Going to a small high school in Pennsylvania, sophomore Mackenzie Strohl said she always had the greatest times at sporting events.
She said when she got to Lehigh, though, she realized this wasn’t the case. She decided to make a change by creating Lehigh’s first dedicated club student section for football games, Clutch’s Kettle.
“My friend Alex and my other friend Ben, who’s also in the club, went to a football game that wasn’t Le-Laf, and they said it was honestly sad,” Strohl said. “There wasn’t a real student section, it was more so just parents.”
Strohl said the three of them agreed their high schools had large student sections, so they all loved attending games. Over the summer, they decided they wanted to start something that would give students the initiative to go to athletic events and have school spirit.
After Strohl and her friends applied to be a club, Lehigh’s athletics department reached out to them to help their idea become a reality.
The athletics department sent out a student survey, which asked questions including what would inspire students to come to games, what games they would like to attend and what students’ motivations are to come to athletic events.
“After looking through that survey, we talked about ways to better engage the student body when it comes to athletics, and one of the key things that we heard was having a formalized student section like a lot of other schools have,” Ryan Dilts, assistant director of sales and marketing at Lehigh Athletics, said.
A kettle is a group of hawks rising and soaring together. For the Mountain Hawks, this means being Clutch’s Kettle, the student body coming together to rise up, build energy and make their presence felt at athletics events.
“Being able to engage with students throughout the year at more than just the rivalry is important,” Dilts said. “It will be another opportunity to create camaraderie throughout the student body and give them more of a voice with athletics.”
Dilts, who helped lead this initiative, said one of the main reasons students reported not attending games was transportation issues to Goodman Stadium.
Starting at 9 a.m. on football game days, there will now be direct buses from outside of Grace Hall to Goodman Stadium, and the buses will run throughout the game for students.
Lehigh Athletics has announced other additions to the 2025 football season, including the sale of alcoholic beverages for fans of the age 21 and over, the Alumni Nest membership program created exclusively for Lehigh Football Alumni and a ceremonial bell ring before each game.
On Aug. 26, Clutch’s Kettle had a table at the annual club expo, where Dilts said the group more than doubled their following on Instagram and other social platforms to help get the word out.
Along with Strohl, the leadership team of Clutch’s Kettle includes sophomores Alex Lien, Ben Van Magness, Ryan Rust and Ava Kavasansky.
Lien, who first pitched the club, said he wanted to create a student section at the end of his first year at Lehigh.
“It gives people a community,” Lien said. “It gives them consistency, ’cause you know that if you wake up on Saturday morning, you can go to the football game and have fun with your friends.”
For the kickoff of Clutch’s Kettle, every single first-year student was invited to not only attend the football opener against the University of Richmond, but also to come onto the field as the team ran out.
Lien said while it was mostly first-year students at the game, the club is hoping to grow and recruit more people to attend as the year continues.
He said Clutch’s Kettle maintained a good crowd throughout the game and were happy with the first turnout.
“It may just be a coincidence, but when we really took off the cheers, our team did consistently do better,” Lien said. “It was nice to watch happen.”
Lien said his goals for the club are not only to continue to grow long term, but to expand and have a presence at all sporting events beyond football games.
“As we get bigger and bigger, the goal is to be at important games for all of our sports,” Lien said. “Sports with fewer spectators still deserve spectators.”
Clutch’s Kettle returned to Goodman Stadium on Sept. 6 when the Mountain Hawks defeated Sacred Heart University 28-10.
3 Comments
What a neat story! This student had such a great idea.
50+ years ago, everyone went to games because it was the thing to do and there were far fewer things to do. Having the convience back then of all sports on the main campus made it pretty easy to go. We all became fans of Lehigh Sports which for many of us lasted a lifetime.. I am able to keep these days from the comfort of my home in Florida due to streaming but I’m there for esp all football and wrestling. Hope it boosts interest. They should also try and grow community support like we had but that might be tougher with the demographic changes esp on Southside.. Many of the steelworkers were in the fanbase 50+ years ago… But they had 10K+ crowds at Goodman in the late 90s.
This is awesome and much-needed. I wish much success to this group and the student organizers. Please don’t forget WRESTLING this year – not only is it Lehigh’s most successful sport from a historical standpoint, but the wrestling team is poised for a MASSIVE year, competing with the top programs in the entire nation. It’s also exciting as hell and deserves a raucous student section!
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