While Lehigh football coach Kevin Cahill and his staff were busy preparing for Villanova and the Mountain Hawks\u2019 NCAA FCS round-of-16 playoff game Saturday at Goodman Stadium, they were also scurrying around trying to finalize a recruiting class for the early-signing period.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is what it is,\u201d Cahill said. \u201cIt\u2019s a good problem to have. There are 16 schools with this problem right now in FCS football, and we\u2019re fortunate to be one of them. You appreciate it. There\u2019s a lot of work that goes into this in the summertime and through the fall, and we\u2019ll sign some kids today, and some kids will sign in the next couple of days. Some kids will trickle in over the next few weeks, and then we have another of these in February. So, we\u2019re not done yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen we have the dreaded transfer portal coming up, too, Jan. 2-16. That\u2019s the reality we live in, and it\u2019s hard to get everything done. You have to be organized, which I feel we are. We\u2019re not cramming anything in. Everybody who we thought was signing, is signing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Liberty High\u2019s Jake Pukszyn and Bethlehem Catholic\u2019s Cayden Vassa are expected to be part of this recruiting class, but Pukszyn is not official yet, but is expected to be soon.<\/p>\n
Vassa is officially aboard, and Cahill is thrilled to have him stay in Bethlehem.<\/p>\n
\u201cCayden is a tremendous athlete,\u201d Cahill said. \u201cHe\u2019s a tremendous kid. We\u2019ve known him for a while. He has been to camps here, and the coaches they have had over there, Tyler Ward and now Joe Bernard, speak volumes about him. I\u2019ve seen him play in person a few times. We went to see Sammy Ayache [a current Lehigh sophomore and Becahi graduate], and you see Cayden, and you ask, \u2018Who\u2019s that kid?\u2019 He\u2019s a kid who sticks out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just want really, really good football players in your program and what I liked about him is that he was really unselfish this past year. He was the starting quarterback, and he went to running back because that\u2019s what the team needed. Whatever the team needed, that\u2019s what he was willing to do and it\u2019s going to be the same way here. He\u2019s coming in as an athlete, and we\u2019re excited to get him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vassa ran for a team-high 1,053 yards on 107 carries, averaging 9.8 yards per carry, and scored 15 touchdowns, while in the air he completed 51 of 96 passes for 934 yards and seven TDs.<\/p>\n
He will be one of 18 in the recruiting class.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn reality, this is probably finally where we needed to be as a roster,\u201d Cahill said. \u201cEntering this season, I was worried about our depth in a lot of areas. Now this will get us more depth on the roster. We need more guys involved in different areas, and this will get us up to where we want to be in roster size. We weren\u2019t quite there this year, so we had to be smart about what we were doing. This is the fourth class we\u2019ve recruited, and now we\u2019re where we wanted to get in terms of allotted scholarships in the right positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pukszyn will be a nice addition to the receiving corps. As a senior for the Hurricanes this fall, he was third in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference in receptions with 55 for 906 yards and 15 touchdowns. He is currently starting, and approaching 1,000 career points, as a member of the Liberty basketball team.<\/p>\n
Among the other Lehigh signees were Sebastion Cugini, an offensive lineman from Kirkland, Wash; Bryce Werner, a wide receiver from the Pennington School in Philadelphia; Tyler Bewington, a defensive lineman from Boston; Tim O\u2019Malley, a defensive lineman from Madison, Conn.; Lebon Walker, an offensive lineman from Ruther Glen, Va.; Dominic Volomino, a defensive lineman from Thomas Jefferson in western Pennsylvania; Tristan Yepod, a defensive back from Dracut, Mass.; Benjamin Conelius from Shelton, Conn.; Max Dubin, a kicker\/punter from Highland Park, Ill.; Harry Miller, a linebacker from Scituate, Mass; Mick McKe, a defensive back from Germantown Academy; Aidan Mayfield, a running back from Bensalem; Anton Haven, a defensive lineman from Atlanta; Andy Tatsch, a defensive back from Latrobe, and Patrick Coan, a quarterback from Sayville, Kentucky.<\/p>\n
Lafayette signs eight<\/p>\n
The Leopards, who finished 8-4, 6-1 in the Patriot League this fall, added eight to their program.<\/p>\n
The eight included quarterback Eddie Jordan from Florida; offensive lineman Quinn Purnell from Maryland; offensive lineman Zen Liggons from Toledo; Bryce Tencza from Illinois; offensive lineman Nate Shields from Kentucky; wide receiver Kameron Vance from South Carolina; and cornerback Javian Burrell from Salesianum in Delaware.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have 11 guys coming in total because we have a lot of guys coming back,\u201d Leopards coach John Troxell said. \u201cWe only graduated 13 kids, so this is going to be a smaller class. Last year we had 35 when most years we\u2019re at 18 or 19.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe filled a huge hole in our offensive line. We\u2019re losing two guys there in Brian Baucia and Reed Collins. We\u2019re bringing in four, and we think we have some great ones to develop. We also got a quarterback from outside Jacksonville in Eddie Jordan and Eddie had some Power-4 offers. He\u2019s a real talented kid, and we\u2019re excited about him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe picked up some speed at wide receiver and cornerback. The group comes together nicely. We\u2019ve still got some work to do with about six scholarships left and some preferred walk-on spots. We have a local kid, too, but we can\u2019t announce him yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
That player is believed to be Justin Hussett, a wide receiver and defensive back from Whitehall who had previously been mentioned on social media.<\/p>\n
Troxell said his program is one that doesn\u2019t want to be a portal program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to be a program that develops kids,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, if you lose a kid or two, it\u2019s OK to bring in younger kids, but we lost 10 in the portal last year, and then you have to bring in some older players. Recruiting is still the lifeline of your program. You want to win, you have to have good players. Our staff did a really good job of bringing in talented players.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll know in four years if we\u2019re happy, but I know we\u2019ve got some great kids from great families. They\u2019re committed to what they\u2019re doing and they\u2019re choosing this place for the right reasons. Our degrees at Lafayette still hold a lot of weight so you hopefully are getting kids who will stay. I think we\u2019re bringing in those kinds of kids.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Lehigh football coach Kevin Cahill and his staff were busy preparing for Villanova and the Mountain Hawks\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,2300,726,432],"class_list":["post-52030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-college-sports","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}