Lehigh Football Nation

Yep, it's that time of year again. June, the toughest time of year to be a Lehigh football fan. The trickle of news slows to a crawl... except here at Lehigh Football Nation, where we keep our eyes and ears open for any morsel of news. For my part, I'm doing plenty to keep the Patriot League newsworthy: stirring up the pot on the FCS message board on Any Given Saturday , or posting information on the Lehigh Voy messageboard forums . That's in between time on the day job, writing for the FCS Yearbook (coming soon), and catching up on my FCS viewing (I still need to finish up watching the DVD of the "Goodman 20 Greatest Moments" ) and reading (I am finishing up my signed copy of "Magic On The Mountain" , by David Coulson of The Sports Network , the story of Appalachian State's FCS title run in 2005). Did I mention the closing on our new house will be later this month, too? The latest developments involve Lehigh senior DT Brian Jackson getting onto...

Yes, Virginia, that picture of the large rubber check with all the zeros on it is good news about Lehigh. With a big announcement, Lehigh president Alice Gast announced the largest-ever gift to Lehigh last week: a mind-boggling 34.2 million dollar check from the estate of Donald Stabler ('30). Sports fans know him as the gentleman whose work and donations made the Athletics complex and Stabler Arena possible. According to president Gast, that will be able to "double or triple" the number of Stabler Scholars that are currently attending Lehigh, meaning that somewhere between 30 and 60 new scholarships will be able to be endowed through this gift alone. It's all good. Such scholarships don't only throw the endowment well past $1 billion dollars - it gives more and more students a chance at a Lehigh education. ******************* Two new prospectives have been linked to Lehigh University: Red Bank Catholic LB Anthony Lubischer and William Penn HS (York, PA) FB/L...

The women's softball team travels up to Amherst, Mass, but this time they won't have the element of surprise. After beating Lafayette to take the Patriot League softball title, it's NCAA Tourney time as the Lady Hawks will be facing off against #12 Stanford, Princeton, and UMass in the Amherst Regional. They return to UMass, the scene of their last postseason appearance where they disposed of heavily-favored Texas A&M (seeded #13) and surged into the NCAA regional finals. If Lehigh can get out of this regional again - winning over the CAA champs, the Ivy League champs, and one of the best teams in the Pac 10 - it would be a fantastic story and another coup for Lehigh. Not to mention beating two of the best academic schools in the world in Stanford and Princeton. Are the seeds there for an upset once again? I won't count these Lady Hawks out, with a team batting average of .318 led by freshman C Carly Potok (.354), junior OF Alishia Gonzales (.346) and senior O...