By: Justin Lafleur, Lehigh Sports Communications
The Patriot League’s imaginative and prescient contains the next sentence…
“Scholar-athletes are ready to turn out to be leaders and to make significant contributions to society.”
A part of the mission of Lehigh Athletics is to arrange student-athletes for a lifetime of management. As former First Girl of the USA Rosalyn Carter as soon as mentioned, “A fantastic chief takes folks the place they do not essentially need to go, however should be.”
Nobody from Lehigh (or the Patriot League) needs to be the place we’re, canceling sports activities amidst a pandemic. However that is what wanted to be finished final March, and that is what wanted to be finished on Monday within the curiosity of well being and security.
The choice to cancel fall sports activities naturally brings excessive disappointment, but additionally a chance.
A chance to adapt.
“The power to adapt to 1’s surroundings is crucial in sports activities… in work… and in life,” mentioned head males’s soccer coach Dean Koski. “This can be a beautiful alternative to problem our linear method to a typical faculty season and assume exterior the field to maybe, coach in another way and progress our student-athletes in a unique mannequin.”
That mannequin is one everybody can be tackling for the primary time, and tackling it collectively. That mannequin might embrace on-campus exercises, lifts and practices, so long as native and college pointers are adopted. In different phrases, private and group development and improvement ought to proceed in some form or type. What was eliminated on Monday was exterior competitors (though the Patriot League is exploring the feasibility of the autumn sports activities competing within the spring).
For all the frustration, one of the crucial significant elements of being a collegiate student-athlete are the bonds with one another.
“We wish make the most of any alternative we’ve to play the sport we love, collectively,” mentioned head girls’s soccer coach Eric Lambinus. “If that’s modified coaching this fall in preparation for potential competitors within the spring, then that is what we’ll do.
“My hope is that this expertise permits every student-athlete to really perceive how particular it’s to play soccer at Lehigh and when the time comes and we’re given the inexperienced gentle to play, we’ll do it with our complete coronary heart.”
Earlier than the pandemic, student-athletes poured their hearts and souls into their sport. It is like a full-time job, and a few. The pandemic has introduced an excellent higher appreciation for his or her sport, and the Mountain Hawk student-athletes have gone in regards to the final a number of months very maturely.
“We spoke to our seniors final week to share among the challenges we had been going through as we noticed many conferences round us make the choice to cancel,” mentioned head area hockey coach Caitlin Dallmeyer. “We had a group assembly Monday morning, simply minutes earlier than the [Patriot League] information broke. The overall response was disappointment, however not essentially shock. We had shared with them the challenges that we had been working by way of, together with testing and security protocols, so that they had an concept of how exhausting folks had been working to make it a chance.”
For as a lot because the Patriot League wished to make it work, with the rising COVID-19 circumstances nation-wide, it wasn’t possible, sensible or in the very best curiosity of well being and security.
“I’m appreciative of the thought that went into making this troublesome resolution and applaud the Patriot League Council of Presidents for doing what’s in the very best curiosity of our student-athletes and campus group,” mentioned Koski. “We have to see ourselves as leaders in faculty athletics and make choices that mirror the league’s core mission, no matter public strain or perceptions.”
In making troublesome choices, the present leaders of the Patriot League are serving as a mannequin instance for the leaders of tomorrow – the student-athletes.
“We’re all residing in an unprecedented time and we have to adapt and evolve to make the very best of the scenario,” mentioned Lambinus. “We have now excellent people in our girls’s soccer program and I do know they’ll all make the most of this adversity to turn out to be higher variations of themselves. It’s our tasks as educators to information them by way of this course of.”
These unprecedented instances have introduced so many ups and downs, which may change (and have modified) within the matter of weeks, and even days.
“I like curler coasters,” mentioned head girls’s cross nation coach Debbie Utesch. “As a coach, the buildup to my sport season is just like the anticipation of that preliminary lengthy, sluggish climb to the highest of the primary large drop of the coaster. Then, preseason apply begins and I am going rushing by way of the season with all of its twists, turns and the wrong way up loops.
“On Monday, that trip got here to a screeching halt,” she continued. “On this surroundings of accelerating COVID-19 circumstances, the Patriot League’s troublesome resolution to halt fall sports activities was anticipated by most coaches. 
“However as extremely aggressive folks, that does not imply we did not need to end the trip.”
The chance to complete the trip might nonetheless occur within the spring. However for now, the main target inside Lehigh Athletics is to give attention to the current, respect each alternative (even when it does not look the identical as final fall) and get higher individually and collectively.
The hope is that arduous work this fall will repay within the type of spring competitors towards exterior opponents. However it doesn’t matter what, the student-athletes, coaches and workers have gotten higher folks by going by way of these challenges, even when they don’t seem to be consciously realizing it.
“We’ll make the most of the autumn having misplaced all of final spring,” mentioned Koski. “Youthful gamers who did not play a lot within the fall missed the spring phase, which is a vital developmental part. We are able to get them caught up this fall and now, we get to judge incoming freshmen for 4 months moderately than two weeks. We see this resolution as a chance to show extra, be taught extra and develop extra as a group.”
“In reference to one among our senior’s favourite analogies, ‘We spent eight months constructing a rocket ship that would have taken us to the moon, a spot our program has by no means seen earlier than. Our luggage had been packed, seatbelts on and technical difficulties exterior of our management have now made it not possible to launch,'” mentioned Dallmeyer.
“It is very important perceive that we’ll proceed to be a robust illustration of our program and although what we are able to accomplish this semester won’t be sport outcomes, it may nonetheless be highly effective in persevering with to maneuver ahead in new methods.”
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