When Chris Bates was named the men’s lacrosse coach in 2009, his predecessor Bill Tierney had some advice: Make a high school junior named Tom Schreiber your first priority.
Tierney, who left for a coaching job at the University of Denver, already had secured a commitment to attend Princeton from Schreiber, a midfielder at St. Anthony’s High School on Long Island and one of the top recruits in the country. Such was Schreiber’s promise, Tierney wrote in an email, that he “was one of the factors that might have made me stay at Princeton.”
The day after Bates was introduced as Princeton’s coach, he drove to Schreiber’s house to spend the afternoon with the young player and his father, Doug, himself a member of the Lacrosse Hall of Fame. During the visit, Bates “was drawing up plays on the coffee table,” said Tom Schreiber ’14, who liked what he saw and kept his promise to attend Princeton.
The results have been terrific for the squad. Schreiber led the team in goals and assists in each of his first two seasons and was the Ivy League Rookie of the Year in 2011. He currently is “the dominant midfielder in the country,” said Tierney, scoring 17 goals and 16 assists as of March 30 to lead Princeton to a 6–2 record. The Tigers were the Ivy League champions last year and should be in the running for the title this season.