Confessions of an Almost-Tiger

March 30, 2011 will always be “The Day the Music Died,” at least to me. That fateful Wednesday marked the end of my dreams of being a Princeton Tiger. My future in idyllic central New Jersey, clad in orange and black, died even faster than Mitch Henderson’s NBA career. I would not be part of the Jadwin Jungle, and I would not take part in a “P-rade,” whatever that might be.

As the hard copy of the rejection letter arrived (thank you Princeton, I really wanted to read it both online and in paper!), I was left with no other option–-it was time to release hatred upon this middling Ivy institution, the now-mediocre athletic teams it breeds, and the sad state in which it resides. Hey Penn, you’ve got me on your team…Puck Frinceton! Hey Dirty Jerz, thanks for being the armpit of America!

And so it was that I came to Harvard, ready to often cheer for and occasionally write about the Crimson. Over the course of my freshman year, Harvard sports faced off against Princeton dozens of times, with varied results. Some games proved to be bright-–I’ll never forget then-sophomore Kenyatta Smith doling out swat after swat as men’s basketball handled the Tigers at Lavietes, while a home win by women's basketball that snapped Princeton's 33-game Ivy League win streak stands out in its historic nature. But other moments proved not to be so sweet; many games were rather sour.

It started early in the year, as Tigers backup quarterback Quinn Epperly tossed a real nugget to Roman Wilson for a Princeton homecoming win to shock the preseason-favorite Crimson.

The pain continued as the gridiron season gave way to ice and hardwood.

In early January 2013, two intrepid and charming Crimson sportswriters ventured deep into the belly of the Tigers’ den to cover a winter break ice hockey game. What began as a road trip soon turned to me holding my co-writer’s hair back as she vomited into the mean streets of Princeton. No, she had not fallen as an early victim of Newman’s Day but instead had contracted some sort of stomach virus in the few hours we’d been in this sleepy town. My guess was it was the Jersey water.

Just a quick hockey game later, and it was I who felt like puking after watching our hockey team open the New Year with a real doozy. Thanks, Tigers goalie Sean Bonar, for being a ginger. You really took that orange-and-black theme to a new level.

Days later, Princeton took down both men’s and women’s squash. Perhaps not all that surprising coming from “the pleasantest country club in America,” as Princeton alum F. Scott Fitzgerald not-so-fondly referred to his alma mater. Less to kvetch about here, but still, yikes.

Basketball season saw more trouble–the Crimson was stopped short by both the men’s and women’s teams whilst visiting Jadwin. Speaking of Jadwin, who on earth designed that arena? Last time I checked, a cavernous empty airplane hangar wasn’t an ideal shooting backdrop. I say it’s an inferiority complex at this point, not a basketball complex. If you were actually confident in your team’s ability to win games at home, you wouldn’t need to disable your opponents with blinding darkness.

And so it was that my freshman year saw some of the darkest moments in Harvard athletics come at the hands of the Ivy League’s very own trade school, Princeton.

This past fall, as Epperly yet again strutted his stuff up and down the field at Harvard Stadium to a triple overtime win (once again sealed by the evidently baby-soft hands of Wilson), I thought it might be time to rescind my hatred and beg at the knees of Janet L. Rapelye for a transfer admission. Newsflash, they don't exist. Princeton is just that exclusive.

The joke was on me this time. After yet another trouncing of Yale at The Game, Harvard was greeted with the glorious news that Epperly threw a nasty pick at Dartmouth to blow his team’s chance at an undefeated conference season and sole possession of the Ivy title. How’d that feel, Epperly? Fun to share with Harvard, right? I hope you had a blast at your bonfire. Up here in Cambridge we feel no need for a medieval celebration after beating two lesser institutions. I wonder if the butlers made the fires?

And so we arrive at the very-recent past, a high point of my hatred for Princeton. This past weekend, my new dream finally materialized. Brick by brick, four Harvard teams took down the Tigers. From the ice at Hobey Baker to the bleachers at Lavietes, it was the Crimson in the limelight.

Thank you, women’s basketball, for beating Princeton own its own turf for the first time since 2009 as Niveen Rasheed probably wept quietly from the Euro leagues. Thank you, men’s basketball, for dropping our Jersey friends to a measly 0-2 in the Ivies, and rattling them enough to lose to Dartmouth—DARTMOUTH, I tell you—the next night. Congratulations, men’s hockey for snapping your four-game losing streak. And women’s hockey, you stayed classy to hold on for the win. That’s what you get from a top-five-in-the-nation team.

So here it is, Princeton. You’re soft. You’re not our rival…Yale is. Harvard and Yale don't sell Princeton-bashing gear, but I’m sure the Barbour, Kate Spade, and Lululemon stores in the town of Princeton are just stock full of Harvard-flaming paraphernalia. The Game never refers to a face-off with the Tigers. Princeton is on the periphery, no more of a real thorn in our sides than UPenn State or SUNY-Cornell. Get that, Tigers? We don’t really care, and we’re coming for you at Jadwin.

—Staff writer Cordelia F. Mendez can be reached at cordelia.mendez@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @CrimsonCordelia.