Four Princeton student-athletes have been named finalists for the 2021 William Winston Roper Trophy, which is awarded annually to a Princeton senior man of high scholastic rank and outstanding qualities of sportsmanship and general proficiency in athletics. The Roper Trophy is presented by Mrs. William W. Roper and the Class of 1902.
The William Winston Roper Trophy will be presented at the virtual Gary Walters ’67 Princeton Varsity Club Awards Banquet on Thursday, May 13th starting at 8:00 p.m. EST. For more information on the 2021 banquet, click here.
Meet the 2021 finalists!
Patrick Brucki is one of seven wrestlers in Princeton history to earn at least two All-American honors, the third to do so in the last four years, and he won 21 matches in a 2020 season that saw Princeton win the Ivy League championship for the first time in 34 years. Brucki earned the first of those All-American honors in 2019, when he finished fourth at the NCAA Championships at 197 pounds. In 2020, Brucki was looking for more, qualifying for the NCAA Championships for the third time in as many seasons of competition with the program, but the pandemic canceled the NCAA Championships and Brucki was selected as a first-team All-American. As a freshman in 2018, Brucki became just the third rookie in program history to qualify for the NCAA Championships, doing so after placing fifth in his debut at the EIWA Championships and earning second-team All-Ivy recognition. As a sophomore, Brucki won the EIWA title for the second of what would become three place-winning finishes in three trips to EIWAs, and he was an All-Ivy honoree for the second of three times in his career. A civil and environmental engineering major from Orland Park, Illinois, Brucki’s senior thesis was titled Displacing Concrete in the Modern Infrastructure: Steel-Timber Hybrid Construction.
Daniel Kwak graduates as a two-time All-America, finishing as the national runner-up in the NCAA saber championship in 2019 before earning second-team All-America honors following the canceled 2020 NCAA Championships. Kwak was a 2018 first-team All-Ivy League honoree in a year that saw him advance to the NCAA Championships for the first of what would be three times in three seasons of competition for Princeton. In 2019, on the way to his NCAA runner-up finish, Kwak was also the runner-up at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic/South Regional, and in 2020 Kwak was a first-team all-region honoree as he won the NCAA regional title. A 2019 Academic All-Ivy League honoree and a psychology major from Los Angeles, Kwak wrote his thesis on the role of adult-generated hippocampal neurons in early-life adversity induced changes in defensive behavior.
Tassilo von Mueller is a three-time letterwinner who was named captain of the men’s heavyweight rowing team for 2021. This year, he has been instrumental in helping the team navigate through the pandemic, returning not only to the boathouse but to competition where the heavyweights are undefeated against four opponents. In 2019, he rowed in the first varsity eight, helping the Tigers win the Navy-Princeton, Childs, and Content Cups. That boat also placed fourth at Sprints and sixth at the IRA Championships. As a freshman, he stroked the second varsity to the gold medal at Eastern Sprints and sixth place at the IRA Championships Grand Final. A mechanical and aerospace engineering major, he will be pursuing a PhD at either Oxford or Cambridge following graduation
Richard Wolf was a mainstay on defense for the Princeton men’s soccer team during his career, earning two All-Ivy selections. As a freshman, he made 14 appearances with 13 starts, helping the Tigers to a 0.87 goals-against average as a team. In 2018, he had 12 appearances en route to first-team All-Ivy honors and an Ivy League championship as the Tigers ranked No. 9 in the nation in goals-against average while allowing just 0.67 goals per game. In 2019, he started 16 matches while setting a career high in points as he scored twice and added an assist. Wolf was a part of two 10-plus win teams during the 2018 and 2019 campaigns, only the third time in program history that the Tigers reached double figures in wins in back-to-back years. An Academic All-Ivy selection, Wolf is majoring in computer science.
