Lehigh Football Nation

Pretty? Absolutely not. But Lehigh will gleefully take this 35-28 victory at Rose Hill, a game which featured a combined seven turnovers, three missed field goals, and seventeen penalties for 143 yards by both teams. Starting out, it seemed like Lehigh was trying to give the game away as junior DB/RS John "Prez" Kennedy fumbled a punt return that was recovered by the Rams in the end zone to erase a beautiful 11-play, 66 yard drive ending with an 8 yard pass from junior QB J.B. Clark to sophomore WR Jake Drwal . It would be the first of four Lehigh turnovers that led directly to touchdowns the other way. Taken in that way, you could say that had Lehigh took care of the ball a bit better, this would have been a laugher. After a Lehigh fumble ended with a 19 yard strike to Ram sophomore WR David Moore from s enior QB John Skelton to fall behind 14-7, Lehigh took advantage of a fumble on special teams, recovered by junior FS John Venerio, to tie the game after Clark's...

(Photo courtesy Five Boro Sports) Winning against sub-.500 teams. A blowout loss to a CAA opponent. Coming up oh-so-close to Holy Cross and Colgate, but falling just short. A description of Lehigh's football season? It could just as easily been a description of Fordham's as well. Before the season started, Fordham looked like a team that could put things together and make a run at the Patriot League title. They had a QB that was getting NFL looks. Their defensive captain was only two years removed from his pick of Holy Cross senior QB Dominic Randolph to preserve their (near) worst-to-first Patriot League championship in 2007. Like Lehigh, they had horses. They just needed to have them all working together. The Rams started out the year in disarray, with a 41-28 loss to Rhode Island and a 40-28 loss to their "Liberty Cup" rival Columbia. Turnovers were the name of those games, and seemed to portend a season on struggle rather than a run at the title. After a...

The Players of the Week were pretty easy choices this time around. Offensive Hawk of the Week: Junior RB Jay Campbell (131 yards rushing on 21 carries, 18 yard TD pass) Defensive Hawks of the Week: (tie) S enior LB Troy Taylor (9 tackles, 1 1/2 tackles for loss including 1 sack, 1 key forced fumble) and junior FS John Venerio (7 tackles, 1 interception, 1 pass breakup) Special Teams Hawk of the Week: Freshman PK Jake Peery (2/2 XP, 2/3 FGs, 23 yards, 38 yards, missed a long 45 yarder) I've been remiss in reprinting the exclusive pieces that Lehighsports.Com has put out about members of the senior class. Here are two of them: Senior LB Heath Brickner : Relentless the Books and Opposing Backs Senior OL Frank Giacalone : Up for Any Challenge Also, former Lehigh WR Sekou Yansane was named a winner of the 2009 Academic Momentum Award through the National Consortium for Academics and Sports (NCAS).

(Photo courtesy Denise Sanchez, the Morning Call) Here are the press links for this weekend's heroic effort versus Holy Cross, but before I get to that I just wanted to reiterate how great it was to see Murray Goodman come to life this weekend. Have I become a sudden fan of moral victories? No; but I still feel like this effort was a step in the right direction. There were lessons in this game for the underclassmen, and I'm hoping those lessons will pay dividends next year. Morning Call: Late TD Allows Holy Cross to Escape Lehigh As he tried to come to grips with another agonizingly close loss for his Lehigh football team, coach Andy Coen scanned the stat sheet late Saturday afternoon in a tiny media room at Goodman Stadium and noted the similarities of the final numbers. Both Lehigh and Holy Cross had run the same number of plays (70), had the same number of penalties (9) and had nearly the same total yards (375-372 Lehigh). The difference wasn't on the sheet, but rathe...

Yes, I've resorted to Egyptian gods for my "Sunday Word" now. It's a byproduct of following a 2-7 team, I think - the more tough losses I endure, the more creative I have to be. In ancient Egyptian mythology, "Horus" is the son of gods Isis and Osis. He's the Egyptian god of the sky, the sun god, the god of life and the god of war. (Those Egyptian gods seemed pretty malleable, depending on how you felt that week, it seems.) Furthermore, while most translations depict "Horus" having a head of a falcon, the alternative spelling of his name, Nehkeny, means literally "one from Nehken", known as the "city of the Hawk". So for the sake of my belief (and this "Word"), "Horus" is an Egyptian god, with the head of a hawk. (And contrary to popular belief, I do not have a life-sized statue of "Horus" on my nightstand with a Lehigh logo pasted on it.) Bear with me. Trust me when I say this will make s...