Lehigh Football (and Fans) Undeterred By Cold and Damp Lehigh Brown/White Scrimmage

On By Chuck Burton

BETHLEHEM, PA – It was an unseasonably cold and rainy Saturday in Bethlehem, one that felt a lot more like Rivalry November rather than Lehigh Mountain Hawks spring football.

The original plans to play on the grass at Murray Goodman stadium switched to the artificial turf at the Whitehead practice fields, for the safety of the players.

That meant a rapid redeployment of the “spring showcase”, as deployed by the Lehigh Football Partnership, to the more intimate environment, the fans, recruits and enthusiastic football alumni to an area of no seats.

But the power of a unexpected Lehigh football championship last fall led to a spring showcase that almost a family reunion feel, as the 2025 football team displayed their progress over the spring and the alumni and friends made it an event.

One thing that was striking was an odd combination of depth and youth on display, with an amazing 40 players encountering their first spring session.

“We’re still growing up,” head coach Kevin Cahill said after the spring showcase. “We make a lot of young mistakes, and that’s why you practice. It doesn’t affect the scoreboard. It doesn’t affect the standings. That’s where you have to make the mistakes. Then when we get a chance to compete against other teams and play in a league schedule or a conference, whatever it is, you hope we learned from those mistakes at that point. But that’s not always the case. You’re going to have young kids making mistakes, and we’re just trying to eliminate them making the same mistake multiple times. So we tell them all the time, you can make mistakes, make full speed mistakes, and that’s fine. We’ll adjust them, but just don’t make a same mistake twice.”

QB Hayden Johnson played a ton of football last season and led Lehigh to a glorious season last year – lest we all forget, a Patriot League Championship, a clinching victory over Lafayette at home that will be talked about for generations, and Lehigh’s first win in the FCS Playoffs since 2011. Yet spring football at Lehigh was a brand-new experience for the rising sophomore.

“I think this spring has been just a good gauge for us to see who can fit in the roles and who can play where,” Johnson told me afterwards about his first spring session. “I think just having everyone evolve over these past four weeks and just evolving in the weight room the six weeks before, just really just growing our team, just getting stronger, faster, quicker, just more mentally strong as well, just has been great for us. I think we’ve really evolved in getting those roles filled.”

Johnson and QB Matt Machalik took all the snaps at QB in the spring – both looking like they are in in-season form running the offense, with some slippery ball mistakes and some other spring-like work – and despite the 6:00AM practices and occasional cold weather, Hayden was able to navigate the challenges. Machalik’s TD catch from the halfback toss and pass electrified the crowd.

“I love it. Me and [Matt] out there, just both of us just riding every day, just having each other’s backs, just pushing each other,” Johnson told me afterwards. “Obviously, having just two of us [in camp this spring], we have to rely on each other to pick each other up. If one of us having a bad practice, the other one’s got to have a better practice. I think that’s where finding just the relationships between other guys and trying to find new ways to just succeed in what we have now versus last year.”

“We’re trying to get out of our comfort levels, trying to wake up early in the morning, get practice early in the morning, get that work in early,” rising senior DL Matt Spatny told me after the spring showcase. “It’s been really nice. We’re working towards our goals, not fully polished yet, but that’s what we expect.”

Lots of questions have been asked already about Lehigh’s very early morning practices, but from all outward appearances Spatny is a fan.

“It’s very bare bones, and I love it,” he told me. “I like when there’s not a ton of cameras or nothing, no distractions. Spring is amazing for me and the rest of the team because we really just get to lock in and play football. I think all the younger guys have to be thrown into something that they’ve never been into, and it allows them to grow as both players and people, how to deal with time management and having to really be a college or collegiate athlete. That’s really where they learn, not just in the season where it’s easy and we’re just playing football all the time, but how they balance their classes with other stuff that they have to do. It’s really helped out.”

PK Nick Garrido, agreed.

“Spring season this year has been really good,” he told me. “We’ve all brought the energy every day. Teams just were really forming around each other every single day and just growing tighter as brothers.”

Insiders

The spring showcase had an insider feel to it, partially due to the shift to the Whitehead practice fields, partially to the cold, partially due to the presence of the Lehigh Football Partnership, which provided entertainment, a PA system, and live commentary.

There was an alumni “skills competition”, an alumni championship ring presentation, and the yearly tradition of the awarding of the Jim Gum scholarship.

Jim Gum was former three-year starter for Lehigh football and a 1980 Pen Argyl graduate. He passed away in 2006 after a six-year battle with ALS, and each year at Lehigh’s Brown and White spring football showcase, a scholarship is presented in Gum’s name.

And this year it went to PK Nick Garrido, the Notre Dame Green Pond graduate who had a great season kicking last year that went somewhat under the radar – 9/10 on field goals and 43/44 on extra points.

“It’s a great honor,” he said. “Very unexpected. But I thank my family. I thank God, and I just thank my teammates and the coaches and all of his family members that pick me for the award. I appreciate everything, and I’m just really grateful for it all.”

Then the showcase got into gear.

Garrido, just like in the regular season, didn’t miss much on the practice field, even though snapping and holding was not ideal in the cold weather.

“We have new snappers, new holders, so we’re just getting comfortable with everybody,” he said. “Plus, when it’s wet, we just have to factor in certain things with kicking and holding and all that stuff. But I think we did a pretty good job today regarding the elements, and I think we’re on the upward trend for sure.”

On offense, RB Aaron Crossley – making the most of his reps as RB Jaden Green was competing in spring track – made the most of his opportunity, standing out with some excellent runs and a touchdown which sent the bench swarming to celebrate. A play where he ran over a defender got the crowd excited.

“We know we have some other talented [players] the guys that people don’t know about yet, but we know they’re going to be pretty good in the future,” Cahill said. “Aaron’s one of those kids. There’s a kid named RB Luke Yoder who’s pretty good. We have a kid named Jaden Green who’s pretty good. There’s a kid named Aaron Crosley who’s just as talented as those guys, and brings a little bit different thing to the backfield, and he showed that against Colgate in a long run last year. And he’s coming into his own. He’s going to be a talent for us.”

While LB Brycen Edwards and LB Will Parton shined on the defense to me, with the Spatny and the front six getting good pressure on the quarterback in the drills on offer, seeing LB Mike DeNucci not in pads emphasized something – even though many of the same faces were on the field this spring showcase, the key to the 2025 season might be replacing the senior leadership that gave the 2024 Mountain Hawks their beating heart.

“Losing them was, I think, just as much as a physical loss as a mental and team loss,” Johnson said. “That was where we really tried [this spring] to find just how to pick each other up in the mental and team side of it. Because those guys, QB Dante Perri, and [DeNucci], and OL George Padezanin, were just so passionate. [DeNucci] deciding to stay back for a fifth year, come back here, just to guide us and be a leader for us was just really cool for us, and we respected that.”

“It’s not easy to replace a player. It’s not easy to replace Mike,” Cahill said. “He was a really good player. He was a tremendous leader. And that’s the harder part, to replace the leader that Mike was, the leader that Dante was, the leader that a lot of those guys up front where George was a tremendous leader for us. When you don’t have them, it’s tough to replace the voice behind everything. The other guys know that, and we’re giving them the opportunity. There’s other guys that we have that we think are going to be just as talented, but they’re going to play their style of football. We don’t have anybody that’s going to be Mike DeNucci. Don’t try to be him – be who you are. That’s what the kids are learning.”

https://twitter.com/LehighFootball/status/1912224270886764625

In the end, the spring showcase is about good times, honoring last year’s champions, and the first showcase of what’s to come in 2025. Starting with the skills competition from the LU Football partnership and ending in networking in the afternoon at Career Day, A lot of hard work was put in to improve Lehigh football, and there seems like a lot more depth and a lot of work was able to be achieved. There’s a lot of growth that needs to happen – that’s a constant in the spring – but there’s plenty of glimpses of good potential for this fall.

Lehigh will start off the 2025 season on Saturday, August 30th in a highly-anticipated opener against the team they beat in the FCS Playoffs in the first round. The game against the Spiders is going to be a conference game, since Richmond joins the Patriot League this fall.

Aug 30th, RICHMOND *
Sep 6rh SACRED HEART
Sep 13th at Duquesne
Sept 20th at Bucknell *
Sept 27th PENN
Oct 4th YALE
Oct 11th at Columbia
Oct 18th BYE
Oct 25th at Fordham *
Nov 1st GEORGETOWN *
Nov 8th HOLY CROSS *
Nov 15th at Colgate *
Nov 22nd, 161st meeting of The Rivalry, at Lafayette

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