Ivy League Sports

One of the most successful programs of the 1980s was Princeton softball. Yet when new head coach Cindy Cohen arrived on campus in 1982, she discovered a team lacking both support and a regimen. The team had only one set of uniforms, and because they played on an off-campus field, players had to run to a bathroom in the registrar’s house nearby between games at double-headers. Many softball players played basketball in the fall (Cohen was also assistant basketball coach); the team did not practice during spring vacation; players were unaccustomed to regular training; and the team had to sell cookie pies, magazines, and t-shirts to raise money for its first pitching machine.

Cohen immediately set about instilling discipline into the program and generating support for it, and by 1985 the team was regionally ranked for the first time and since then has consistently included a number of outstanding players. But Princeton softball is not all work. In the 1980s the team started probably its best known tradition: synchronized, fast-paced, and always boisterous cheering in the dugout during games. Cohen says the tradition started when players brought “a cheer with them from the summer league or their high school team” and taught it to the others. Players then began practicing cheers on the bus going to games and even choreographed some cheers, adding arm and feet movements. As the Tigers developed a large repertoire over time, Cohen says her only requirement has been that the cheers not be negative about other teams.

Over time, the Princeton softball program progressed to elite status, including a pair of College Softball World Series appearances in 1995 and 1996. Perhaps the most outstanding graduate among many in the program is Jen Babik, a molecular biology major and jazz musician who graduated in 1995 as a three-time All-Ivy softball player, a three-time Academic All-American, and a Rhodes Scholar. Babik is one of the many academic and athletic stars who, responding to Coach Cohen’s challenge, have made Princeton softball a star in the Ivy record books and on the national scene.