This week’s profile segment highlights the “first team into the field” for the upcoming 2016 edition of the NCAA Tournament. Congrats to the Princeton Tigers, Ivy League Champions!
It took all three games of the conference championship series for Princeton to claim the Ivy League title. An outcome that should trigger anything but surprise, this group of Tigers has done very little with ease in recent memory.
While the journey was not without its struggles, even during the now storied 2016 campaign, the finish was well worth the sacrifices and the challenges. Princeton’s storybook ending required back to back victories, a bases loaded hit batsman and a walk-off wild pitch, yet the sense is that this bunch wouldn’t have had it any other way.
After winning just seven games in 2015, posting one of the lowest win totals in all of Division I baseball, the club returned to the diamond with a newfound resolve and forged a different narrative by sheer will and determination. This past week it all came together as they defeated Yale 6-2 and 2-1 in back to back contests at Clarke Field to punch their ticket to the NCAA Regionals.
The title was the first for Princeton since 2011 and the school’s eighth all time. The Ivy League’s representative will now await word on where the next chapter of this remarkable story will be written. Welcome back to the NCAA Tourney Princeton, this time around you’re the “first in the field.”