Archive For The “Lee Kurfis” Category
WR Lee Kurfis literally came out of nowhere last year on the Patriot League and national scene.
Hard to believe now, but going into the 2013 season, he wasn’t a member of the preseason all-Patriot League team, despite playing very well in several games his junior year when WR Ryan Spadola, now with the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, was out with mono.
Maybe it was the unorthodox style of running. Or maybe it was because people forgot about his sneaky quickness to break for the ball. But after Kurfis almost singlehandedly helped Lehigh overcome a three-score opening-game deficit to Central Connecticut State, Lehigh Nation certainly knew that Lee had the potential to be a great one in the annals of Lehigh history.
Now of course, the rest of FCS Nation knows who Mr. Kurfis is, as he finished atop the FCS on average yards per game (122.8), 3rd in FCS in receptions per game (9.0), and finding his name on the ECAC All-Star Team, the AP FCS All-America team, Sports Network All-Star Team, the College Sporting News All-Star Team, and, most recently, the College Sports Journal All-Star team.
Now, he’s headed to the campus of Furman University to showcase his talents in front of NFL scouts.
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(Photo Credit: The Citadel Alumni Club of Pittsburgh)
I don’t think it’s too much of a reach to say that pretty much everyone involved with the Lehigh football program now wants to add something else to their Christmas wish list from Santa – a new offensive coordinator.
Consequently, Valparaiso, a non-scholarship Division I football program the competes in the Pioneer Football League, seems to pretty much have gotten the early Christmas present they were looking for.
This morning, Dave Cecchini was announced as the new head coach of the Valpo Crusaders, making people who know Dave happy, because he’s clearly been in line for a head coaching position for many years, and sad, because they know he’s going to be a particularly big void to fill in terms of Andy Coen‘s offense.
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(Photo Credit: Matt Smith/The Express-Times)
When I look back at Lehigh’s football program over the last four years, I can’t think of a single game that wasn’t meaningful.
And when you think about this fact, that’s a powerful thing to say about this group of seniors that will graduate this season.
So many programs have off years, years in between quality starting quarterbacks, years when players who find themselves in NFL training camps graduate, and the number of holes to fill are too great to compete for championships, let alone playoff spots.
But that didn’t happen for this group of Lehigh athletes in 2013.
Despite needing to replace two players who found themselves in NFL training camps, WR Ryan Spadola and LB Billy Boyko, a starting quarterback, QB Michael Colvin, and an all-Patriot League secondary consisting of CB Bryan Andrews and S Billy O’Brien, the expectations on this year’s team was great: Win the Patriot League. Build off a 10-1 season. Make the playoffs.
That’s what going to Lehigh to play football is all about: Winning. High expectations, on and off the field. And despite the rebuilding, and despite the gigantic injury to QB Brandon Bialkowski, this team made every game meaningful.
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(Photo Credit: Chris Shipley/The Morning Call)
Below the flip, enjoy this week’s “LFN Players of the Week” for the Georgetown game.
You’ll notice that there’s a lot of nicknames below after last weekend’s 45-24 win over Georgetown.
It wasn’t a typical Lehigh weekend for me as I headed to Murray Goodman.
With my family, including my mother and father visiting Murray Goodman stadium for the first time in a long time, I spent most of the game experiencing most of the game in a place where I haven’t been in a while: the “stands”.
When you cover a team, it’s a bit too easy sometimes to take refuge in the press box, hermetically sealed from the rest of the fans out in the fresh air. Too often, too, that’s what I do: plop in the press box, not to emerge until after the clock reads zero.
This time around, though, I had the incredible experience once again to enjoy most of the game in the stands, thanks to my family, and it couldn’t have been a better one, thanks to the best efforts of the other fans.
The picture above was taken on my phone, from where I was sitting on Saturday.
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(Photo Credit: Kiera Wood/The Columbia Spectator)
Below the flip, enjoy this week’s “LFN Players of the Week” for the Columbia game.
As sports comebacks go, this one was pretty epic.
Down 5-1 in the bottom of the eighth inning, Boston OF David Ortiz jumped on the first pitch from Tigers P Joaquin Benoit, a pitch he put over the short right-field bullpen fence in Fenway Park.
OF Torii Hunter leaped, and the baseball appeared to bounce off his glove, but he went head-over-heels into the dugout without the ball in hand, and Big Papi had tied the game at “five”.
Like so many Lehigh football games this season, Boston came from behind, thanks to heady baserunning by OF Johnny Gomes, and ultimately won Game 2 of the ALCS 6-5.
It seemed apropos that this game would have that score, and be won in this way, because it seems like that game could also be a microcosm of this Lehigh football regular season, too.
Everywhere you look at this season thus far, things are coming up “fives” for Lehigh.
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Brazilian soccer fans are one hard to please bunch.
It’s not enough for the soccer nation that brought us Pele, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho to simply win their soccer games against the rest of the world: to the high-maintenance fans of the seleção, every game involving the Brazilian nation team needs to had flair and panache: style points. They can still win, but if they win boring, the fans become restless.
Similarly, Lehigh fans looked to the Mountain Hawks to go up to the upper tip of Manhattan and heap on a stylish win filled with scoring, crispness, and focus. For some Lehigh fans, Saturday’s game wasn’t supposed to be about the win, it was about the style of the win.
If they were looking to win on style, they didn’t get that.
But more importantly, the Brown and White did get the win, notching a 24-10 victory, inching closer to their goal of a Patriot League title and the all-important autobid.
It wasn’t crisp, and it wasn’t pretty, but it was enough to allow Lehigh to cross the George Washington Bridge with a 5-1 record.
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(Photo Credit: The Morning Call)
Below the flip, enjoy this week’s “LFN Players of the Week” for the Fordham game.
(Photo Credit: John Huff/Foster’s Daily Democrat)
This weekend, it’s homecoming at Lehigh.
The pre-football festivities for homecoming start at in the middle of Friday, with a campus rally, followed by a dinner and a movie presentation.
The movie happens to be Monsters University, the hit Disney/Pixar movie from this summer where the heroes Mike and Sully flash back to their days at old Monster U., and we find out how they made it through their college years.
It so happens that there is an associated website with the release of the movie that is still up – complete with references to the Monsters U. athletic program and homecoming
“The MU faithful were put to the test last year, losing the conference championship with a “Hail Scary” pass from Fear Tech. But MU is back this year with an excellent new recruitment class — including three top-tier high school standouts: Bart Gates (quarterback), Uriah Pemberslime (fullback), and Harry Phiegel (wide receiver). The entire university community is buzzing with the prospect of Gates throwing to Phiegel for four years of touchdowns. “
In this entirely coincidental, fictionalized summary of the Monsters University football team is everything you need to know about this weekend’s game.
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