Lehigh University Athletics
Season recap: Second half improvement sets foundation for continued program success
6/5/2018 3:24:00 PM | Softball
BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Statistically speaking, the 2018 season was atypical for the Lehigh softball program. A challenging early season schedule, combined with injuries and players taking on new roles led to a slow start for the Mountain Hawks. For the second straight season, the end of its spring break trip proved to be a turning point for Lehigh, as the Mountain Hawks started to figure things out. With improved play from some key veterans and the emergence of new talent, the Mountain Hawks won 20 of their final 32 games and once again found themselves in the mix for a Patriot League championship.
The Mountain Hawks ultimately fell short in their pursuit of a second straight league title, but showed great resiliency coming back from the rough start. A six-member senior class steered the ship, doing everything from setting records to managing injuries to taking on new roles.
"Ultimately our tough preseason schedule prepared us well for the Patriot League season and helped us in our run to the finals of the Patriot League Tournament," head coach Fran Troyan said. "Our record over the last 32 games was much more indicative of the performance from a Lehigh softball team."
The year began with a tough test at the Citrus Classic in Orlando, Florida. Five games, including three against power conference foes, highlighted by NCAA Regional participants Minnesota and South Carolina, left Lehigh at 1-4 after the opening weekend. A tournament at Duke and a spring break trip to Florida followed. Many of the games were competitive, but Lehigh came home from spring break at 4-15. The Mountain Hawks were in most of those 15 losses, but dropped seven games in which they were tied or leading after six innings.
There were some early-season bright spots. On March 11 against Loyola Chicago, senior Nicole Yozzo became Lehigh's career leader in stolen bases with her 72nd. Yozzo went on to steal a school and Patriot League record 46 bases in 2018 and finished her career with 108.
Five days after Yozzo's school record, Lehigh reached a program milestone. A 3-1 win over Elon in its opening game of the USF Spring Break Tournament marked the 1,000th in Lehigh softball history; an impressive milestone for a program that has won 14 Patriot League titles and has made 10 NCAA Regional appearances.
Success at home helped spur Lehigh's second half turnaround. The Mountain Hawks went 12-2-1 at Leadership Park, including a 7-2 Patriot League mark that helped solidify a league tournament berth.
The Mountain Hawks split their home and league-opening doubleheader with Colgate but won the series as a pinch-hit two-run single by senior Cassie Lajeunesse led Lehigh to a 3-1 win in the series finale. Lehigh then outscored rival Lafayette 13-2 over a three-game sweep that left the Mountain Hawks 5-1 in the Patriot League after two weekends of league play.
A nine-game road trip began with an 8-6, eight-inning win at eventual Atlantic 10 champion Fordham, with sophomore Mary-Hannah Smith leading off the eighth inning with a home run after the Rams had rallied to tie the game in the bottom of the seventh.
Three-game Patriot League series' at Boston University and Bucknell were indicative of how "different" the 2018 season was for the Mountain Hawks. Over the previous 25 years, Lehigh had only been swept in three Patriot League regular season doubleheaders and had lost just three series of three games or longer in the Patriot League regular season. Yet in back-to-back April weekends, Lehigh won a single game on the opening day of a series, only to get swept on day two doubleheaders. The end result was that for just the third time in league history, the Patriot League Tournament would take place outside the Lehigh Valley.
A weekend off from league play allowed Lehigh to get back into a groove. The Mountain Hawks won single home games against Princeton and Seton Hall, the latter of which was won on a Carolyn Wright walk-off home run, and then grabbed a home win and a tie against Villanova.
As a freshman in 2017, Parker Boyd pitched just 57.2 innings and had a 6.07 ERA. Through and offseason and fall season of work and development, Boyd emerged as a reliable pitcher for the Brown and White in 2018. Boyd's performance at Army in the next-to-last weekend of the regular season solidified her status as Lehigh's ace in the circle. With Lehigh in the unusual position of fighting to just qualify for the Patriot League Tournament, Boyd opened the series at West Point by hurling a one-hit shutout, with a then career-high 11 strikeouts in a 2-0 win. The Mountain Hawks dropped game two, but Boyd came back in Sunday's series finale with another shutout, a six-hitter, as Lehigh claimed the series with a 1-0 triumph as the Mountain Hawks officially locked down a tournament berth.
Lehigh closed out the regular season with a home doubleheader sweep of Rider and then took 2-of-3 from Holy Cross on senior weekend at Leadership Park, highlighted by a 3-2, 13-inning win in the series opener, where Boyd struck out a career-high 14 and freshman Allyson Dibsie delivered the game-tying and game-winning RBIs.
The Mountain Hawks entered the Patriot League Tournament as the No. 3 seed for the first time in 20 years. Both Lehigh and Bucknell showed jitters in their tournament opener. The Mountain Hawks scored an unearned run in the top of the first and the Bison answered with three before Boyd and Bucknell's Raeanne Geffert settled in. The Bison dropped Lehigh to the loser's bracket with that 3-1 victory.
If nothing else, the following day showed a glimpse into the potential of Lehigh's future. While the offense struggled, Boyd was masterful in the circle, throwing back-to-back three hit shutouts in consecutive 3-0 elimination game wins over Army and then Bucknell to bring Lehigh into the championship series against Boston University.
Boyd's performance over Lehigh's first three Patriot League games landed her a spot on the All-Tournament Team, where she was fittingly joined by seniors Rachel Timberman and Katie Schultz. Timberman fought through injuries, which affected her defense, for much of the season but managed to hit .294 and had a big two-run single in the Army elimination game win. Schultz had the go-ahead two-run single in the win over Bucknell and added strong defense in right field throughout the tournament. Her rise mirrored that of Lehigh's as she came out of an early season slump to hit a team-best 353 over the 32 games post-spring break.
"It was a real testament to Katie," Troyan said. "To go from where she started to where she ended was impressive. She finished the season incredibly well."
At the conclusion of Lehigh's season, Troyan announced the softball team's end of season awards. Yozzo received the Outstanding Athlete Award, given to the player who makes the most outstanding athletic contribution to the accomplishments of the team. In addition to her stolen base prowess, Yozzo batted a team-best .331 and led Lehigh with 49 hits and 31 runs scored. She was a first team All-Patriot League selection and second team All-ECAC honoree.
"She set some serious records that will be tough to break," Troyan said of Yozzo. "She played the whole year with heart and passion and honestly was somebody that other teams really had to game plan for. It was great for her to have that tremendous senior year."
Senior Carolyn Wright was recognized with the Scholar-Athlete Award, which is given to the student-athlete who best exemplifies the ideal of the scholar athlete, for the second straight season. The 2017, Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year for softball, Wright is a three-time Academic All-Patriot League selection, who graduated with a 3.87 GPA in accounting. With a hole at first base and a wealth of catching talent, Wright selflessly moved to first base, where she started 38 of Lehigh's 51 games. She finished with five doubles and 14 RBIs.
Boyd received the Coaches Award, which is given to the individual who made a significant contribution to the well-being of the team in terms of attitude, improvement or special leadership. A second-team All-Patriot League performer, Boyd finished her sophomore season at 19-13 with a 2.57 ERA. She threw five shutouts and struck out 187 batters in 204.2 innings while emerging as Lehigh's top arm in the pitcher's circle.
"Parker really emerged as a true No. 1 presence in our program," Troyan said. "We're excited about that and we're looking forward to building upon our late season success and in getting to the championship game. (Pitching Coach Stephanie Covelle) was doing a great job working with her and it was just a little fine tuning as we continued through the season. By the Bucknell series she really had figured some things out and it was a matter of her gaining confidence and the team gaining confidence behind her."
Lehigh says goodbye to a six-member senior class that won a pair of Patriot League titles in four years. The class includes Lajeunesse, Schultz, Timberman, Wright, Yozzo and Lindsay Phillips, who selflessly re-invented herself as a pitcher, posting a 3.94 ERA in 16 innings, when the coaching staff needed an extra arm in the bullpen.
The returning core for 2019 includes rising seniors Ashley Rabago and Emily Sorem, both of who have earned All-Patriot League honors and infielders Brie Gerhardt and Jennifer Stoll.
Mary-Hannah Smith earned second team All-League honors for the second straight year at second base and was Lehigh's top run producer a season ago with three home runs and 30 RBIs. Allyson Dibsie developed a good rapport with her battery-mate Boyd and also contributed 15 RBIs. Rising juniors Reva Alderman and Lexi van Ooyen provided offense off the bench while juniors Hannah Edwards and Emily Preble and sophomores Payton Alsobrooks and Lainey Stephenson either were limited or missed significant time due to injuries.
While six very important players have graduated, there are enough pieces in the program and optimism stemming from a late-season run for the Mountain Hawks to make another championship run in 2019.
The Mountain Hawks ultimately fell short in their pursuit of a second straight league title, but showed great resiliency coming back from the rough start. A six-member senior class steered the ship, doing everything from setting records to managing injuries to taking on new roles.
"Ultimately our tough preseason schedule prepared us well for the Patriot League season and helped us in our run to the finals of the Patriot League Tournament," head coach Fran Troyan said. "Our record over the last 32 games was much more indicative of the performance from a Lehigh softball team."
The year began with a tough test at the Citrus Classic in Orlando, Florida. Five games, including three against power conference foes, highlighted by NCAA Regional participants Minnesota and South Carolina, left Lehigh at 1-4 after the opening weekend. A tournament at Duke and a spring break trip to Florida followed. Many of the games were competitive, but Lehigh came home from spring break at 4-15. The Mountain Hawks were in most of those 15 losses, but dropped seven games in which they were tied or leading after six innings.
There were some early-season bright spots. On March 11 against Loyola Chicago, senior Nicole Yozzo became Lehigh's career leader in stolen bases with her 72nd. Yozzo went on to steal a school and Patriot League record 46 bases in 2018 and finished her career with 108.
Five days after Yozzo's school record, Lehigh reached a program milestone. A 3-1 win over Elon in its opening game of the USF Spring Break Tournament marked the 1,000th in Lehigh softball history; an impressive milestone for a program that has won 14 Patriot League titles and has made 10 NCAA Regional appearances.
Success at home helped spur Lehigh's second half turnaround. The Mountain Hawks went 12-2-1 at Leadership Park, including a 7-2 Patriot League mark that helped solidify a league tournament berth.
The Mountain Hawks split their home and league-opening doubleheader with Colgate but won the series as a pinch-hit two-run single by senior Cassie Lajeunesse led Lehigh to a 3-1 win in the series finale. Lehigh then outscored rival Lafayette 13-2 over a three-game sweep that left the Mountain Hawks 5-1 in the Patriot League after two weekends of league play.
A nine-game road trip began with an 8-6, eight-inning win at eventual Atlantic 10 champion Fordham, with sophomore Mary-Hannah Smith leading off the eighth inning with a home run after the Rams had rallied to tie the game in the bottom of the seventh.
Three-game Patriot League series' at Boston University and Bucknell were indicative of how "different" the 2018 season was for the Mountain Hawks. Over the previous 25 years, Lehigh had only been swept in three Patriot League regular season doubleheaders and had lost just three series of three games or longer in the Patriot League regular season. Yet in back-to-back April weekends, Lehigh won a single game on the opening day of a series, only to get swept on day two doubleheaders. The end result was that for just the third time in league history, the Patriot League Tournament would take place outside the Lehigh Valley.
A weekend off from league play allowed Lehigh to get back into a groove. The Mountain Hawks won single home games against Princeton and Seton Hall, the latter of which was won on a Carolyn Wright walk-off home run, and then grabbed a home win and a tie against Villanova.
As a freshman in 2017, Parker Boyd pitched just 57.2 innings and had a 6.07 ERA. Through and offseason and fall season of work and development, Boyd emerged as a reliable pitcher for the Brown and White in 2018. Boyd's performance at Army in the next-to-last weekend of the regular season solidified her status as Lehigh's ace in the circle. With Lehigh in the unusual position of fighting to just qualify for the Patriot League Tournament, Boyd opened the series at West Point by hurling a one-hit shutout, with a then career-high 11 strikeouts in a 2-0 win. The Mountain Hawks dropped game two, but Boyd came back in Sunday's series finale with another shutout, a six-hitter, as Lehigh claimed the series with a 1-0 triumph as the Mountain Hawks officially locked down a tournament berth.
Lehigh closed out the regular season with a home doubleheader sweep of Rider and then took 2-of-3 from Holy Cross on senior weekend at Leadership Park, highlighted by a 3-2, 13-inning win in the series opener, where Boyd struck out a career-high 14 and freshman Allyson Dibsie delivered the game-tying and game-winning RBIs.
The Mountain Hawks entered the Patriot League Tournament as the No. 3 seed for the first time in 20 years. Both Lehigh and Bucknell showed jitters in their tournament opener. The Mountain Hawks scored an unearned run in the top of the first and the Bison answered with three before Boyd and Bucknell's Raeanne Geffert settled in. The Bison dropped Lehigh to the loser's bracket with that 3-1 victory.
If nothing else, the following day showed a glimpse into the potential of Lehigh's future. While the offense struggled, Boyd was masterful in the circle, throwing back-to-back three hit shutouts in consecutive 3-0 elimination game wins over Army and then Bucknell to bring Lehigh into the championship series against Boston University.
Boyd's performance over Lehigh's first three Patriot League games landed her a spot on the All-Tournament Team, where she was fittingly joined by seniors Rachel Timberman and Katie Schultz. Timberman fought through injuries, which affected her defense, for much of the season but managed to hit .294 and had a big two-run single in the Army elimination game win. Schultz had the go-ahead two-run single in the win over Bucknell and added strong defense in right field throughout the tournament. Her rise mirrored that of Lehigh's as she came out of an early season slump to hit a team-best 353 over the 32 games post-spring break.
"It was a real testament to Katie," Troyan said. "To go from where she started to where she ended was impressive. She finished the season incredibly well."
At the conclusion of Lehigh's season, Troyan announced the softball team's end of season awards. Yozzo received the Outstanding Athlete Award, given to the player who makes the most outstanding athletic contribution to the accomplishments of the team. In addition to her stolen base prowess, Yozzo batted a team-best .331 and led Lehigh with 49 hits and 31 runs scored. She was a first team All-Patriot League selection and second team All-ECAC honoree.
"She set some serious records that will be tough to break," Troyan said of Yozzo. "She played the whole year with heart and passion and honestly was somebody that other teams really had to game plan for. It was great for her to have that tremendous senior year."
Senior Carolyn Wright was recognized with the Scholar-Athlete Award, which is given to the student-athlete who best exemplifies the ideal of the scholar athlete, for the second straight season. The 2017, Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year for softball, Wright is a three-time Academic All-Patriot League selection, who graduated with a 3.87 GPA in accounting. With a hole at first base and a wealth of catching talent, Wright selflessly moved to first base, where she started 38 of Lehigh's 51 games. She finished with five doubles and 14 RBIs.
Boyd received the Coaches Award, which is given to the individual who made a significant contribution to the well-being of the team in terms of attitude, improvement or special leadership. A second-team All-Patriot League performer, Boyd finished her sophomore season at 19-13 with a 2.57 ERA. She threw five shutouts and struck out 187 batters in 204.2 innings while emerging as Lehigh's top arm in the pitcher's circle.
"Parker really emerged as a true No. 1 presence in our program," Troyan said. "We're excited about that and we're looking forward to building upon our late season success and in getting to the championship game. (Pitching Coach Stephanie Covelle) was doing a great job working with her and it was just a little fine tuning as we continued through the season. By the Bucknell series she really had figured some things out and it was a matter of her gaining confidence and the team gaining confidence behind her."
Lehigh says goodbye to a six-member senior class that won a pair of Patriot League titles in four years. The class includes Lajeunesse, Schultz, Timberman, Wright, Yozzo and Lindsay Phillips, who selflessly re-invented herself as a pitcher, posting a 3.94 ERA in 16 innings, when the coaching staff needed an extra arm in the bullpen.
The returning core for 2019 includes rising seniors Ashley Rabago and Emily Sorem, both of who have earned All-Patriot League honors and infielders Brie Gerhardt and Jennifer Stoll.
Mary-Hannah Smith earned second team All-League honors for the second straight year at second base and was Lehigh's top run producer a season ago with three home runs and 30 RBIs. Allyson Dibsie developed a good rapport with her battery-mate Boyd and also contributed 15 RBIs. Rising juniors Reva Alderman and Lexi van Ooyen provided offense off the bench while juniors Hannah Edwards and Emily Preble and sophomores Payton Alsobrooks and Lainey Stephenson either were limited or missed significant time due to injuries.
While six very important players have graduated, there are enough pieces in the program and optimism stemming from a late-season run for the Mountain Hawks to make another championship run in 2019.
Players Mentioned
IF/OF
/ Softball
C/OF
/ Softball
P
/ Softball
C/UT
/ Softball
OF
/ Softball
OF
/ Softball
IF
/ Softball
C
/ Softball
OF
/ Softball
OF
/ Softball
IF
/ Softball
P
/ Softball
P/UT
/ Softball
IF
/ Softball
IF
/ Softball
IF/UT
/ Softball
C
/ Softball
OF
/ SoftballMHT EP 12 - Softball
Friday, March 13
2026 Lehigh Softball Season Preview
Thursday, February 05
Lehigh Sports Central: Softball
Wednesday, April 30
2025 Season Preview: Softball
Thursday, February 06
