Ivy League Sports

Coaches have been critical to building teams and to helping players achieve success in every aspect of their education, in every decade of Ivy League women’s athletics. In the 1990s, two Princeton coaches — Chris Sailer and Beth Bozman — took the lacrosse and field hockey programs from novice to championship levels in a remarkably short period of time, acting as each other’s assistants through the middle part of the decade, until each chose to coach a single sport year-round beginning in 1996. In 1999, Sailer entered her 13th season as head lacrosse coach, half of the program’s 26-year history. It is clearly the better half: under Sailer, Princeton has had a 151-58 record, including an NCAA title in 1994 — the first in any sport by a Princeton women’s team — along with national runner-up finishes in 1993 and 1995, semifinal appearances in 1989, 1992, and 1996, and quarterfinal spots in 1998 and 1999. There have also been four Ivy League titles and six runner-up finishes in the past 11 years.

Sailer has coached 23 of Princeton’s 24 lacrosse All-Americans and, in 1998, became the first women’s lacrosse coach in Ivy history to have the League’s Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year in the same season. In addition to being named the Mid-Atlantic region Coach of the Year in 1992, 1993, and 1994, Sailer was honored by her peers as the Division I Coach of the Year in 1993 and 1994. A 1981 graduate of Harvard, where she majored in psychology and captained both the lacrosse and field hockey teams, Sailer taught at Choate Rosemary Hall School, the University of Massachusetts, and Penn before coming to Princeton.

Bozman brought Princeton field hockey to national prominence shortly after Sailer did so in lacrosse. A graduate of Trenton State College, who coached at her alma mater, Old Dominion, James Madison, and Hofstra before arriving at Princeton in 1988, Bozman has compiled a mark of 134-53-6 record in her first 11 seasons.

She led the Tigers to the ECAC tournament in each of her first five years, winning the championship in 1992, and then to an unprecedented fifth perfect Ivy League season and three consecutive NCAA semifinal appearances. With title game appearances in 1996 and 1998, Princeton is the lone Ivy school to participate in the NCAA finals. The team has won seven Ivy League titles, including five in a row from 1994 to 1998.

Bozman was named the 1996 National Field Hockey Coaches Association Coach of the Year and 1997 Regional Coach of the Year. In 1998, she also served as president of the National Field Hockey Coaches Association and was selected as head coach of the United States Field Hockey Association’s elite summer league team.

Both Sailer and Bozman have taken a very similar tact to publicize Princeton when recruiting athletes for their teams. Sailer says she wants “top athletes who will work hard in the classroom and on the field” and is adamant that “good sports and good academics go hand in glove.” Bozman agrees: “Our players,” she says, “decided that what Princeton could offer is more important [than receiving an athletic scholarship] — playing on a top team and getting a great education at a college where field hockey is a ‘big sport.’ Our players chose Princeton so they could fulfill their dreams on and off the field.”