Princeton coach Ben Syer didn’t recruit Jayden Sison to play for the Tigers, but he knew the now-senior forward was tailor-made for the kind of institution he would attend.
The Tigers’ head coach since 2024, Syer previously was an assistant at Ivy League and ECAC Hockey rival Cornell. One of his former players coached Sison at the midget level, and after one phone call with Sison, Syer knew he was the kind of person he wanted in his program.
That didn’t happen at Cornell, but after Syer moved from central New York to northern New Jersey, his view of Sison as a person kept being reaffirmed.
Now it has happened again, with Sison being named one of this year’s five finalists for the Hockey Humanitarian Award.
“He’s a personable guy, and he’s very intelligent, but he also has a way about himself with people,” Syer said. “I’ve been around some pretty good guys who care a lot about their teammates, and I’ve been fortunate in that regard, but I put Jaydo right up there with anybody. He just loves people, and going forward, I see him involved in some capacity of service.”
That is just as he has been as a Tiger, playing in more than 100 collegiate games while balancing his hockey and academic commitments with community outreach.
Sison belongs to the Princeton Student-Athlete Service Council, a 30-person group that helps introduce new service opportunities for the roughly 1,000 student-athletes Princeton has across its 38 varsity sports. With Princeton’s men’s hockey team in particular, Sison has led the Tigers’ involvement in a youth sports clinic as well as literacy efforts with local students.
Among his other commitments, Sison has served on the leadership team for Tiger Pals, a mentorship program for young men in underprivileged school environments. He also has led the Tigers’ Team IMPACT initiative, working with a local middle school-aged student who has a learning disability.
All of which begs the question: How does a student-athlete at a world-famous university have time for all this?
Ask Sison, a native of nearby Paoli, Pennsylvania, and he’ll point to his parents, Renata and Ed Sison.
“My family has been super fortunate over the years in general, and growing up, my parents were involved with corporate volunteering days, and I’d join them for those,” Jayden said. “They both work in Philadelphia, and there are a lot of opportunities there. They do a lot with the Eagles, and my mom does a lot specifically with the Flyers, where they’ll do clothing drives and work with food banks and homeless shelters.
“My parents have always given back that way, and that’s just how I grew up. At Princeton, I saw chances to get involved, and there’s a bunch of us that do a lot that way.”
Jayden’s community work also is well documented back home in the Philadelphia area. He has worked as a program delivery interim with the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation, helping coordinate on- and off-ice programming, events and engagements for one of the sport’s biggest philanthropic entities.
“Jayden flat-out makes time management a priority,” Syer said. “There’s not just one thing that Jaydo has done; it’s multiple things. We recently were coming back from a road trip, and I announced a practice time on an off day from school. As soon as I said it — and I was thinking, ‘There’ll be no issues’ — Jaydo comes up to the front of the bus and was like, ‘We’re supposed to go read to our Tiger Pals here at 12:15. Can I tell the teacher when we’ll be off practice?’
“He makes service part of who he is and part of his daily routine. Even though he’s really busy, he makes this a priority, and how he does that intrigues me. I can’t say enough good things about what he does for our community.”
Sison is enrolled in Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, which is famous for training future lawyers and government officials. How Sison will parlay his experience there into what he will do in the working world remains up in the air, but no matter where he goes once his hockey career wraps up, he’ll already have the makings of someone highly valuable to whoever his higher-ups might be.
“I want to be known as a good teammate, but also a better person,” Sison said. “I like to be a guy in the room that people can come up to and pick my brain. If I can be remembered for something, it’s about giving back.
“Princeton opens so many doors for you and gives you so much, and we’re all so lucky to be here that, even in the thick of it with school and hockey, there’s always time to do other things and give back to those around you.”