Transfer portal

[The Kid]

Cornell is private and and Ivy and they are getting tons of top recruits? How are they doing it?

[HFO]

Cornell is private and and Ivy and they are getting tons of top recruits? How are they doing it?

That's a brave statement with some Lehigh alumni.

You are going to get hit with that Cornell is quasi Private, because Cornell is the designated "Land-Grant University" for agriculture since the 1860s for New York and as such, has a separate cost structure and admissions policy for in-state students to the schools part of the "land-grant" and federal and state funds received for it.

Duke is also fully private and is Davidson and others, but as stated Stanford and Lehigh are rare in that they can produce All Americans and rank in Top 25. Lehigh doesn't project that image well enough. I have a preferred competition list when it comes to scheduling each year. It would be good for Lehigh if it did have Stanford, Northwestern, Duke on the list. The premier privates in each of their previous leagues. Then when Lehigh sweeps them, it is a feather in our cap when trying to recruit that type of student athlete.

Hard to compete against Stanford. Academics and location. Northwestern lake shore campus in early Fall and late Spring is wonderful, but the months in between can be brutal, but if your Midwest, you know Chicago is the center of that universe for jobs and culture. So recruiting Midwest students to Lehigh Valley for wrestling has always been a tall order. We have had some. Hutchinson and a few others, but not lots despite the wrestling tradition in Illinois and Wisconsin.

[HFO]

Just checking out the playing field that Joe and Pat are operating on

Results of the NCAA Tournament

School Undergraduate Enrollment
Penn St 42,223 (Main Campus)
Cornell 15,735
Michigan 32,645
Iowa State 30,177
Iowa 21,973
Arizona St 75,492
Virginia Tech 30,434
Ohio State 46,123
Nebraska 19,189
Oklahoma St 20,801
Missouri 23,752
NC State 27,317
South Dakota St 9,921
Northern Iowa 7,739
Lehigh 5,624

The top 15 teams are comprised of 13 public universities, 1 Private/Public (Cornell) and Lehigh the only purely private school.

Anyone notice a pattern? Every one of these schools have a significant advantage over Lehigh. Public funding for facilities, coaching, training partners etc. Cheaper tuition, easier academic requirements at large, public universities. We've been through all this before. Now is this NIL era, add on average 5 X the alumni base just looking to use an athlete's name, image and likeness on his billboards. This isn't the old days. Smaller programs have since de-emphasized or dropped the sport and larger programs in the Big 10 and ACC have added major funding.

To any non-partisan outside observer, I would think Lehigh would be held in high esteem for what we accomplished this year.

Yes, there a pros and cons. However, Lehigh's budget for wrestling is among the highest of all NCAA program. It is not a skimpy budget. The facilities for wrestling are as good as any in NCAA. The coaches are as good as any in NCAA. One thing us alumni harp on is that ADMISSIONS does not have a "special abilities" classification to get in a special athlete who may not have 1300 SAT. We can have a bare minimum SAT for admission for this category and split it Men-Women across all sports and then also an equal number for other "special abilities" admission whether in performing arts, fine arts or whatever. This then allows you to go after athletes and students who Lehigh was not even a possibility before. There are plenty of major now that are not as demanding as pure science and engineering as in the past. Tuition should no longer be the deciding factor. Lehigh has signed onto that they will offer free Tuition to families with under $100k income and there are plenty of options for financial aid and as well Army ROTC on campus. You can go to Lehigh for free or near free, if you do the research and the student puts the work in.

Is there a bias toward large campus settings with big time football or the south, you bet. Students want a fun atmosphere. I do not know about you, but the Hill was a lot of fun in 1939 when I arrive and was even more fun when we returned from the war. We had women who bussed them selves in from Vassar, Cedar Crest, Mt Holyoke, Wellsley, Bryn Mawr, Barndard and many others, plus lots of local young ladies. From what I hear and have seen, college administrations have squashed any of the fun and debauchery of an all men's college of my era. My own view is that college Presidents have gone to far in loco parentis and all the restrictions and expulsions that now occur on college campuses.

Lehigh is a fine place for a student athlete who wants a good education, good post career and a smaller setting. I know even in my era that Lehigh and Haverford were fall back types of schools when you didn't get into Carnegie Tech, MIT, Penn, Princeton. For the hardcore engineering majors with scholarships, it typically was the #1 or #2 school. It was very hard to get into Lehigh, for sure it was not 46% admission rate as it is now to get the current 1500 student yield each year. It was more around 10% of applicants got in. Lehigh has lost some of it's luster over the past 2-4 college Presidents. The influx of applicants is due to an ever concentration of applicants applying to Top 100 schools and influx of nearly 1 million foreign students to American universities again who all want to go to a Top 50 school. Lehigh has a better overall applicant pool with high SAT, but a big difference is that before the vast majority of students wanted to be at Lehigh. I have a feeling now that more of the population of Lehigh students are there by default of not getting into their #1 or #2 school.

Being at Lehigh over 4 or 5 years does seem to convert most of our students who then become loyal alumni and donors. Life on South Mountain and a more intimate atmosphere changes hearts. In my era, our classes were 300 or less, so it was very close knit. At 1500 freshmen now, I suppose you could be anonymous and unknown as a freshman so that put us right in the pack with the Big 10 whose incoming classes are 10,000.

Lehigh is and has never been particularly good at branding especially when they by choice under Ulrich as Board President deemphasis of ENGINEERING and push to a comprehensive university with arts, sciences, business and engineering. The mascot was thrust upon us as part of that grand bargain of the board. Since the 1990s, we see that Lehigh has progressively move down in ranking and not improving. We land less prestigious PhD candidates as Assistant Professors, we produce less meaningful citied research, we barely bring in enough research dollars to prop up departments. So Lehigh needs to once again get competitive based on its strengths, not by selling the mediocrity of a comprehensive, small, residential college. Mediocrity in the middle is not a winning strategy.

[LUEngineer]

HFO has very well defined the progression of Lehigh & particularly the poor branding decision by Ulrich & Likens in the 90’s.

But that was nearly 30 years ago & at the very least for Wrestling recruits we should play of the WSJ top 15 ranking as I recall.

We are not trying to recruit West Cosst or Midwest kids but keep the Eastern kids & Lehigh Valley kids using the private school success story & associating with Stanford as our West coast equivalent.

I know we are not as good as Stanford academically etc but Hotel Bethlehem is not as good as the Peabody Hotel but customers think we are because we brand & associate with them & the beat them in our 3rd try.

You are who you associate with & Lehigh Wrestling now has a marketing oppprtunity based upon this past year performance plus a new NIL entity.

[LUEngineer]

also we can build off 2 Freshman All Americans. How many other schools can claim that accomplishment?

[Justafan]

HFO...thank you for your post and a bit of nostalgia.

I want to infuse a bit of optimism. I am very cautiously optimistic about the new President. He will not fulfill every requirement for everybody but he has already checked a lot of boxes IMO.

The 46% acceptance # everyone alludes to was during COVID. The landscape has changed significantly since then. Two years ago, there were approx 15K applications, last year, there were 18K, this year the # is about 21K. Of course the acceptance rate is contingent on applications. Research dollars increased 35% in JH's 1st year. Lehigh's overall ranking has gone from #50 to #47. Civil Engineering is ranked #2 in at least 1 publication.

Lehigh still has a PR problem in the middle of the country, but Lehigh is preparing to launch a satellite location in TX, based on our success in California.

Please keep in mind that wrestling is not the #1 goal on Lehigh's agenda as most posters demand but it is a means to the end which is to establish Lehigh as a top National University.

I remain optimistic.

[whiz wit]

Go after Kyle Parco at 149/157 or not worth it?
Is #3 guy good enough or should we see how the room develops?

Parco was a wrestling club teammate of Bailey in California and I believe Bailey's dad was a coach there. I also believe Yozzo was connected to that club/family and that's how Bailey wound up at Lehigh.

[NothingMeaningful]

also we can build off 2 Freshman All Americans. How many other schools can claim that accomplishment?

Cornell 2017-18: The Killer Ds: Diakomihalis, Dean, Darmstadt, three freshman, all AAs.

[1/2NELSON]

Go after Kyle Parco at 149/157 or not worth it?
Is #3 guy good enough or should we see how the room develops?

Parco was a wrestling club teammate of Bailey in California and I believe Bailey's dad was a coach there. I also believe Yozzo was connected to that club/family and that's how Bailey wound up at Lehigh.

Was un-aware that PARCO was available! Would be ONE hell'uve pick-up..

[LUEngineer]

My question about any other team with 2 frosh AA’s was in reference to this year only. Does anybody know if there is any other school this NCAA that had or more frosh AA’s?