Darrin Lenhart named Elizabethtown’s new baseball coach

Darrin Lenhart has had a lot of great experiences in a lifetime affiliated with baseball.

The latest came recently when he was named the head baseball coach at Elizabethtown College.

He was a star player at Allen High School where he graduated in 1997 and then was a four-year starter at Pitt and might have had a career in professional baseball were it not for three torn ACLs — the first that happened while playing basketball for the late John Donmoyer at Allen — and two while in college.

“A couple of pro teams called, but I thought by that point that playing was not in the cards for me,” Lenhart said.

He still played baseball locally in the Tri-County League and was a league MVP in the amateur circuit while beginning his coaching career. He coached four seasons at Allen and then became a college coach at Lehigh-Carbon Community College where he elevated the program to NJCAA Division III status and eventually moved them up to NJCAA Division II, which meant scholarship money could be given.

But as that was about to begin, the pandemic stalled everything, and eventually LCCC ended the program.

As the saying goes, when one door closes, another one opens, and Lenhart got the opportunity to coach with John Kochmansky at a growing East Stroudsburg University program.

“I was already teaching at East Stroudsburg while pursuing a PhD in health science movement at Seton Hall, and one of the projects at Seton Hall was to develop appropriate assessment and training for pitchers,” Lenhart said. “So while I wasn’t coaching there, I was working on my program for training pitchers, and I brought that to ESU, and [Kochmansky] allowed me to implement my program at ESU.”

While at ESU, Lenhart got to be a key part of a program that continued to get better.

“Each year we got a little bit further in the postseason,” Lenhart said. “We made a regional, then we hosted a regional, and then we got to a super regional and then hosted a super regional,” he said. “And then last year, we won the super regional and got to the NCAA Division II College World Series in Cary, North Carolina, at the USA Baseball National Training Complex. Jack Rothenhausler hit a walk-off grand slam to give us a win down there, and it was like one of the greatest times I’ve ever had on a baseball field.”

Lenahart formed a great bond with Kochmansky, and they worked well together for five years.

“I’m forever grateful for John and his wife because they became great friends and gave me the opportunity to grow as a coach,” Lenhart said. “And they knew that all I ever wanted to do was be a head coach at a four-year school.”

And now, he is.

He’s excited to take over at Elizabethtown.

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” Lenhart said. “It’s bittersweet leaving ESU, but E-Town is a great program with great history and great success. It’s a great opportunity. There’s really a very short list of places that I would leave ESU to go to and this would be the one.”

Lenhart said that Elizabethtown has great facilities, including a fieldhouse that was built in 2019. There are baseball and softball stadiums that feature grandstands and there’s a human performance lab where Lenhart said he can do many of the same assessment and development techniques that he did at ESU and added that they have already implemented many of the same things.

“It’s a successful program and I am grateful for giving me the opportunity and trusting me with that,” he said.

Officially, Dec. 26 is Lenhart’s last day at ESU and then will begin to begin moving things forward at E-Town. The first day of practice is Jan. 12.

At ESU, Lenhart was a full-time assistant, the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator and he brought a lot of Lehigh Valley talent to Monroe County.

“There were a few times when you could look out onto the field and you could see all nine guys being from the Valley,” he said. “If we could expand the recruiting and get some Lehigh Valley kids out to Elizabethtown it would be fantastic because it’s a great school and they have been in the NCAA tournament 24 times and hosted a regional two years ago. They have great facilities and I think coaching there is going to be a great experience.”

Lenhart and his wife and three kids will maintain a home in Center Valley where the youngest are in the Southern Lehigh School District. His mother, Linda, lives in Northampton.

His father, Keith, died at the age of 69 in 2021, but Lenhart keeps him in his heart and approaches coaching the way his dad approached his life. He was a special education teacher in the Northwestern Lehigh and Allentown school districts.

“How I go about doing things and teaching young people, I got a lot of my philosophy from him,” Lenhart said. “He was the most influential person in my life. I try to do things the way he would do them.  I don’t always succeed because I am not as good as him. But I try to model the things I do after him and he was always so patient. He had an astronomical amount of patience and tried to meet people where they were. He understood that everyone is going to learn differently and he knew he had to teach them in a way they needed to be taught. He didn’t believe there was just one way and it had to be his way.

“People learn at a different pace and in a different way and I try to do the same thing with my baseball players and understand that you have to reach them in different ways. I got that from dad and also remember that his faith and integrity were also unmatched. I try to model myself after him.”

Elizabethtown opens its season on Feb. 22.