Even in April, No. 156 should still be special
The buildup lasts for days, and in some years, weeks.
The morning of the game often offers the same anticipation felt by little kids waiting to see what Santa brought them on Christmas morning or what a family feels entering Disney World for the first time.
As kickoff approaches, the tailgates going on outside the stadium lift spirits while inside the teams ratchet up the emotion and intensity.
When the teams run out of their locker rooms, the roar of the crowd brings a sense of electricity and energy almost unmatched in Lehigh Valley sports.
Lehigh-Lafayette football is not only college football’s most-played rivalry, it is a local sports treasure, annually drawing one of the biggest crowds of any sporting events held.
Edition No. 156 will be played at 12:35 p.m. Saturday at Lafayette’s Fisher Stadium, nearly 17 months after it was originally scheduled and one week after it was supposed to be held during unique Patriot League spring football season intended to help fill the void left when the 2020 season was canceled by the pandemic.
Lehigh is 0-2 and hasn’t scored a touchdown this spring and Lafayette is 1-1 and coming off a 38-13 defeat at Bucknell, which was won the South Division title. It’s the same division featuring both the Mountain Hawks and Leopards.
While neither team will advance to the Patriot League title game on April 17, this
unprecedented April meeting will give closure to many seniors playing their last college game and provide valuable experience for the players will play key roles in the 2021 fall season that’s less than five months away.
Lehigh will be trying to end a six-game losing streak dating back to October of 2019. Lafayette would like to make it two in a row over its rival for the first time since 2013-14 and beat the Mountain Hawks at home for the first time since 2006. The Leopards were considered the home team when they won 27-7 in 2014, but that 150th meeting was played at Yankee Stadium.
There is a lot to play for, but will the emotions be at a fever-pitch even with a lot of empty seats at Fisher Stadium?
“Obviously with the attendance restrictions imposed due to COVID-19 protocols there will not be many people in the stadium, so you have to bring your own juice as we say,” Lehigh coach Tom Gilmore said. “You have to make sure you’re up from an internal standpoint because you’re not going to have the external motivation as much. There will not be an overflow crowd, but it’s still Lehigh-Lafayette. I don’t think the guys will have any trouble getting charged up for the game.”
Lafayette coach John Garrett is sure his guys will be pumped up.
“We always have great motivation to compete and play and beat Lehigh no matter what the stakes are within the league,” he said. “It’s the best rivalry in sports if you’ve ever been a part of it. Everybody gets juiced up, hyped up, more than ever. It’s going to be no different this time. It’s how you control those emotions and how focused you are on doing your job.”
Lafayette began preparing for Lehigh on the bus ride back from Bucknell on March 27.
That preparation was put on hold to a degree after the game was postponed for a week, but was sure to ratchet up this week as game day neared.
Adding into the emotion is the fact that for many players it’s the last college game they will ever play and since only a select few go on to play professional football, it’s the last organized game for most seniors.
Jeffrey Kordenbrock, who kicked the game-winning field goal in Lafayette’s 17-16 win in 2019 and was named MVP, said he tries to block out the past and not look too far into the future.
“I just think about what’s going on this week and know it’ll definitely be a really fun game for all of us to get after and possibly compete with each other for possibly one last time,” he said.
Selwyn Simpson, a Lafayette running back who scored both Leopards touchdowns the last time they played Lehigh, said the pregame nervousness will turn into monster energy once the game starts and it’s important to channel that energy the right way.
“It’s unexplainable, honestly,” he said. “You get hyped up for other games, but this one definitely feels different.”
Since Lehigh features a roster filled with freshmen and sophomores, the sensation of competing against Lafayette will be new to many of them. They will need to quickly adjust to the adrenaline rush that playing in a game known as “The Rivalry” brings.
Lehigh has 30 freshmen on its roster and 17 are listed on the two-deep depth chart. Counting kicker Dylan Van Dusen, the Mountain Hawks will have 10 sophomores starting.
Mountain Hawks sophomore safety TyGee Leach will be playing in his second Lehigh-Lafayette game and he said he has been trying to impart to the freshmen how this one is not just another game.
“This game just brings out something different in everybody,” Leach said. “Finishing our season with a game as big as this one, they need to know it’s going to feel different and they’re going to play different. They’ll see it for themselves on Saturday.”
Lehigh would like to close out the spring with a touchdown, preferably more than one, after scoring getting a total of three points in two games.
Gilmore and Garrett both have said the spring schedule, despite constant schedule reshuffling that has hindered preparation, has been worth the effort.
Lehigh has borrowed a phrase from the military — “Embrace the suck” — which means no matter how crazy things are, and they have been quite unpredictable since practice began, you try to adapt and go with the flow.
Everyone agrees that playing real games against league opponents has brought much more energy than the mundane nature of a normal spring practice.
“The spring has been more challenging than I expected,” Gilmore said. “I didn’t know what to expect to be quite honest. But from everything I’ve been seeing and hearing all week, it seems like we’re going to play this game this weekend, which is what everyone wants. Everyone wants to see it happen, our players and their players definitely do. So hopefully the rest of the week will go as planned and we can play this game everyone is looking forward to.”