Practice Update: Lehigh Straps on the Pads

Lehigh just released an interesting report on their official website regarding Lehigh's progress during preseason practice, and I can say this: it didn't look like that when I showed up at practice the other day.

After getting permission to see practice from the athletics department this past Sunday I was in the area for Eagles practice and stopped to also see the Brown & White later that afternoon. The practice was already pulled into Rausch field house at that time since it had hailed just about an hour earlier in the Valley.

I took great pains to stay out of the way, and see exactly what was up. Since it was a split squad match (and I only saw the one of them), no real conclusions can be drawn. I did see sophomore RB Jaren Walker sporting his new #8 jersey as Lehigh go through some physical drills in "shells" (to the uninitiated, in helmets and about half the number of pads as normal).

The only real "news' I can offer from the practice was the presence of a walk-on in the QB derby. Yes, you read right. I spied a #16 in practice taking reps at QB who I later learned was a walk-on, freshman QB Thad Kosciolek. That makes the grand total of QBs in practice at five.

Coach Coen told me after the practice that the weather didn't "cooperate", but he was pleased with the work they were able to get done inside on Sunday and Monday (where once again the weather was bad).

Building on this, coach Coen reported this week that he's still looking at the team's overall conditioning, and he's looking forward to the heat to see how they troops' condition really is.

“I thought we ran the ball well today,” Coen said. “The defense rallied late and that’s usually the way the early part of camp goes, with some give and take on both sides.” He continued, “Our pass skeleton drill was up and down with some dropped balls but kids were making plays too.”

Coen said it has been tough to get a clear read on the team’s overall conditioning in the early going due to the favorable weather. “With such good weather, it’s tough to tell where we’re at. I’m hoping the temperatures pick up soon here. The double sessions will also give us a good read on what type of shape we’re in.” Coen added, “I think it’s clear that there is a noticeable difference in the strength in a lot of our kids. Many of these guys put in long hours of work in the offseason and it has shown.”

Although the team has had just five practices, Coen said it’s easy to see that the newest group of Mountain Hawks is not shying away from competition. “I’m very pleased with our freshmen. It’s a group of competitors. They’re still learning the system and thinking too much, but the effort they’re giving and how eager they are to get better has been very impressive.”

This is all music to my ears - the freshmen are entering the meat grinder pretty well early on, and the overall strength is up on the team. I see it in this way: coach Coen has set a bunch of goals for this team (like building strength), and the team is meeting the goals. Now, let's just keep those injuries away...

How The Ivy League Is Able To Break the NCAA's Scholarship Limits and Still Consider Themselves FCS

By now you've seen the results. In 2018, the Ivy League has taken the FCS by storm. Perhaps it was Penn's 30-10 defeat of Lehigh a couple of weeks ago . Or maybe it was Princeton's 50-9 drubbing of another team that made the FCS Playoffs last year, Monmouth. Or maybe it was Yale's shockingly dominant 35-14 win over nationally-ranked Maine last weekend. The Ivy League has gone an astounding 12-4 so far in out-of-conference play, many of those wins coming against the Patriot League. But it's not just against the Patriot League where the Ivy League has excelled. Every Ivy League school has at least one out-of-conference victory, which is remarkable since it is only three games into their football season. The four losses - Rhode Island over Harvard, Holy Cross over Yale, Delaware over Cornell, and Cal Poly over Brown - were either close losses that could have gone either way or expected blowouts of teams picked to be at the bottom of the Ivy League....

Examining A Figure Skating Rivalry: Tonya and Nancy

It must be very hard for a millennial to understand the fuss around the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding figure skating scandal in the run-up to the 1994 Olympics. If you're of a certain age, though - whether you're a figure skating fan or not, and I am decidedly no fan of figure skating - the Shakespearean story of Harding and Kerrigan still engages, and still grabs peoples' attention, twenty years later. Why, though? Why, twenty years later, in a sport I care little, does the story still grab me? Why did I spend time out of my life watching dueling NBC and ESPN documentaries on the subject, and Google multiple stories about Jeff Gilooly , idiot "bodyguards", and the whole sordid affair? I think it's because the story, even twenty years later, is like opium. The addictive story, even now, has everything. Everything. The woman that fought for everything, perhaps crossing over to the dark side to get her chance at Olypic Gold, vs. the woman who...

#TheRivalry Flashback: November 21st, 1987: Lehigh 17, Lafayette 10

Since becoming an undergrad at Lehigh back in the late 1980s, I first heard about the historic nature of the football team and "The Rivalry" through the stories that fellow students would share. I did not attend the final meeting between Lehigh and Lafayette at Taylor Stadium, which was the final time a football game would be played there. Those that did attend said that was that it was cold. "I remember it being one of the coldest games ever," Mark Redmann recollected, "with strong Northwesterly winds and the temperature hovering around 20. By the end of the game, the stands were half empty because most of the fans just couldn't take the cold. "Fortunately, several of my fraternity brothers snuck in flasks to help fend off the chill."

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