Winning the Patriot League championship and returning to the NCAA Tournament last year was more than a breakthrough season for the Lehigh women’s basketball team. It was momentum.
And momentum, for Susan Sachs ’77, is something you build on.
The success spurred Sachs to make a gift last year that created an endowment for an international travel program for the team, the first of its kind for Lehigh Athletics. The Mountain Hawks will go to Greece Aug. 6–14 to compete against international teams and enjoy sightseeing and cultural excursions that will enrich the student-athletes and spark team bonding.
“This could be someone’s first trip to Europe, much less to Greece,” Sachs says. “That falls into the bucket of experiences as a student-athlete that will stay with you forever.
“It creates a different mindset. It’s providing an aperture that’s wider than the one they have in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.”
Building From the Ground Up
Sachs developed her love of Lehigh athletics immediately when she arrived on campus in the fall of 1973. Her time at Lehigh was much different from what today’s female student-athletes experience.
Lehigh began admitting women just two years before Sachs arrived, and Title IX began providing women more opportunities to compete just one year earlier. All of that allowed Sachs to be part of many historic firsts as she helped build four teams from the ground up.
Sachs advocated for equality in college athletics, working to secure uniforms, appropriate facilities, and funding for her teams. She also served as a co-captain of the inaugural women’s basketball team during the 1974–75 season, played field hockey for its first three seasons, and was a co-captain of Lehigh’s first softball team in 1977. Sachs played volleyball during her senior year, making her an impressive four-sport letterwinner.
Her success led to her being inducted into the Roger S. Penske/Lehigh Athletics Hall of Fame in 2024 and to a successful media executive career. Her work included 18 years at Time Warner Inc. (now part of Warner Bros. Discovery), as well as a career at Common Sense Media, the nation’s leading nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of children in the digital world, where she currently serves as co-chair of the board.
“Sports provided core values and skills that transcend all aspects of my life,” says Sachs, who gives annually to each of the four teams she competed on. “It certainly defined my experience at Lehigh and shaped me as an individual for the rest of my life.”
Thinking Bigger
After the women’s basketball team won last year’s Patriot League championship, Sachs asked Murray H. Goodman Dean of Athletics Jeremy Gibson where else she could make a difference.
Gibson, recognizing the importance of recruiting top student-athletes to the success of teams, shared his vision for providing international experiences to student-athletes. He believes that such opportunities will set Lehigh apart during competitive recruitment.
“He wants coaches to think big,” Sachs says. “He wants coaches to be aspirational and then take whatever existing success you have and build on that.
“Specifically with the women’s basketball team, he [said], ‘We’re going to make women’s basketball matter, and we should go to the NCAA Tournament every year, and we should pop up in the Sweet 16. We should show the world we belong.’ That vision resonated right away for me.”
Women’s basketball head coach Addie Micir also believes these trips will have an enormous positive impact on her team as it prepares for next season.
“This trip is an invaluable chance to build team chemistry away from the daily routine of campus, providing a transformational experience where our students will become better athletes, as well as more well-rounded individuals,” Micir says. “We cannot wait for the experience.”
Sachs’s gift will allow the team to take one international trip every four years, guaranteeing every student-athlete will have one opportunity to participate, with future locations to be determined.
As someone who has lived overseas and traveled extensively, Sachs hopes the Mountain Hawks have fun on their trips as they continue to build on the foundation she started more than 50 years ago. She also recognizes the extraordinary opportunity provided by Gibson’s idea and her gift.
“It’s a way to punch above your weight,” Sachs says. “If Ivy League teams can do this and other top-level programs can do this, why can’t we set something up where we say, ‘Hey, this is going to be very special and a distinctive experience at Lehigh that sets us apart’? It’s that differential.”
