Ivy@50

Esmeralda Negron
When Princeton's women's soccer team advanced to the NCAA College Cup Final Four in 2004, the Tigers were led by All-American Esmeralda Negron, who envisions a future with much more soccer.

In 2004 Esmeralda Negron had, arguably, the greatest season of any Ivy women's soccer player in history.

She set the Ivy League mark for points scored in a season, with 23, and set Princeton season records with 52 points, 20 goals, and 12 assists. She also set Princeton career records for points and goals scored, marks previously held by 1980's two-time first team All-Ivy Linda DeBoer. Negron was named first team All-Ivy (for the third consecutive year) and first-team All-American, and repeated as Ivy League Player of the Year.

Negron also led Princeton to the NCAA tournament Final Four, where the Tigers were defeated by UCLA. This is the only time an Ivy team has ever made a women's soccer Final Four. "It was amazing," remembers Negron. "I can still remember every game of every round we played so clearly. It gives me goose bumps sometimes thinking about what we did and how connected as a team."

"[Coach] Julie Shackford was amazing and she encouraged me to play freely and to not alter my style" says Negron. To say that she responded well would be an understatement. During her time at Princeton the soccer team went 22-4-2 in league play (57-12-6 overall), winning three Ivy titles, two unshared. By comparison Princeton won two shared titles in 23 previous seasons, and none since Negron graduated in 2005.

From Harrington Park, N.J., Negron played soccer from the age of six and became interested in Princeton while in middle school, playing in a soccer tournament in nearby New Brunswick. "I remember walking around the campus and Nassau Street in between games and telling my Dad I wanted to go there," she says. Majoring in Spanish and pre-med, she found "balancing both athletics and academics was difficult, but I had a lot of support from professors and the coaching staff."

After graduation Negron played professionally in Europe. Her first season she played for the USCO Compiegne club team in France, and currently plays in the first division for Koln, Germany. "The only thing I [missed at Princeton] was studying abroad because I didn't want to be away from soccer for that long," says Negron, "but I've gotten to do that now. It has been challenging but I wouldn't trade this experience for anything. I get to travel and see the world while getting to play soccer. I like that I am still able to play because soccer is truly my passion."

She's also been playing professionally in the United States. In the summer of 2006 Negron played for the New Jersey Wildcats of the Women's United Soccer League. "Playing in the States is great," she says. "I am looking forward to playing in the W-league this summer. I heard that the women's professional league that folded will be revived in April 2008, so I think a lot of people see potential in women's soccer."

Aside from her plans to continue playing soccer, Negron "would also like to get involved in college coaching. I think regardless of what I do professionally I will always be connected to the game in some way."

— Stephen Eschenbach

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This website will be hosting a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of formal Ivy League competition, featuring special articles every weekday through the end of May 2007.

Although some League rivalries predate the Civil War, and the term 'Ivy League' was used in newspapers as early as the mid-1930s, the Ivy League began formally with the Ivy Presidents' agreement of 1954, and the first year of formal competition was 1956-57.

The first formal Ivy League contest -- on Sept. 29, 1956, when the Columbia Lions' football team hosted the Brown Bears at Baker Field in upper Manhattan -- will be commemorated at that same site (now Wien Stadium) with a ceremony on Saturday, September 30, when Columbia hosts the Princeton Tigers.

Since that first contest, more than 75,000 Ivy athletes have played under a unique model of college sports, sharing a remarkably consistent goal: to provide successful athletics as an integral part of the full undergraduate experience -- combining the values and lessons of athletics with those of the classroom and laboratory, the campus and the community -- to produce leaders in every walk of life.

The 50th Celebration is not intended as a formal or complete history of each era, sport or school in the last half century. There's simply too much history to be able do that -- although the online Ivy League Record Book provides a wealth of information about Ivy League standings and All-Ivy teams, national successes in every sport, and individual athletic and academic achievements.

Rather, the Celebration will ask more than 200 former Ivy League athletes to tell the story of Ivy athletics through an almost-daily series of interview-based profiles. Combined with more comprehensive theme-based features (such as the Ivy League's long Olympic history), these profiles will cover every part of these 50 years at all eight schools -- all of the more than 30 Ivy women's and men's championship sports (the broadest collegiate athletic participation in the country) -- and the incredibly diverse backgrounds and careers of Ivy athletes.

Some of these alumni were stars or champions. Others -- like most athletes at every level of competition -- played more anonymously or with only modest team success. In their combined athletic and academic Ivy League experiences, however, each of them found values and habits that led to later success, whether in global arenas or in their own families and neighborhoods.

Special aspects of the Celebration will include:

a preview of each week's stories in the weekly Ivy League email newsletter, which is available free of charge on the left hand side of this page, beneath the menu. Just simply place your email address in that box and select 'GO.'
an earlier (preceding Friday) preview for members of the media, Ivy Sports Information Directors and other Ivy institutional staff (media may sign up by writing to Jane Antis).
archiving of all profiles and features on www.ivy50.com, chronologically as well as by both school and sport.

We welcome reprinting of all stories, with appropriate credit, in public media, and in all institutional media (including websites, weekly bulletins and calendars, game programs, and alumni magazines).

The Ivy League 50th Celebration will be Co-Edited by Ivy League Associate Director Brett Hoover and by Stephen Eschenbach, a long-time contributor to each of the Ivy alumni magazines who also will be Senior Writer. Other contributing writers will include two-time Olympian and 1990 Harvard graduate Meredith Rainey Valmon; former Ivy Public Information Assistants Josi Carlson and E.J. Crawford; current Ivy Public Information Assistants Wes Harris and Bethany Karantonis; and Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans and Associate Director Chuck Yrigoyen.

We hope you will enjoy this special year-long Ivy feature, and we look forward to reading your comments and answering your questions, which can be sent to Hoover.