By Chris Goldberg
Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 11/30/10
Bishop Shanahan senior defender Leah Peppelman has signed a National Letter of Intent to play Division II lacrosse at Lock Haven University.
Peppelman was an Honorable Mention Ches-Mont League pick last year for the Eagles, who went 8-9 and advanced to the District 1 tournament. She plays club lacrosse for SEPA.
Peppelman plans to major in Secondary Education (science) and specialize in Biology.
“They have a great program for education and I really would like to coach, too,” Peppelman said. “Science is something I have been interested in since I was little.”
Peppelman will play under Lock Haven coach Kristen Selvage, who has taken the Eagles to the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference crown and the NCAA semifinals in each of the past two years.
“Coach Selvage is awesome and when I when went on my overnight I felt like I already knew the girls on the team,” Peppelman said. “They made me feel so welcome.
“I also like that it’s about 3 hours away. I didn’t want to be too close to home.”
Peppelman is the third Philly girls to commit to Lock Haven; the others are Unionville attack Jill Murray and Souderton defender Melinda Wojt.
Peppelman is excited about the 2011 scholastic season, too. Shanahan, named the Most Improved Team by the Pennsylvania Schoolgirls Association last year, also returns three Division I signees: attack-midfielder Colleen Holmes (Long Island Univ.), midfielder Hannah Goforth (Villanova) and midfielder Casey Briglia (Duquesne).
“We have really high expectations,” Peppelman said. “All the other teams lost a lot of top seniors, and we’ve been steadily improving over the last few years. We’ve been saying since freshman year that this year we’d be hoping to go pretty far and be very competitive.
“We’re trying to leave a mark. We have a lot of really talented seniors. It should be interesting.”
