BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Coming off back-to-back Patriot League Tournament berths, the Lehigh women's soccer team began preseason practice earlier this week with the season opener at Saint Joseph's quickly approaching on Sunday, Aug. 19. The Mountain Hawks lost several talented seniors from last year's team, but return a strong foundation who look to mix with the eight first-year players.
 
This first week is all about learning. Lehigh has two scrimmages within the first week, which will give the Mountain Hawks an opportunity to learn about each other.

 
"It's a new group," said head coach Eric Lambinus, who is entering his ninth season at Lehigh. "More than 25 percent of our team is new. We recruited all of them, so I believe they are really good fits and will acclimate well. It's about learning how to play with each other. We did solidify a little bit of our lineup in the spring, so we feel really comfortable about the way we're going to play and things we're going to do. Now, it's about how some of the other players can fit into that."
 
So far, the Mountain Hawks are off to a good start. Their work in the summer has put them in a strong position for successes from the get-go.
 
"We put in a lot of work in the spring and then our players definitely put the time in over the summer," said Lambinus. "They put themselves physically in a position to be successful, so we're really happy about that.
 
"As a group, they want to get better," he continued. "They know that we're not as good as we can be right now and we've got a long way to go, but they want to get better and they're willing to put in the work."
 
Last season, Lehigh finished 9-5-4 overall, 5-2-2 in Patriot League play to earn its second straight league tournament berth. The Mountain Hawks are 20-10-6 overall over the last two seasons and look to continue the success, and go even further. The team is keeping a big-picture approach.
 
"The mindset of the group is knowing that it's a build over the course of a season," said Lambinus. "We know that this first week was set up to learn a lot. So this first week with coming back, our fitness testing, practice and into two scrimmages against two really highly-competitive teams (St. John's and La Salle), it will give us a good idea of the direction we need to go.
 
"It's such a long season that we'll know more about this team three weeks from now than we will right now," Lambinus continued. "And then, we'll even know more when we hit Patriot League play, which is the end result of preseason and nonleague. All this is to set us up to be in the best position to be really competitive in the league."
 
A question heading into every year, for every team, is how to replace the previous year's seniors. For the Mountain Hawks, they lost several key seniors, including two-time All-Region honorees Alyssa Riporti (who is now Lehigh's graduate assistant coach) and Adrian Vitello. Along with their on-field production he Mountain Hawks lost important leadership, but Lambinus is liking what he saw last spring, and is seeing so far this fall.
 
"Our team is always going to take on the personality of our leaders," he said. "Our senior class, and our juniors, are somewhat of a different personality [than last year's upperclassmen]. It doesn't mean they're not as strong as leaders. One of the biggest areas is that they're really adaptable to the team and they want to get better. We want to be a good attack-minded team. We have a good leadership core right now. They had the team prepared for preseason, so you can't ask for anything more."
 
Following Lehigh's season opener at Saint Joseph's on Aug. 19, the Mountain Hawks play their home opener on Thursday, Aug. 24 when they host Fairleigh Dickinson at 12 p.m.
 
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