For Pete's sake: It was nice to have former Lehigh football coach back in town

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FROM KEITH GROLLER

A break from basketball gave me a chance to catch up with former Lehigh and current Ball State coach Pete Lembo tonight at the NIKE Coach of the Year clinic in Fogelsville.

Had a chance to interview him before his presentation and then sat through all of the hour-and-20-minute of  session which was entitled "Building A Program From the Ground Up."

It was impressive, just like Lembo's work at Elon and Ball State since leaving Lehigh.

Even though Lembo's speech was the last presentation of the day and didn't begin until 9:15 at night and there was beer and pizza awaiting the guys who were there, Lembo kept their attention.

Lafayette coach Frank Tavani, former Nazareth head coach and Lehigh assistant Rob Melosky and former Whitehall coach and former Lehigh assistant Tony Trisciani were all there as was Walt Whitehead, the son of the late John Whitehead, Lehigh's legendary coach.  think everybody was impressed.

I.covered Lembo (seen at left with former Becahi quarterback Mark Borda during a 2004 game) in his five seasons at Lehigh from from 2001-05 and I saw a different side of him tonight.

I saw him as a polished, articulate, organized and yet entertaining and genuine speaker who seemed to truly want to make everyone in the room a better coach and person after listening to him.

It's no wonder to me why Lembo, who was 44-14 in his time at Lehigh, has had even more success at both Elon and Ball State and why he may be one of the hottest commodities in the college coaching profession at the age of 43.

Looking back, Lembo wasn't appreciated fully at Lehigh, in part because he followed the charismatic Kevin Higgins, who struggled in his early years on South Mountain but got things turned around in a big way..

When Lembo went 11-1 and won the Eddie Robinson Award in his first season, people sniped that he won with "Higgins' team."

And when Lehigh lost four games the following season and three each of the next three, it was like the sky was falling.

But as Lembo said Thursday night, it was a learning experience for him and there were limited resources at Lehigh. It was difficult to keep the program at an elite level, and while Lehigh didn't go to the playoffs every year of his enture, the program never slipped very far on his watch even as he was losing quality coaches like Tom Gilmore and Dave Cecchini to other programs.

Lembo also admitted that he's a more seasoned, experienced and poised coach than he was in this first few years at Lehigh. He has learned how to deal with adversity much better.

He spelled out many of these things during his session and he talked about the need to fill your program with high character players and high character coaches who leave their egos at the door.

He talked about a lot of different things that made a lot of sense.

This wasn't a heavy X-and-O session. It was about setting the tone for your program, even the way you dress matters, he said.

And, he even talked to the coaches about the need to take a vacation once in awhile and take care of themselves.

All in all, I was impressed and so was clinic director Jim Tkach, who said it was one of the best sessions he had ever heard in 11 years of the clinic.

I will have much more on Lembo's return to the Valley -- and yes, he still knew his way around the area -- in the print edition of Saturday's Morning Call.

National championship coach Jimbo Fisher of Florida State and new Penn State coach James Franklin are among the guests on Friday at the clinich who goes through Saturday at the Holiday Inn Conference Center.