture request and you have to wait at least a year to get into any Hall of Fame.
Don't remember that story? You can read it again HERE.
Just make sure you don't make the same mistake.
As an aside, it's possible that there are other factors that have gotten in Belichick's way, such as his record with and without Tom Brady as his starting quarter, the fact that Brady won a Super Bowl without Belichick and the fact that the Patriots have now made it back to the big game without him as well.
The whole no-picture-with-Dina thing didn't help of course.
The subject today isn't Halls of Fame though. It's national champions.
Princeton added another one yesterday when junior Zeina Zein won the College Squash Association individual championship for the second straight season. This time, Zein took down Harvard's Caroline Fouts 11-8, 12-10, 5-11, 14-12 in the final.
Zein is now 12-1 all-time in the individual championships, beginning as a freshman, when she reached the semifinals. She's also 10-0 in matches played in the majestic squash facility that has been set up in New York City's Grand Central Terminal.
Fouts actually led 3-0 in Game 1, 6-0 in Game 2 and had two game balls in Game 4. Zein toughed it out each time.
The win vaults her into elite Princeton women's squash company as the fourth Tiger to be at least a two-time national champion. The other three are Wendy Zaharko (1972, 74, 75), Demer Holleran (1986, 87, 89) and Julia Beaver (1999, 2000, 01).
Zaharko has one of the most amazing stories of any athlete in Princeton history. Her freshman year of 1970 was wiped out by a spinal condition combined with a fall on a wet Jadwin Gym court that left her in a full body cast that she referred to as a "turtle shell."
Despite all that, she would never lose a squash match at Princeton. The missing championship on her resume came her sophomore year, when a conflict between the U.S. national championships and a Princeton regular season match led to her leaving the team and not competing in the college final.
Zaharko, by the way, is a medical doctor today, as is Beaver.
Zein's repeat got TigerBlog to thinking about other Princeton athletes who have been multiple time individual national champions.
Staying with the sport of squash, the men's program has had six different multiple time individual champs. The first was back in 1941 and 42, when Charles Brinton was the winner. The others were Roger Campbell (1954, 55), Stephen Vehslage (1959, 60, 61), Jeff Stanley (1987, 88), Peter Yik (1999. 2000) and of course Yasser El Halaby (2003, 04, 05, 06).
Off the top of his head, TB can think of Tora Harris, who won two NCAA high jump championships (indoor and outdoor 2002) and Sondre Guttormsen, who won three NCAA pole vault championships (indoor 2022, 23; outdoor 2022).
Soren Thompson (2001, 03) was a two-time individual fencing national champion. George Church was the 1912 and 1914 individual national tennis champ. G.T. Dunlap was a two-time NCAA individual golf champion (1930, 31).
There might be others who escaped TB's notice. Either way, you can see how hard it is to do what Zein has just accomplished.
And she has another year to try to make it a three-peat. Or a Z-peat.
