Lehigh's Foundation Unchanged Under Will Scudder

Will Scudder was in the middle of a whirlwind.

His boss and college coach, Kevin Cassese, had just left Lehigh after 16 seasons to become the offensive coordinator at Virginia. He spent much of that Monday morning in Mountain Hawks athletic director Joe Sterrett’s office to agree to terms on a promotion. And he had a meeting with a stunned team looming in less than a half hour.

There wasn’t much time, but enough for one important call. He had to reach out to Scott Cole, a senior attackman who he played a major role in recruiting to Bethlehem.

“I called him and said, ‘Scott, this is what’s happening. I need you. I love you. I’m very vulnerable right now, and I need you more than ever. You’re my guy,’” Scudder said. “We don’t name captains usually until the fall, and I told him, ‘I’m going to name you a captain on this Zoom call when we jump on in 15 minutes, and I need to know if you’re all in,’ and he had my back 100 percent. He said, ‘Coach, whatever you need from me, I have you all the way.’”

Cole, who had 49 goals and 26 assists last season to earn the Patriot League’s offensive player of the year award, wasn’t going anywhere. Nor were his teammates. Nor, after four-plus months of effort, were any of Lehigh’s 12 commits who ultimately signed in November.

The handoff was complete. And Lehigh managed not only to maintain ties to its most successful period in the modern era, but also to find someone who would be as invested in the school as anyone.

“I just kind of hung up the phone, and there was no sense of panic at all,” Cole said. “He’s such a relationship-oriented guy, and he has all of our backs so much, and the guy just loves Lehigh more than anybody. I think we all knew we were going to be in good hands.”

SOME PEOPLE KNOW THEY WANT to be a coach long before their college careers end. Scudder was not one of them. 

He was, however, a freshman on Cassese’s first Lehigh team. He was one of 12 players in his recruiting class but one of only three who made it to their senior year with the Mountain Hawks.

A faceoff specialist, Scudder was a captain in 2011, helping to lay the groundwork for a team that would make its first two NCAA tournament appearances in 2012 and 2013. And by the time he was ready to graduate, Cassese approached him about a position on staff.

“He offered me a job as kind of, ‘Hey, do you want to come and do this? I think you’d be a pretty good coach, do you want to stay on staff and try this out next year?’” Scudder said. “I laughed at him, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to coach. I want to go make money.’”

So that’s what he did, working a financial insurance gig while living at home with his parents in the Philadelphia area. By his second year, he was volunteering as a lacrosse coach at Great Valley High School. Bosses allowed him to leave work early in exchange for coming in around 5:30 a.m.

Scudder experienced a bit of an epiphany that spring. He wasn’t getting paid to coach high school kids, but that’s who he was pouring all his energy into. So, when Cassese asked him that summer if he’d be interested in returning to Lehigh, he had a different answer.

“I felt like I was missing and losing a little bit of my competitive drive after I graduated college,” Scudder said. “Once I got back on staff, there’s nothing that replicates the adrenaline rush of game day. The preparation we put in for the week. It just comes down to surrounding myself with like-minded individuals and being around something that’s bigger than myself.”

Over time came more responsibilities. About five or six years ago, Cassese began letting Scudder have a hand in every part of the Mountain Hawks’ program. He saw how Cassese handled things and also had a sense of what problems could pop up based on various situations.

When Cassese made his move, no one was better equipped to keep Lehigh — which has six 10-win seasons in the last 12 years, including a 10-5 mark last season — operating as a reliable Patriot League contender than Scudder.

“To have one of my own take over and have that transition happen quickly and smoothly was really important to me, and I know it was important to the administration,” Cassese said last summer. “It’s obviously well-deserved for Will. Is he ready? Yep, absolutely he’s ready, and he’s going to do a great job there.”

Cassese let Scudder know the Thursday or Friday before his eventual departure that he was leaning toward leaving. By Sunday, he’d made his decision. Less than 24 hours later, Scudder was speaking to a team that was both surprised by the news and elated about their new coach’s promotion from defensive coordinator.

“It was so humbling to see how excited my players were for me to know this was such a dream of mine to be a head coach in Division I one day and have it be at my alma mater and have it be with the guys I recruited,” Scudder said. “That sentiment has really carried through the fall and into the spring where they’re playing really hard for me because they don’t want to disappoint me.”

THE VALUE OF CONTINUITY GOES BEYOND simply having a familiar face in charge.

Scudder retained assistants Matt Francis and Matthew Licciardi while adding former Dartmouth assistant Evan Lombardo to fill the open spot on staff. Scudder has added a few wrinkles.

Cole described weekly “shared adversity sessions” on Friday mornings in the fall when the team would tackle physically and mentally challenging tasks with the aim of building camaraderie. The Mountain Hawks have also switched up their practice routine, moving from longer practices to shorter, more intense workouts.

But the ethos of a program that was always rugged under Cassese is fundamentally unaltered.

“Everything pretty much stayed the same, and it’s very comforting from an upperclassman’s perspective to know we’re not rewriting the script here,” Cole said. “Sure, we have to step up a little bit and help out our new head coach, but this is still the Lehigh lacrosse that we’ve all been a part of and know. We’re going to represent ourselves the same way we have for the past three years.”

Take one of the basics at Lehigh. Cassese insisted on four core values as he built the program: Passion, selflessness, discipline and toughness.

\Scudder, who repeatedly credited Cassese for his mentorship and stewardship of the Mountain Hawks’ program during a preseason discussion, rattled off those pillars in the same exact order Cassese did.

“That’s the biggest message I’ve been preaching to our guys: These are the things you’re going to be judged on at the end of the day,” Scudder said. “It’s not how many goals you score, it’s not how many caused turnovers you have. It’s how selfless a teammate are you? Do you care more about your teammates than yourself? Trying to get them to buy into that mindset will make us the best version of Lehigh lacrosse that we can be.”

Whatever version it is — and the Mountain Hawks will begin finding out Saturday when they visit Rutgers in their season opener — they’ll do it with someone both Cassese and Cole describe as passionate about his work and the people around him guiding the program. And that makes Lehigh’s players all the more invested in their new coach.

“In the middle of the game, in sign language, he’ll hold up his hand and it’ll say, ‘I love you,’” Cole said. “It’s just a really comforting thing to know that this guy is here for me, and he fully accepts me as one of his guys. That’s a guy you want to play for.”