Bill Tierney is back in the Princeton University orbit this weekend, and the Hall of Fame coach did not try to dress it up. He is writing a book, he said, and he is already up to 390 pages. He is also in Charlottesville with Princeton as the Tigers prepare for Monday’s final against Notre Dame.
Tierney, who won seven NCAA championships as a head coach, six of them at Princeton and one at Denver, has spent enough time around the sport to know what moments matter. He will be 75 in a few months, and this weekend has given him another one: a chance to sit with the program he helped define while it tries to finish the job again. Princeton’s current players have noticed. Junior captain Colin Burns saw Tierney in the hotel and said it was like meeting a celebrity. Burns added, “We know he’s a legend. Six nattys in 10 years. That’s legendary.”
For Princeton, the trip to the final lands 25 years after its most recent national title, a run that still shapes the way the program sees itself. The 25-year-old championship team will be honored for its silver anniversary at halftime of this year’s title game, a reminder that Princeton’s last peak is still close enough to touch and far enough back to feel like history. This weekend, the team has taken over a Charlottesville hotel ballroom for meals, meetings and hanging out during Championship Weekend, with Tierney around for the whole scene.
That return also puts his personal life back into the frame in a way only sports can. Tierney said he and his wife, Helen, have had their routine figured out for a long time, and when asked about it he smiled and said, “She makes me eat four vegetables a day.” It is the kind of line that sounds minor until you remember who is saying it: a coach whose life has been measured in titles, and who never played lacrosse until he got to Cortland State. He now coaches the PLL’s Philadelphia Waterdogs, but Princeton remains the place where much of his legacy was built.
The tension around Monday is simple and sharp. Princeton is trying to win a national title again while the program’s past is sitting in the room with it, from Tierney to the 1998 team that will be honored at halftime. The old coach is writing, the current team is chasing, and the gap between those two eras is exactly what makes this weekend matter.
