Football tops Cornell for first league win

The Princeton football team trailed Cornell 13­–10 with six minutes remaining when sophomore quarterback Tommy Wornham threw to wide receiver Trey Peacock ’11 for a 78-yard pass play — the longest by the Princeton offense in five years — to give the Tigers a touchdown and the lead. Princeton held on to win the Oct. 31 game at Princeton Stadium, 17–13.

The win snapped a four-game losing streak and gave the team momentum heading into the season’s final three games.

“When I caught it, I didn’t really know where the defender was,” Peacock said of his game-winning breakaway. “When I got back to the sidelines, the guys told me that if I didn’t score on the play, they wouldn’t have talked to me for a week.”

The two teams traded field goals in the opening quarter before Princeton (2–5 overall, 1–3 Ivy League) tallied the game’s first touchdown, a 17-yard pass from Wornham to Peacock. Cornell (2–5, 1–3) got the next two scores in the third quarter: a touchdown on a 3-yard run by running back Randy Barbour, and a field goal with 27 seconds left in the third quarter.

“I’m proud of the team,” head coach Roger Hughes said after the victory. “There were times we could have folded up the tent, but we hung in there and found a way to win the game. We have a long way to go, but this was important for the team.”

The Tigers’ victory against Cornell came on the heels of a disappointing loss a week earlier against Harvard, a 37–3 drubbing in which the league’s top team jumped out to a 24-3 halftime lead and the Princeton offense failed to score a touchdown for the second time this season. 

Andrew Robinton ’04 is a freelance writer in New York City.