Princeton University Athletics
Friday TigerBlog - So Good, So Good, So Good
March 06, 2026 | Tiger Blog
It's too bad you weren't at the Princeton Department of Athletics staff meeting yesterday.
You missed out on hearing Deputy Director of Athletics Anthony Archbald's rendition of "Sweet Caroline."
It was part of what Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack calls "Forced Family Fun." These are the small games that he loves to bring out to start meetings, games that are designed to promote staff bonding, make things a little lighter and just generally remind everyone that there's a time to be serious and a time to laugh.
Yesterday's game was "Grab the Mic," which saw two teams of five players randomly chosen (TigerBlog wasn't among them). The basic premise is that each team would put up one player at a time to go head-to-head with a player from the other team. A word would then flash up on the big screen in the front of the room, and the first player to "grab the mic" and sing a line or two from a song that had that lyric in it would earn a point for that team.
One of the words, by the way, was "Family," as in the obvious "We are family." TB has been trying to think of another.
Anthony's big performance was when the word "Sweet" came up. How was his singing?
So good. So good. So good.
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The Princeton women's team is in Lake Placid today for the ECAC semifinals, where the second-seeded Tigers will take on third-seeded Quinnipiac at 7. The day begins at 4, with top-seeded Yale against fourth-seeded Cornell.
The winners will play Saturday at 5 for the championship, which will bring with it an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. It's almost a certainty that three of the four teams — and maybe all four — in Lake Placid will have their seasons continue on past this weekend.
Princeton is currently ninth in the NPI ratings, which determine NCAA spots in hockey. There will be 11 teams in the NCAA field, with one automatic bid to a team that will not be in the top 11 of the ratings.
Going back to the regular season, Princeton won both of its meetings against Quinnipiac, 4-3 in Princeton and 2-0 in Hamden. When were those games played? Nov. 20 and 22.
Yes, the hockey season is a long one. And yes, it would be great to see it go even longer for the Tigers.
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In addition to Forced Family Fun, one of the other features of the department staff meetings would be the awarding of mini-Gargoyles to head coaches of championship-winning teams. The one yesterday saw five of them given out: men's and women's swimming and diving, men's and women's indoor track and field and women's squash.
Those five brought the number of Ivy titles for the academic year to 10, a figure that doesn't include the ECAC regular season championship for women's hockey or the NWPC championship for men's water polo in the fall.
There's another championship up for grabs this weekend, and that's in women's basketball. As the regular season enters its final game, Princeton and Columbia are tied for first at 11-2.
The Ivy tournament will be next weekend at Cornell, and the teams are already set. The Tigers and Lions will be joined by Harvard and Brown, though the order is still to be determined.
As for the Ivy League title, Princeton would clinch at least a share of it with a win tomorrow at 2 at home against Yale. Princeton would win the outright championship, and the tournament's top seed, with a win and a Columbia loss to Harvard; the Lions will be the No. 1 seed with a win over Harvard, regardless of the outcome of the Princeton game.
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Are you interested in watching a fascinating men's tennis match? There's one at the Si Qin Family Indoor Tennis Center today at 2, when 28th ranked Princeton takes on 27th ranked Pepperdine.
It seems like this is going to be fairly competitive, no?
You can add to that the fact that Pepperdine has spent the entire week in the East and has already lost to Columbia and beaten Harvard and Yale. Also, Pepperdine will head to Middle Tennessee State for a match Sunday; Princeton's most recent match was at MTSU.
Perhaps Pepperdine should be admitted into the Ivy League? If you've ever been to its campus, you know that attending games there would be well worth it.
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Lastly, TigerBlog would like to congratulate his longtime colleague and friend Mike Mahoney, the 2026 recipient of the College Sports Communicators' Arch Wade Award, given annually to a current College Sports Communicators member who has made outstanding contributions to the field of college athletics communications, and who by his or her activities, has brought dignity and prestige to the profession.
Who was Arch Ward? And what does Pete Carril have to do with this? TB will get back to that in a moment.
Mike has worked at the University of Pennsylvania for the last 20 years, with six years each at Dartmouth (his alma mater) and Northwestern before that. He goes way back with a whole bunch of Princetonians, including John Mack and Bill Carmody from his time with the Wildcats and Office of Athletic Communications head Chas Dorman when Chas worked at Penn.
TigerBlog knows Mike well enough to know that the people who chose this award definitely got it correct. Dignity and prestige? Those are defining characteristics of the job that he has always done, in all the years that TB has known him.
There are some people who are just universally liked, and there are some people who always perk you right up when you see them. Mike Mahoney is one of those.
Back to Arch Wade and Pete Carril, this is what the CSC website says about the namesake of this award: Arch Ward was sports editor of the Chicago Tribune from 1930 until he died in 1955. He is credited with inventing the concept of an all-star contest. All-star games began in 1933 with the first baseball all-star game. The following year, Ward initiated the College All-Star football game.
It reminds TB of many of men's basketball banquet, when Carril used to award the team's B.F. Bunn Trophy. Who was B.F. Bunn, he'd ask? It doesn't matter. If a person like that year's winner was being honored with an award in Bunn's name, then that automatically made Bunn someone special.
The same has to be true of Arch Ward.
Congrats Michael.
