Quietly, Lehigh Starts Climbing the Mountain to the 2024 Season

On By Chuck Burton

BETHLEHEM, PA – Some schools make a big deal of spring football. Hype videos, sports information prose, and prime time showmanship at some places are a part of the trade of a spring season to start developing and building a team for the fall football season.

When it comes to head coach Kevin Cahill and the Lehigh Mountain Hawks, however, spring ball didn’t start with fireworks, corporate promotions or carnival barking.

Quietly, on a very cold and wet March 19th at six o’clock in the morning, Lehigh’s spring practice officially began for the 2024 season.

Why that early?

“We looked at what fit this team best,” coach Cahill told me. “Based on class schedules and field availability, we had to be smart. Due to the weather, we knew we wouldn’t be on the grass as often as we’d like. So we came to 6:00 AM.”

Coming off a 2-9 season filled with some very tough growing pains, it seems like this spring practice season is probably just the way Cahill and the players seem to want it – quiet work towards improving from last year, away from the spotlight.

“Sometimes you want things that are hard,” Cahill told Tom Fallon on the Happy Hour radio show. “to find out things about ourselves.”

Climbing the mountain together. No hype. No press conferences. Just quiet work to get better – before classes start.

“The players have jumped all in with us,” Cahill said. “It’s been great. Helpful to build the mental grit that we look for.”

The Bitterness of Last November 18th

At halftime in the biggest game of the season last year, Lehigh was leading 21-14.

Behind QB Dante Perri, who was thrust into the starting role when QB Brayten Silbor got injured the prior week at Colgate, threw for two first half touchdowns and made it look like they could possibly spoil Lafayette’s FCS playoff hopes.

It would have been a great win for the program – one that would have really announced to the league that Lehigh is back after a string of losing seasons, but also would have put in the rear view mirror a tough 2-8 season that had its share of tough losses of all varieties.

Nobody went into the season with inflated expectations, but even so the season felt like one where nothing would be handed to this team and these players. Their wins versus Merrimack and Bucknell were tough and earned, the Merrimack win being played in cavernous Harvard Stadium after the game was relocated and delayed twice, the team returning to Bethlehem around 4AM. They worked hard against Holy Cross and Fordham but were one play away, just missing that special something that might have turned those great efforts into wins.

Then, in the second half, Lehigh’s upset bid came apart.

As what tends to happen with teams trying to learn how to win, little mistakes became more little mistakes, which became big mistakes which snowballed and became an insurmountable deficit. And Lafayette was far, far too good a team to not capitalize. An interception became a Lafayette touchdown, which became a second stalled drive, then another Lafayette touchdown.

The Leopards became a brutal machine in the second half, rightfully not caring about Lehigh’s struggles over the course of the season. This Lafayette team was very, very different than the Leopard teams that Lehigh had experienced over the last decade. When the dust had settled, Lafayette scored 35 straight points in their 49-21 win over the Mountain Hawks.

The sting of that loss has not gone away from coach Cahill – his first Lehigh/Lafayette game as head coach – and this team as it goes through the spring.

“It’s a bitter pill that still has not been swallowed,” he told me. “You’d like to change the outcome, but that’s what you do in the offseason. We are not proud of that game and we know that is not what the Lehigh Football standard is. We have to get better.”

As rough as the loss was – as rough as Cahill’s first season at the helm felt at times overall – the silver lining is that the Rivalry defeat does end up being a convenient point of emphasis on the need for the team to take this spring to improve greatly, and to climb the mountain.

And about halfway through the spring season, Cahill sees progress.

 “I am really happy with our growth this offseason,” Cahill said. “The players have been bought in and eager to continue to head in the direction we need to. It’s a process, and I feel we are taking the correct steps, but like everyone else I want those steps to be leaps.”

This spring, it’s been more established for everyone, and it’s seen as a great positive. Last season, between the whirlwind of Cahill’s hiring, getting to know the players an assembling a staff, most of the story in the spring was about establishing culture and assessing the team. This year, with consistent staff and expectations set and in some cases raised, it’s been easier.

“We’re much more stable now because the kids now know us and understand what we’re trying to do and they know our expectations and how we operate,” Cahill told Keith Groller this week. “We’re all speaking the same language now and we’re all moving in the same direction.”

And it seems to be paying off already this spring.

“We have taken a lot of strides in all areas of our program,” Cahill told me. “We’ve been focusing on individual development and how that impacts our team’s growth. Putting it all together with a new class coming in will be exciting.”

A New 2024 Beginning

There was a lot of turnover from last season on South Mountain.

Most of it came from the graduation of a large summer class and a few who put their names in the transfer portal.

But there’s a large incoming freshman class on the way too, after a massive recruiting effort this fall that will see at least 35 new incoming freshmen enter the program and a few interesting transfers. It’s the largest incoming class Lehigh has seen in quite some time.

That means the spring is more about development of the leadership group that will remain, and lucky for Lehigh that includes fifth year LB Mike DeNucci, which will be a welcome, familiar presence at linebacker.

Last season he notched 87 tackles, good for second best on the team, as well as 6 tackles for loss, 4 pass break-ups and one blocked kick.

“Mike is a very good football player,” Cahill said. “He is a leader by example. The success of Lehigh Football is important to Mike, and we are very excited to have him back and we look forward to his continued impact on our program.”

While it’s early and nothing is set in stone, eight of the defensive starters against Lafayette return, and all of them are sophomores or juniors with the exception of DeNucci and senior DB Jordan Adderley.

Lehigh’s offense, which struggled a lot of last year, also has nothing set in stone but has two fifth year building blocks on the offensive line in OL Renach Gena and OL George Padezanin returning as well.

Every 5th year returning will be deeply relied on to build this program back up from the doldrums it’s been in, and that will start with this spring.

“We need reps,” Cahill said on The Happy Hour. “We need to continue to get better with each rep. Every coach thinks there’s never enough reps, but with our numbers, we need to be smart.”

Overall, Lehigh’s roster has ten rising seniors and four 5th year players, which means that the Mountain Hawks will be a young team again this year – especially in August with the large incoming class.

But it also means that Lehigh’s player numbers for the spring, especially when considering keeping them healthy for the fall, are thin.

“We are low on numbers this spring,” Cahill told me. “We knew this was coming and have planned our whole spring around our low numbers. Get on the field, get the work done and get off. The players have done a great job attacking the spring schedule. We’re very proud of the growth we’ve made.”

Both this Saturday’s practice, and the Brown and White game on April 20th, are free and open to the public.

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