June 4, 2003: Sports
All-season
Tigers
Princeton varsity athletes tackling more than one sport
Men’s track second at Hepsrowning
Sports Web Exclusives! P-nut Gallery column
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All-season
Tigers
Princeton varsity athletes
tackling more than one sport
Photos: Top, Kelly Baril ’03; middle, Cameron Atkinson ’03; bottom, Kelly Sosa ’03. (Photographs by Bevery Schaefer)
Kelly Baril ’03 thought her Princeton varsity sports days were over when she blocked her last shot for the field hockey team last fall. But the three-time All-America goalie replaced her pads with a pair of high-tops in the winter to join the women’s basketball team after the coach saw her play in pickup games at Jadwin Gym.
Coach Richard Barron must have sung Baril’s praises at home, because his wife, Tiger softball coach Maureen Davies Barron ’97, asked Baril to pull on the orange and black this spring to fill an outfield spot on her team. Even with her thesis looming and her senior spring ahead, Baril says she had to accept. “Playing a varsity sport in college is one of the most amazing things I’ve been able to do. I couldn’t turn down an opportunity to keep playing,” the psychology major says.
Several other Tigers also are playing more than one sport, which is common in high school but not at the N.C.A.A. Division I level.
The Ivy League’s new seven-week rule requiring time away from practice for varsity athletes has not slowed multisport participants, whose coaches are encouraged to make sure the students get time off between seasons, according to Erin McDermott, assistant director of athletics.
“If a kid has the ability to contribute in more than one sport at a school like Princeton, it’s our responsibility to give him a chance to try,” says Princeton baseball coach Scott Bradley, who has had his share of two-sport athletes, including football’s B. J. Szymanski ’05 and basketball’s Will Venable ’05 this season.
Szymanski, one of football’s top receivers, has hit .329 for Bradley this season, leading the Tigers in runs, hits, and stolen bases. Bradley says the ability to offer standout student-athletes the chance to play more than one sport helps Princeton recruit some high school seniors who are considering schools such as Vanderbilt or Stanford, where off-seasons are filled with mandatory practices.
Cameron Atkinson ’03 runs track in the winter and spring, but in the fall he’s all football. Third on Princeton’s all-time rushing list with 2,449 yards, the captain of this year’s track team also holds the school record in the 60-meter dash and won the 200-meter dash at last month’s outdoor Heptagonals.
“It’s been easier in my senior year since I’ve been doing it all along and now I can leave it all on the table, because once it’s over, it’s over,” says Atkinson, a chemistry major.
Among other Princeton standouts donning more than one uniform is Rachael Becker ’03, an Academic All-American on the defending national champion women’s lacrosse team who also plays field hockey. Becker has won seven Ivy League titles (four in field hockey and three in lacrosse). Her lacrosse teammates, Elizabeth Pillion ’05, Theresa Sherry ’04, and Kelly Sosa ’03, also star on the Ivy League champion women’s soccer team. All-Ivy volleyball player Kellie Cramm ’04 is playing her second season of lacrosse, while All-Ivy basketball player Ray Robins ’03 hit the volleyball court this spring. Paul Lyons ’05, who has won three Heps shot-put titles, also plays football.
Sosa, the women’s soccer captain for the past two seasons, joined the lacrosse team as a backup goalie this spring. Accustomed to using her feet on the soccer field, she jokes that “pain has helped motivate me to use my stick more, but I still do a lot of kick saves.”
Sosa says she uses her time more wisely during her sports seasons because
she has to be more efficient managing it. “When I was deciding whether
to play lacrosse, I was thinking about relaxing in the spring for the
first time, but that’s not really my personality. Especially since,
when I thought I was done playing for Princeton, I realized how valuable
that experience is,” she says. 
By A.D.
True Tiger fan
Thacher Longstreth ’41 at Princeton’s November 9 football
game against Penn. The former Philadelphia city councilman and All-America
end for Princeton died April 11. Longstreth attended every Tiger football
game — home or away — since the Yale contest of 1949, until
a Texas windstorm kept him from the Brown game in 2001, snapping a streak
of more than 460 games.
Men’s track second at Hepsrowning
The men’s winner at the 69th Heptagonal Outdoor Championships May 4 at Yale came down to a controversial finish in the final event, the 4x400-meter relay.
Trailing Cornell by six points heading into the relay, Princeton needed to finish at least three places ahead of the Big Red to claim its 13th outdoor Heps title. But the Tigers’ Josh Kauke ’04, who was running the anchor leg of the relay, was bumped by a Cornell runner and fell. Although Kauke got up and finished, Princeton placed fifth. Cornell was disqualified.
A call for a rerun of the event without the Big Red was overturned by meet officials, leaving the final score to stand at Cornell 130, Princeton 127.
“Unfortunately it came down to the 4x400 meter relay, but the meet was not lost there. We underperformed in a few key events, and Cornell had a great meet,” said team captain Cameron Atkinson ’03, who won his first individual Heps title in the 200-meter dash. “To have a teammate go down in the relay and to have all that controversy made taking the loss that much more difficult.”
Other strong performers: Paul Lyons ’05 and Rocky Craley ’04
placed first and second, respectively, in the shot put. Josh McCaughey
’04 won his third straight Heps hammer-throw title.
By A.D.
The women’s lacrosse team (14—4, 6—1 Ivy) moved within two victories of claiming back-to-back national titles when it defeated Ohio State, 17—8, May 11 in the quarterfinals of the N.C.A.A. tournament. The win earned Princeton its fourth straight trip to the Final Four, where it was scheduled to face top-seeded Loyola May 16 in Syracuse. The Tigers beat LeMoyne 19—1 in the first round of the tourney.
Men’s lacrosse (11—3, 5—1 Ivy) defeated Albany 16—10 in the first round of the N.C.A.A. tournament and was set to face its old rival Syracuse in a quarterfinal May 17. Princeton is seeking its seventh national title. The Tigers have played in each of the last three N.C.A.A. championship games, all against Syracuse, which won two of the three matches.
The baseball team (27—21, 15—5 Ivy) was headed to its eighth N.C.A.A. tournament after winning the Ivy League title in a three-game playoff against Harvard at home May 10—11. Thomas Pauly ’04 pitched a complete game in the 5—2 win that earned Princeton its third Ivy League title in four years.
The 2003 Tigers’ 27 wins are second only to the 1985 team, which won 29 games.
Softball (23—19—1, 11—3 Ivy) made the 230-mile trip to Providence to get just four outs against Brown May 3. But finishing that game, which had been halted by darkness April 14, was worth every mile as the Tigers won 8—5 to claim the Ivy championship and an automatic bid to the N.C.A.A. tournament. Princeton was scheduled to play South Carolina May 15 in the opening round in Tucson.
Women’s golf’s Avery Kiser ’05 received one of three at-large bids to the N.C.A.A. championships after claiming her second straight Ivy League individual title. The Tigers finished second to Yale by 10 strokes at the Ivy golf championships April 27.
Men’s lightweight crew surprised the field by winning the Eastern
Sprints May 11 in Massachusetts. The fifth-seeded Tigers won the Ivy League’s
varsity title with a time of 6:28.49, finishing nearly four seconds ahead
of Columbia and five seconds ahead of top-seeded Harvard.
By A.D.
