A shout out to the Princeton University women's basketball team, which won 31 straight this season before falling to Maryland Monday night. Even though the University of Maryland is five times larger than PU, has completely dominated the Big Ten conference, and was playing at home, Princeton held its own. If not for the stunning long-range accuracy of Maryland's guards, Princeton might well have pulled it out.
I'm not the usual basketball fan. If Jadwin Gym was really trying to recycle, and fans were slam dunking their empty bottles into the right receptacle, I'd be cheering for that as much as for the team. But there's something about seeing a full tilt team effort, well conceived and well executed, with crowd cheering them on. Well, in Princeton, the cheering is not exactly exhuberant, but you know everyone's at least cheering really loudly in their thoughts. I'm as reticent as most everyone else, though lately I've taken to shouting "VanESSaaaaa" every time sophomore Vanessa Smith makes a basket--something that's happening with increasing frequency of late.
I get the same good feeling watching the PU soccer games in the fall--women's and men's--framed by the boundaries like a pretty picture of what it could be like if America took on its problems with the same sense of spirit and people pulling in the same direction. Collective action is celebrated in sports, but sabotaged at every turn in real life, where most people, for instance, mix trash and recyclables with complete indifference to the notion of team ethic or shared goal.
Watching women's basketball evolve in intensity and skill in recent years, I have to think that the psychology and mechanics of the game have largely been solved. Might similar advances be possible in the greater human arena? The Princeton women have given us a season for the history books, and an inspiration to carry far beyond the boundaries of a basketball court.
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