Online voting will determine the best
By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
Who is the best athlete in Princeton High School history?
That’s a question that could be talked about for hours and we still wouldn’t have an answer.
There have been many great athletes to compete for the Little Tigers during their illustrious history. Football and baseball stars, as well as field hockey and track stars. Swimmers, runners, soccer players as well. Many of them have already rightfully found themselves in the Princeton High Athletic Hall of Fame.
But which one is the best?
That’s what we aim to find out over the course of the next several weeks. It’s certainly not a scientific method, but it’s as good as we could come up with.
With the input of several former Princeton High athletes and coaches, we’ve come up with who we feel are the top 31 in school history. It’s up to you this week to select the 32nd athlete from PHS to round out the field.
Through voting online here, we’ll narrow the field of 32 down to just one overall champion — the Greatest Athlete in Princeton High history.
Voting will be done on the new Packet sports blog, NJGameon, which can be accessed through the website www.packetonline.com. Every few days there will be two head-to-head matchups to be voted on as the field of 32 is eventually narrowed to a final four and then a final two, much like bracket play.
Once the Princeton High contest is over, there will be similar contests for West Windsor-Plainsboro, Montgomery, the Hun School, Princeton Day School and Stuart Country Day.
The hardest part is figuring out who should be included in the original field. In the end, we decided to limit it to 32 athletes though the field could have been larger. We selected the first 31. You can pick the final member of the field online with your comments on our website.
The seeding committee put together the bracket for the event and every few days there will be new head-to-head matchups to vote on in the contest. After the first round, the field of 32 will be narrowed to 16. Then those 16 will be cut to eight, eventually getting down to four and then two.
With apologies to those who just missed the cut, and there were many, here are the first 31 athletes that will form the field for the contest. Keep in mind this is based on how the athletes performed at PHS and not in outside competition.
If we forgot your favorite, now is your chance to enter that PHS athlete. Matchups will appear on the website, with two matchups voted on every three or four days.
The athletes in the field are: Sikira Backus, Ron Celestin, Scott Clark, Denise Craig, Rodney Derry, Heidi Faith, Stefan Fletcher, Royce Flippin, Scott Gabrielson, Jim Laverty, Mark Leshley, Wagner Marsielle, Missy McCloskey, Paul Miles, Sue Mooney, Ailey Penningroth, Ian Reddy, Bram Reynolds, Nina Rossi, Tim Rumer, John Ryan, Craig Schroeder, Karen Schwartz, Peter Sharpless, Al Terry, Buster Thomas, Sandra Tignor, Marv Trotman, Kirk Webber, Saskia Webber, Darius Young.

