Lehigh football carries undefeated season, legacy into The Rivalry

Of all the games Deron Braswell, ’98, played during his football career, his first taste of the Lehigh-Lafayette Rivalry was the most memorable.

On Nov. 18, 1995, the 7-3 Lehigh Engineers trekked into Goodman Stadium standing one win away from the Patriot League Championship in the team’s second season under Coach Kevin Higgins.

As the game kicked off, Braswell, then a first-year wide receiver, didn’t realize he was about to partake in a historic comeback for the brown and white.

According to The Brown & White Archives, Lehigh faced a 30-14 deficit at the start of the fourth quarter. But the Engineers forced overtime after tying the score at 30. 

In overtime, Braswell said at the time, Goodman Stadium didn’t have lights, leading to dark playing conditions. While the night’s shadows crept over the field, Braswell said wide receiver Brian Klingerman snatched the ball with one hand in the end zone between the “old school” H-shaped goalposts, giving Lehigh the lead.

With the NCAA overtime rules, Lafayette still had an opportunity to possess the ball.

But Lehigh defended the nest, clinching a 37-30 double-overtime victory and a title.

“That was the first memory of how big (Le-Laf) was,” Braswell said. “You realize that you’re playing for more than just yourself and your team. You almost feel like you’re playing for generations of Lehigh football players.”

The game, known as “The Catch,” helped spark a dominant run of championships under Higgins, culminating in three undefeated regular seasons in 1998, 2000 and 2001.

In the ensuing years, the program — which rebranded as the Mountain Hawks in 1996 — suffered back-to-back losing seasons in 1996 and 1997. On-field performances were overshadowed by discourse regarding the new mascot.

But in the summer of 1998, the team underwent a cultural transformation.

Braswell was one of four team captains for the 1998 squad. He said the senior class was motivated to give the team an added push to work harder, convincing nearly 40 players to stay on campus to get extra work in.

“I think the coaches might have been surprised once we got to really organized team stuff — how far along we were,” he said.

He said the captains also focused on shifting the team’s mindset to trying to win every moment through their slogan: “one.” 

If they could repeatedly do that, Braswell said they knew they could become battle-tested for any in-game scenario. 

“It sounded corny,” he laughed. “We went with it. The team bought into it.”

In 1998, with quarterback Phil Stambaugh at the helm, the Mountain Hawks went undefeated in the regular season. 

The team traveled to Lafayette for the final game of the season, with perfection and an outright Patriot League Title hanging in the ballots. 

Looking back, Braswell believes it wasn’t the team’s best performance. He recalls assistant coach Dave Cecchini chewing the team out for not taking the game seriously.

Lehigh blew out the Leopards 31-7.

Despite the students rushing the field to take photos, Braswell said the biggest thing he remembered from the game was taking in his final rivalry on the sideline after the team took the starters out in the fourth quarter.

“Just soaking it in knowing, we beat (Lafayette) four years in a row, and we were getting an opportunity to go to the National Playoffs, which is something Lehigh hadn’t done in a long time,” he said.

Braswell said winning his last rivalry game at Lafayette made the moment special. He graduated after the 1998 season as the second-leading receiver in program history.

Two years later, one of Braswell’s close friends, Brant Hall, ’02, would join him in the record book.

As the quarterback for the 2000 team, he said the group would treat every Patriot League game like a championship game. 

And when they reached their final regular season game against Lafayette, it was no different. He said they wouldn’t settle for being a one-loss championship team. They were going to see an undefeated season through. 

After learning under Stambaugh in the ‘98 season, Hall said 2000 was a year for young players to make a name for themselves. 

“People didn’t know who a lot of us were, and it was our opportunity to step up and fill the shoes of some of the guys who had left that legacy for us to continue,” Hall said. 

He said while the team had their ups and downs at the beginning of the season on offense, by the end of the year they started to click — leading to an 11-0 season etched in the record book. The team then repeated the success the following year in a 10-game season after a game against the University of Pennsylvania was cancelled. 

Now, as the Mountain Hawks face Lafayette on Saturday, Hall said he’d give the same advice he followed — to go out and do exactly what they’ve been doing all season, because there’s no better feeling than beating Lafayette. 

While Lehigh’s on the verge of repeating a perfect regular season for the fourth time since 1998, Coach Kevin Cahill said they still have work to do. 

He said the team’s philosophy the last few years has been to focus on getting better every day. But while the Mountain Hawks have had a great year so far, everything they want — a top seed in the FCS playoffs and a zero next to the losses column — is still in front of them. 

Amid the noise from the student body that comes with playing in the 161st rivalry game, Cahill said the team is still focused on one thing: themselves. 

“Everyone’s all excited about this rivalry game, which is great,” he said. “You come to Lehigh to be a part of a game like this.” 

For Dan Bayer, ‘59, that campus energy is all too familiar.

When Bayer was just 6 years old, his father, who also graduated from Lehigh in 1935, took him to his first rivalry game in 1943. 

At the time his father worked for a railroad company. The two would take a train from where they lived in Maplewood, New Jersey, to the Lehigh Valley Railroad. They’d hop off the train in Bethlehem or Easton and walk to campus to go to the game every year.

By the time Bayer attended Lehigh in 1955, he was already accustomed to watching the rivalry, but was able to start taking part in campus traditions that fueled Lehigh’s competitive spirit.

He said each year, first-years from each school would collect wood for a bonfire in a vacant lot by Taylor Stadium. A few students would stay up all night standing guard around the wood, as someone from the opposing school would try to come and set it on fire. 

This tradition, along with tug-of-war and separate games for first-years the Friday before, was something that Bayer said kept campus energy surrounding the rivalry high. 

That love for Lehigh football, though, followed Bayer long after graduation. 

Now, he’s preparing to attend his 83rd rivalry game. 

Having stayed close friends with his fraternity brothers from college, he said he’s attended many home games over the years, bearing witness to the team’s wins, losses and undefeated seasons.

But throughout every Lehigh team Bayer’s witnessed, he said this group is special for being well-rounded. And despite never being a football player himself, he said he loves the sport, the game and the program above all else. 

“Well, I’d say (this team) is pretty good,” he joked. “It’s tough to stay undefeated mentally.” 

Cahill similarly recognizes that spark from this year’s team. 

The team’s current mindset echoes the one taken by Higgins during his undefeated seasons with the 1998 and 2000 squads. 

“Our whole thought process then was one practice at a time,” Higgins said in an interview with The Brown and White following the 1998 team’s victory over the Leopards. 

Now, Cahill has adopted that same mentality.

He said this group’s willingness to continue to improve, to receive constructive criticism and to get better has gotten them to the point of being 11-0 — on the brink of clinching an FCS playoff bid and the team’s first 12-0 regular season. 

“It’s a special group of kids,” Cahill said. “I give them all the credit for being a player-led team and them driving the mindset we have each day in practice. Each game we have is just one play at a time.”