Tigerpride

Molly Marcoux Samaan graduated from Princeton in 1991 as a two-sport athlete. She played soccer and absolutely crushed ice-hockey. She was the 1988 Ivy League Rookie of the year, a four-time 1st Team All-Ivy selection and still holds the record for most goals in a season. In 2014, she returned to Princeton as the University's Ford Family Director of Athletics. Currently, Mollie has another really cool job in sports, as the Commissioner of the LPGA.

Brooke Owens and Kurt Lunkenheimer have been together since 1999. Kurt was a senior captain of the insanely successful men's team that won the National Championship his freshman, sophomore, and junior years. Brooke was a freshman when they met, on the verge of an epic career en route to winning the National Championship as a senior in 2002. Now married, with two kids, they are living the dream in Miami Beach.

Liz Fagan is one of the best athletes to come out of Princeton EVER. For Field Hockey, she was the Rookie of the Year in 1991 and the Ivy League Player of the Year in 1993 and 1994. She only started playing lacrosse her freshman year at Princeton. Only three years later, in 1994, her junior year, she was a starting defensive midfielder on the first Princeton National Championship team ever.

Jenn Cook is the Associate Head Coach at Princeton. For 10 seasons she has led the defensive strategy for the Tigers, which has contributed to 4 Ivy League Titles. In 2019, Jenn and the Tiger D crushed it, and Jenn was named IWLCA Assistant Coach of the Year. As a player, she was a 3x All-American and 3x All ACC player at UNC who, though she graduated in 2007, still holds the career record in ground balls for the Tarheels.

Kerrin Maurer was a star for the Duke Women's Lacrosse Team. She graduated in 2015 a 2x All-American and with a 47-game point scoring streak. For all four years she played at Duke, Kerrin led the Blue Devils in point scoring and to four consecutive NCAA quarterfinals appearances, including a trip to the national semifinals her senior year. That year, in 2015, Duke beat Princeton in the Quarterfinals to advance to the Final Four.

Lucy Small DeStefano was a senior captain of the 1999 Tiger team that lost in the Quarterfinals against Penn State on Sherrerd Field in 1952 Stadium. She started her career as a two-sport athlete at Princeton, quickly chose to stick with lacrosse only, then worked her butt off to gain a starting spot her sophomore year. She ended her collegiate athletic career a 2x All-American, 3x All-Ivy player and the DI Defensive Player of the Year in 1999. She went on to play on the USA Team for 6 more years post-collegiately.

Karin Brower Corbett graduated from William & Mary as a field hockey and lacrosse star. She was the first dedicated Assistant Coach to the Princeton Lacrosse program after the Field Hockey and Lacrosse programs split in 1995. She came in as a defensive specialist who took time with players, and most importantly, shared Chris's love and dedication to teaching the sport. In 2000, she took over the program at the University of Pennsylvania, and in 6 years, she built the team to national prominence and created a savage rivalry with Princeton that stands today. Penn made the Final Four in 2007, 2008, and 2009. In 2007, Karin was named IWLCA National Coach of the Year. In 2008, UPenn made it to the final game. In her 22 years at UPenn, Karin's teams have won 11 Ivy League Championships.

Theresa Sherry's career as a Tiger spanned four of the most nationally successful years in the program's history. Her freshman year, they lost in the final game. Sophomore year, they won the championship. Junior year, she scored the money shot in overtime to win back-to-back championships. And senior year, in 2004, the year Princeton hosted the NCAA Finals, they lost in the final game. That year, Theresa would be named Ivy League Player of the Year and finish her career at Princeton having won 7 Ivy League Championships because, that's right, she also crushed it on the soccer field as a Tiger. 2x National Champion. 3x All American. 4x All Ivy. All of this and a woman here today, 18 years after graduating, talking about the best parts of it all - her 2004 classmates, that 2004 team, and that 2004 coaching staff.

Tess D'Orsi headed into her senior year a 3x Ivy League Champion and was ready to go 4 for 4 in the 2020 season before COVID wiped out the ability for her and her class of 2020 teammates to look forward to - and have - all of their lasts -  last practice on ‘52, last pre-game meal, last game in a Princeton Women's Lacrosse uniform. She was coming off an 80 pt season, having scored her 100th career goal vs. Stony Brook in 2019. Though she never got to play her senior season, and our hearts break for every player who missed out on that opportunity, she shows up in truth, in heartbreak, and in pride to represent the great class of 2020.

Suzanne Morrison was a Varsity Ice Hockey Player at Princeton. In her senior year, the fall of 1988, wanting to learn more about sports management, she became the Manager of the Field Hockey team to brand new Head Coach Beth Bozman, and then, in the spring of 1989, she took on the same role for the women's lacrosse team. This was only Chris's 3rd season at Princeton, and the first time the Tigers would make it to the Final Four. Despite her short involvement with the program as an undergrad, SuMo has become an active alumnae with Princeton University generally, and more specifically, and most meaningfully, with the Princeton Lacrosse Programs.

Missy Doherty came to Princeton in 2000 as an Assistant Coach. In her three seasons at Princeton spanning 2001-2003, the Tigers won 3 Ivy Championships and 2 National Championships. After Princeton, she took the Head Coaching job at Towson where she led those Tigers for 7 years, including three CAA Championships, and an at-large berth to the 2010 NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history, and their first-ever top 10 national ranking in the IWLCA Division I poll. Now, in her 12th year at Penn State, Doherty's guidance has taken the Nittany Lions to seven NCAA Tournaments and four NCAA Quarterfinals. In 2015, she was named Big 10 Coach of the Year and ECAC Coach of the Year.

Amory Rowe Salem graduated in 1995 from Princeton as a captain of both the field hockey and lacrosse teams. She was the first Princeton athlete ever - male or female - to be named a 3x All-American. She was a junior in 1994, when the Tigers won their first ever national championship. 2 years after graduation, she scored the winning goal in the 1997 World Championship to give the USA Women's Lacrosse Team the Gold in Tokyo, Japan. She then decided she'd become a professional duathlete and, in 2004, was the U.S. Pro Duathlon National Champion and the top-ranked U.S. duathlete, which made her #4 ranked in the world.

Michele “DJ” DeJuliis is a legend in the making, already in the USA Lacrosse National Hall of Fame, Pennsylvania Hall of Fame, Baltimore Hall of Fame, Lock Raven Hall of Fame, and the Penn State Hall of Fame. She was a 4x All-American at Penn State and the captain of the USA Women's National Team that won the World Cup in 2009. She started the WPLL, which is owned and operated by, and now called, Athletes Unlimited. In 2005, she left her job as a SWAT team member in the West Baltimore Police Department to work for Chris Sailer at Princeton University for 8 seasons.

Lauren Simone Farrell, a 2x Tiger Captain and 3x All American, is a member of one of the most historic classes in Princeton Women's Lacrosse history. The Class of 2002 share an incredible four-year journey that cemented the Princeton Women's Lacrosse legacy of excellence by winning the 2002 National Championship. Lauren only started playing lacrosse as a freshman in high school. The year was 1994 - the same year the Tigers won their first National Championship. In 2002, the soccer player from Jersey, led her team to the top and was named MVP of the NCAA Women's Lacrosse Tournament.

Patty “PK” Kennedy was a standout player at UPenn in both field hockey and lacrosse. With her larger-than-life heart (and incredible hair), PK has been a fixture for Princeton Women's Lacrosse - as a trusted coach, a reliable volunteer, life line and mentor.

Beth Bozman was the Head Field Hockey Coach at Princeton for 15 years, from 1988 to 2003. In 1996, she led the Tigers - the first Ivy League field hockey team ever - to the National Championship game. Then, she did it again in 1998. She was the assistant coach to Chris Sailer for lacrosse for 8 years, including the 1994 National Championship win for lacrosse. In 2003, Beth went on to coach at Duke University, bringing the Blue Devils to the National Championship game in her first year for the first time ever in program history and then to the Final Four each of the next three seasons.

Bill Tierney knows how to coach teams to win. Before his 20+ year career at Princeton building a men's program that would take home 6 NCAA Championship titles, he kicked off his college coaching career at RIT, taking the team to two DIII NCAA tournament appearances. Then, he joined as the assistant coach at Hopkins for 3 years, helping the team to win 2 National Titles. In 1998, he led the USA Men's National Team to a World Championship. And, after leaving Princeton in 2009, it only took Tierney 6 seasons to lead the University of Denver to their first national title. With that win, he became the first coach to win an NCAA title at two different universities and the first college lacrosse coach to win a NCAA DI Championship at a school west of the EST time zone.

Cory Samaras Griffeth was a defender with the quickest hands and the hardest check, and often, the sharpest tongue. The self-proclaimed original bad girl of the Princeton Women's Lacrosse program, Cory challenged Chris to her limits many, many, many times. But Chris held firm, sometimes protecting the team from Cory, and sometimes protecting Cory from herself.

Chris Sailer is the Head Coach for the Princeton Women's Lacrosse team. She is a living legend who will retire at the close of the 2022 season after 36 years building the program into a national powerhouse. She has coached 3 National Championship teams (1994, 2002, and 2003) and won 15 Ivy League Titles. In 2019, she became the first NCAA Coach to record 400 wins at the same institution. Just because it's fun to say it out loud, Chris Sailer is in the USA Lacrosse National Hall of Fame, the New England Lacrosse Hall of Fame, the Harvard Varsity Club Hall of Fame, The Haverford High School Hall of Fame, and the Pennsylvania Lacrosse Hall of Fame. It has just been announced that she will be inducted into the IWLCA Hall of Fame in the fall of 2022.

Rachael Becker DeCecco is the most decorated player in the history of Princeton Lacrosse. She was an All-American, Ivy League Player of the Year, a leader on 2 Tiger National Championship Teams - 2002 and 2003 - and still, the only defender in DI NCAA Women's Lacrosse history to be awarded the Tewaaraton Trophy. As much as she was an incredible player, she is 10x that as a teammate, friend, and woman. And, aside from her family, there is nothing Rachael loves more than Princeton Lacrosse and Chris Sailer.

Welcome to the Tiger Pride Podcast - a celebration of Chris Sailer - a legendary coach, a fierce competitor, and the matriarch of a community of players she built over the last thirty-six years of her career. We'll be collecting stories by talking to players, coaches, colleagues, friends, and family - all who know Chris. Simply, this Podcast is a love letter to my coach, to your coach, to every coach who taught us so much more than just how to play.