The Princeton Tigers are the athletic teams of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nin ...

. The school sponsors 35

varsity Varsity may refer to: *University, an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in various academic disciplines Places *Varsity, Calgary, a neighbourhood in Calgary, Alberta, Canada * Varsity Lakes ...

teams in 20

sports Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, t ...

. The school has won several NCAA national championships, including one in men's fencing, three in

women's lacrosse Women's lacrosse (or girls' lacrosse), sometimes shortened to lax, is a sport with twelve players on the field at a time (including the goalkeeper). Originally played by indigenous peoples of the Americas, the modern women's game was introduce ...

, six in men's lacrosse, and eight in men's golf. Princeton's men's and women's crews have also won numerous national rowing championships. The

field hockey Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting c ...

team made history in 2012 as the first Ivy League team to win the

NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athleti ...

Championship in field hockey.

Teams

*Men's Sports: , Baseball , Basketball , Crew – Heavyweight , Crew – Lightweight , Cross Country , Fencing , Football , Golf , Hockey , Lacrosse , Rugby (club only) , Soccer , Squash , Swimming & Diving , Tennis , Track & Field , Volleyball , Water Polo , Wrestling *Women's Sports: , Basketball , Crew – Lightweight , Crew – Open , Cross Country , Fencing , Field Hockey , Golf , Hockey , Lacrosse , Rugby , Soccer , Softball , Squash , Swimming & Diving , Tennis , Track & Field , Volleyball , Water Polo

Basketball

Men's basketball

Princeton's

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

team is perhaps the best-known team within the Ivy League. Its most notable upset was the 1996 defeat of defending NCAA champion

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

in the tournament's opening round, Carril's final collegiate victory. In 1989, the team almost became the only #16 seed to win, losing to Georgetown 50–49. During that 29-year span, Pete Carril won thirteen Ivy League championships and received eleven NCAA berths and two NIT bids. Princeton placed third in the 1965 NCAA Tournament and won the NIT championship in 1975. The deliberate " Princeton offense" is a legacy of his coaching career. From 1992–2001, a nine-year span, the men's basketball team entered the NCAA tournament four times. Notably, the Ivy League has never had an at-large entry in the NCAA tournament. For the last half-century, Princeton and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

have traditionally battled for men's basketball dominance in the Ivy League; Princeton had its first losing season in 50 years of Ivy League basketball in 2005. Princeton tied the record for fewest points in a Division I game since the 3-point line started in 1986–87 when they scored 21 points in a loss against

Monmouth University Monmouth University is a private university in West Long Branch, New Jersey. Founded in 1933 as Monmouth Junior College, it became Monmouth College in 1956 and Monmouth University in 1995 after receiving its charter. There are about 4,400 full ...

on December 14, 2005. The 1924–25 team was retroactively named the national champion by the

Helms Athletic Foundation The Helms Athletic Foundation, founded in 1936, was a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to the promotion of athletics and sportsmanship. Paul H. Helms was the organization's founder and benefactor, funding the foundation via his ownersh ...

and the

Premo-Porretta Power Poll The Premo-Porretta Power Poll is a retroactive end-of-year ranking for American college basketball teams competing in the 1895–96 through the 1947–48 seasons. The Premo-Porretta Polls are intended to serve collectively as a source of informa ...

Women's basketball

Princeton's varsity women's basketball program is the strongest in the Ivy League, carrying on the tradition of the men's championship basketball program. The team had an especially good season in

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...

, with a 31–0 record, a national NCAA Division 1 ranking among the top 25 teams, and entering the field of 32 teams remaining in the

2015 NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament The 2015 NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament was played between March and April 2015, with the Final Four played April 5 & 7. The regional locations, after a one-year experiment allowing tournament teams to host, returned to four neutra ...

Football

The

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ca ...

team competes in the Football Championship Subdivision of NCAA Division I with the rest of the Ivy League. As of 2021, Princeton claims 28 national football championships, which would make it the most of any school, although the NCAA only recognizes 15 of the wins. Twenty-one former players have been inducted into the

College Football Hall of Fame The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were vot ...

. The first

game played between teams representing American colleges was an unfamiliar ancestor of today's college football because it was played under

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is t ...

-style London Football Association rules. The game, between Rutgers College (now

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

) and the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), took place on November 6, 1869, at College Field (now the site of the College Avenue Gymnasium at Rutgers University) in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Rutgers won by a score of six "runs" to Princeton's four. The 1869 game between Rutgers and Princeton is notable because it is the first documented game of any sport called "football" between two American colleges. It is also noteworthy because it occurred two years before a codified rugby game would be played in England. The Princeton/Rutgers game was significantly different from American rules football today but, nonetheless, it was the first inter-collegiate football contest in the United States. Another similar game took place between

Rutgers Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was a ...

and Columbia University in 1870 and a third notable game took place between

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

and

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1875. The popularity of intercollegiate competition in football would spread throughout the country shortly thereafter. Princeton's football helmets are also the basis for

Michigan Wolverines football The Michigan Wolverines football team represents the University of Michigan in college football at the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision level. Michigan has the most all-time wins in college football history. The team is known for its ...

team's famed winged helmets, as introduced by

Fritz Crisler Herbert Orin "Fritz" Crisler (; January 12, 1899 – August 19, 1982) was an American college football coach who is best known as "the father of two-platoon football," an innovation in which separate units of players were used for offense and d ...

, the coach at Princeton before he was hired as the coach of the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

Sprint

In addition to the varsity Tigers, Princeton, like a number of other Ivy League schools, also fielded a sprint football squad for players 172 pounds and lighter from 1934 to 2015. The lightweight Tigers won at least a share of the league title eight times, five of those being from between 1937 and 1942. Their last championship, split with the Army Cadets, came in 1989. The Tigers sprint squad collapsed in 1999, which began a losing streak that spanned parts of 17 seasons and 106 games (a collegiate football record), including at least four forfeits; by the end of the 2015 season, Princeton's athletics department determined that the addition of several schools whose sole football team was a sprint squad (and thus were teams that could get all of the best players at their respective schools) and the loss of most of the Ivy League schools, along with the inability of Princeton to recruit more and better players for the team without compromising its other athletic programs or its academic standards, meant that the team would likely be hopelessly outmatched and that this would pose a safety hazard for the players they could recruit. This conclusion led Princeton to drop sprint football in April 2016.

Golf

Men's golf

The men's golf team have won 12

national championships A national championship(s) is the top achievement for any sport or contest within a league of a particular nation or nation state. The title is usually awarded by contests, ranking systems, stature, ability, etc. This determines the best team, indi ...

, and they have won the Ivy League title 26 times. They have had seven NCAA individual champions: Louis Bayard, Jr. (1987), Percy Pyne (1899), Frank Reinhart (1903), Albert Seckel (1909), Simpson Dean (1921) and George Dunlap (1930 and 1931).

Women's golf

The women's golf team was founded as a club sport in 1978, coached by Betty Whelan. A group called "Friends of Women's Golf" began fundraising immediately, and the group began lobbying for inclusion as a varsity sport. After ten years of being denied varsity status by the university, representatives from the team contacted the

ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

asking for assistance and raising the possibility of a lawsuit under the protections of

Title IX Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...

of the Civil Rights Act. In 1991, the university committed to supporting a varsity women's golf program. After becoming a varsity team, women's golf too the Northeast championships in 1995, and Mary Moan won the first Ivy League individual championship in 1997. The team won its first Ivy League title in 1999.

Ice hockey

Men's ice hockey

Women's ice hockey

Lacrosse

Men's lacrosse

The university's men's

lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively ...

team has enjoyed significant success since the early 1990s and is widely recognized as a perennial powerhouse in the Division I ranks. The team has won 27

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

titles and six national titles.

Women's lacrosse

The Princeton Tigers women's lacrosse team has won 3 NCAA championships.

Rowing

Rowing was introduced to Princeton in 1870 by a handful of undergraduates who bought two old boats with their own funds and formed an impromptu "navy" on the

Delaware and Raritan Canal The Delaware and Raritan Canal (D&R Canal) is a canal in central New Jersey, built in the 1830s, that served to connect the Delaware River to the Raritan River. It was an efficient and reliable means of transportation of freight between Philadel ...

. The construction of

Lake Carnegie Lake Carnegie is a reservoir that is formed from a dam on the Millstone River, in the far northeastern corner of Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey. The Delaware and Raritan Canal and its associated tow path are situated along the eastern shor ...

in 1906 enabled the sport to expand and laid the foundation for today's rowing program at Princeton. More recently, an $8 million upgrade and expansion of the existing boathouse in 2000 formed Shea Rowing Center, one of the finest rowing facilities in the country. With 150 athletes, 60 rowing shells, and 12 coaches, trainers, and boat riggers, crew is the largest varsity sport at Princeton, and one of the most successful. In recent years, from 2000 through 2010, Princeton varsity crews (both men's and women's) won a total of 14

Eastern Sprints The Eastern Sprints is the annual rowing championship for the men's Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC). (Since 1974, the "Women's Eastern Sprints" has been held as the annual championship for the Eastern Association of Women's Rowing Co ...

, IRA (national), and NCAA championships, as well as two international events at

Henley Royal Regatta Henley Royal Regatta (or Henley Regatta, its original name pre-dating Royal patronage) is a rowing event held annually on the River Thames by the town of Henley-on-Thames, England. It was established on 26 March 1839. It differs from the thre ...

. The Princeton boathouse is often a summer base for U.S. national teams in training, and many Princeton rowers and coaches have gone on to compete at the World Rowing Championships and the Olympics.

Rugby

Men's rugby

The men's rugby team was Ivy League champions in 2004, 1979, 1977, 1973, 1971 and 1969.

Women's rugby

The women's rugby team was national champions in 1995 and 1996. Princeton women advanced to the Final Four in 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004 and 2005. 35 Princeton women have been named All-Americans. The team will become Princeton's 19th varsity program for women starting in the 2022–23 academic year.

Soccer

Men's soccer

From 1911 to 1958, Princeton won seven national championships.

Softball

Princeton's softball team appeared in the

Women's College World Series The Women's College World Series (WCWS) is the final portion of the NCAA Division I softball tournament for college softball in the United States. Eight teams participate in the WCWS, which begins with a double-elimination tournament. In other wo ...

in 1995 and 1996.

Squash

Men's squash

The men have won 18 Ivy League championships. They are a four-time winner of the Squash Sloane Award for Team Sportsmanship.

Swimming and Diving

Men's swimming and diving

The men have a long history of success in the Ivy League, winning the Ivy League title 30 times. The program's history also includes NCAA relay titles in 1989 and 1990, and 1992 Olympic gold medalist

Nelson Diebel Nelson W. Diebel (born November 9, 1970) is an American former competition swimmer, Olympic champion, and former world record-holder. Diebel won two gold medals at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. First, he won the men's 100-meter ...

Tennis

Pablo Eisenberg, who went on to become a professional tennis player at Wimbledon and a gold medal winner in the

Maccabiah Games The Maccabiah Games (a.k.a. the World Maccabiah Games; he, משחקי המכביה, or משחקי המכביה העולמית; sometimes referred to as the "Jewish Olympics"), first held in 1932, are an international Jewish and Israeli multi-sp ...

in Israel, as well as a scholar and social justice advocate, played tennis for Princeton in 1952, 1953, and 1954.

Track and field

Women's track and field

Princeton's women's track & field team experienced success under coach Peter Farrell, winning a combined 18 Ivy League titles for its outdoor and indoor team. Farrell was the one who founded the women's track and field team in 1977 and stayed their head coach until 2016 when he retired.

Volleyball

Men's volleyball

The men's volleyball program achieved varsity status in 1997 – though it had competed for two decades as a club sport before then – and competes in the

Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association The Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (EIVA) is a college athletic conference whose member schools compete in men's volleyball. Its member institutions are located in the Northeast United States. The EIVA Tournament champion receives ...

. The Tigers have the honor of being one of only two teams since the formation of the EIVA in 1988 to win the EIVA championship and advance to the

NCAA Men's National Collegiate Volleyball Championship The NCAA men's volleyball tournament, officially titled the NCAA National Collegiate Men's Volleyball Championship, is an annual competition that determines the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship in American college me ...

, with every other title having been won by the

Penn State Nittany Lions The Penn State Nittany Lions are the athletic teams of Pennsylvania State University, except for the women's basketball team, known as the Lady Lions. The school colors are navy blue and white. The school mascot is the Nittany Lion. The interco ...

. The Tigers bested the Nittany Lions in the 1998 EIVA semifinals, and they then went on to beat Rutgers-Newark; as a result, they won the 1998 EIVA championship and gained a spot in the NCAA tournament. The Tigers have had three players earn All-American honors – Marin Gjaja '91, Derek Devens '98 and Cody Kessel '14.

Wrestling

The Princeton Tiger

Wrestling Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat sports ...

team was started in 1905. The Princeton wrestling team competes in Dillon Gym. Jadwin Gym has served host to five previous

EIWA was a Japanese era name (年号, ''nengō'', lit. year name) of the Northern Court during the Era of Northern and Southern Courts after Ōan and before Kōryaku. This period spanned the years from February 1375 through March 1379. The emperor ...

Championships (1969, 1979, 1981, 1987 and 2012), as well as both the 1975 and 1981 NCAA Wrestling Championships. The current head coach is Chris Ayres. With 51 Princeton wrestlers have combined to make a total of 75 appearances at the NCAA Wrestling Championships. Bradley Glass won the unlimited title in 1951, marking Princeton's only NCAA champion in the sport.

Championships

NCAA team championships

Princeton has 24 NCAA team national championships. * Men's (19) **

Golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping w ...

^† (12): 1914, 1916, 1919, 1920, 1922, 1923, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1937, 1940 **

Lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively ...

(6): 1992, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001 **

Fencing Fencing is a group of three related combat sports. The three disciplines in modern fencing are the foil, the épée, and the sabre (also ''saber''); winning points are made through the weapon's contact with an opponent. A fourth discipline, ...

(1): 1964 * Women's (4) **

Field Hockey Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting c ...

(1): 2012 **

(3): 1994, 2002, 2003 * Co-ed (1) **

(1): 2013 † The NCAA started sponsoring the intercollegiate golf championship in 1939, but it retained the titles from the 41 championships previously conferred by the National Intercollegiate Golf Association in its records.

Facilities

The stadium is Princeton Stadium, which replaced

Palmer Stadium Palmer Stadium was a stadium in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. It hosted the Princeton University Tigers football team, as well as the track and field team. The stadium held 45,750 people at its peak and was opened in 1914 with a game ag ...

in 1998. Baseball is played at Bill Clarke Field. Basketball is played at

Jadwin Gymnasium The L. Stockwell Jadwin Gymnasium is a 6,854-seat multi-purpose arena at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. The arena opened in 1969. It is home to the Princeton Tigers college basketball teams. It replaced Dillon Gymnasium, the hom ...

. Ice hockey is played at

Baker Rink Hobey Baker Memorial Rink is a 2,092-seat hockey arena in Princeton, New Jersey. It is home to the Princeton University Tigers men's and women's ice hockey teams as well as the venue for club and intramural hockey teams, intramural broomball, f ...

. Soccer is played at Roberts Stadium. Lacrosse is played at Class of 1952 Stadium. The men's and women's volleyball teams and the wrestling team compete at Dillon Gymnasium. All crews train at Shea Rowing Center and compete on

. The Rugby Team plays at Rickerson Field on West Windsor Fields.

References

External links

* {{Navboxes , titlestyle = {{CollegePrimaryStyle, Princeton Tigers, color=white , list = {{Ivy League navbox {{ECAC Hockey League {{Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association navbox {{Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges {{Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association navbox {{New Jersey College Sports {{NewJerseysports {{NewYorksports Sports teams in the New York metropolitan area