Win the day.
That’s the motto of the Lehigh men’s lacrosse team, a squad that battled through its worst record (7-9) since 2011, suspensions to three of its best players and a six-game losing streak through the month of March last season.
This past fall, the mentality totally changed.
Many aspects of the team reverted back to the way they were in 2012 and 2013, when the team won the Patriot League Championship back-to-back years. This consisted of a tougher fall schedule to morning training sessions and practices. This team wanted to get back to a more successful mindset.
“Coach (Kevin Cassese) made it clear on day one that it was going to be a different fall than we’ve ever experienced,” senior defenseman Casey Eidenshink said. “I think we’ve developed this kind of ‘chip on our shoulder,’ hard-working mentality that we had gotten away from last year.”
The team even came back a week early for preseason to begin practicing, holding double sessions to prepare for 2016. Cassese said the goal was to develop a deeper commitment to the challenging parts of the game.
The team knows it may not be quite as talented as last year, especially offensively, losing players like Dan Taylor, Patrick Corbett and Kurt Kaunas, who combined for 82 of the team’s 163 goals in 2015.
However, it has returned players like senior attackman Reid Weber (38 goals, 13 assists in 2015), senior midfielder/attackman Billy Oppenheimer (10 goals, six assists in 2015) and senior midfielder Alex Eaton (eight goals, four assists in 2015), all of whom were important parts of the team’s offense last season.
Cassese said that Weber, one of the team’s captains along with Eidenshink and senior defenseman Tripp Telesco, would turn into one of the team’s primary leaders and the quarterback of the offense.
“I’m embracing it,” Weber said. “I’m trying to do everything I can to put this team in the best situation to win and doing whatever they ask of me.”
He added that having some newer players in bigger offensive roles will help especially in the beginning of the season because teams won’t have as much film on them. Also, not having someone like Taylor will force all six players to contribute when they can.
“They’ve really bought into that mentality for the most part,” Cassese said. “If we do that consistently we’ll have a chance to put up some numbers offensively, but if we get away from that and we don’t play together, we could be pretty bad on offense.”
Defensively, the team has returned many key players like Eidenshink and Telesco as well as senior defenseman Corey Eppley and junior defenseman/midfielder Jason Kozel, someone who Eidenshink spoke highly of.
“Defense has always been a staple for us,” Cassese said. “Any time we’ve been good here, we’ve been good on defense. I think if we can prevent teams from scoring, we’re going to be in every single game.”
The team’s freshman class is 16 players, bigger than the class of 12 that it has been the past few years. Cassese and Eidenshink both agreed there will be freshmen getting playing time from the very beginning of the season, something the team did last year as well.
The team’s schedule looks a little bit different than it has in years past. Instead of ending the season with rival Lafayette College, Lehigh will face the Leopards in mid-March due to the next cycle of Patriot League scheduling.
Also, the team will have two home games at Goodman Stadium, something it hasn’t been done since 2013. Those games will be two of their toughest matchups of the season, facing off against Loyola University (Maryland) on April 9 and Cornell University on April 16, who were ranked as No. 11 and No. 15 on the Inside Lacrosse preseason rankings, respectively. Lehigh was unranked in the poll and was ranked seventh in the Patriot League preseason standings.
However, the biggest test may be against Cassese’s alma mater, Duke University, who the team will travel to face in just its second game of the year. Duke is ranked third in the preseason poll.
Cassese said the game will definitely be exciting when the team gets to it, but going along with the team’s step-by-step mentality, he said he’ll focus more on it once the game is closer.
“It’ll be fun to get back down there, but I haven’t really allowed myself to think about it much yet,” he said.
Lehigh will open its season at home against New Jersey Institute of Technology (0-12 in 2015) on Saturday at noon on Banko Field.
Comment policy
Comments posted to The Brown and White website are reviewed by a moderator before being approved. Incendiary speech or harassing language, including comments targeted at individuals, may be deemed unacceptable and not published. Spam and other soliciting will also be declined.
The Brown and White also reserves the right to not publish entirely anonymous comments.