Carolyn Wright

Classroom

Following the 2017 regular season, Carolyn Wright was recognized as the Patriot League’s Scholar Athlete of the Year for softball. She holds a 3.89 cumulative grade-point average as an accounting major, which ranks second on the Mountain Hawks (.01 behind the top GPA). Thus far, she is a three-year member of the Patriot League Academic Honor Roll and is a two-time Academic All-Patriot League selection. She has made Lehigh’s Dean’s List with a semester GPA of 3.6 or better in each of her first seven semesters, including a pair of 4.0 semesters, and is a three-time member of the NFCA All-Academic Team. As a sophomore, she was named to the CoSIDA Academic All-District 2 Softball Team. She is a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and the Lehigh University Philosophy Honors Society. She also won the Nelson Leighton Bond Memorial Prize in the fall of 2016 and was a member of a team of students that won the Deloitte FanTAXtic Case Competition Regional Championship in 2015. Wright has already accepted a job with RSM US, LLP in Washington, D.C. following her anticipated graduation in May.

Wright also completed a writing fellowship with Lehigh’s TRAC (Technology, Research and Communication) office. She mentored students in all phases of the writing process, consulted with faculty on assignment design and classroom teaching styles and assisted with library and database research and the use of educational technologies. Her main focus was on improving TRAC Fellow knowledge and expertise in working with ESL (English as a Second Language) students through partnership with Lehigh’s ESL office.

Character

Wright is well-respected by her teammates and is a member of Lehigh softball’s leadership unity council, which acts in place of team captains with representation from each class. Her character is also shown by her selflessness. She split time behind the plate with other catchers in her first two seasons and has also stepped in at first base as needed several times in her career and done so without complaint or hesitation. In addition to her softball duties, she has been involved in the Lehigh Athletics Leadership Academy within the athletics department. In Lehigh’s Leadership Academy, she graduated from the Emerging Leaders program where she learned how to be an effective vocal leader and how to lead by example on her team and within the Lehigh community, and also from the Leadership Legacies program where she learned how to interact with coaches and teammates in order to effectively lead a team as a captain.

Community

Wright has been involved in several community outreach programs at Lehigh, most notably the annual Adopt-A-Family initiative around the holidays. Each Lehigh Athletics team adopts an underprivileged family, and they then raise money throughout the semester to purchase holiday presents for their adopted family. The event wraps up with an event where all the student-athletes present the gifts to the families. Last year, the Lehigh student-athletes raised more than $30,000. She has also previously worked as a volunteer assistant coach for the SoCal Breakers under-14 travel softball team near her hometown of Chula Vista, Calif.

Competition

Wright entered her senior season as a two-time first-team All-Patriot League catcher (2017, 2016). Last season, she added third-team NFCA Mid-Atlantic All-Region honors after batting .308 and tying for the Patriot League with 42 runs batted in. After a slow opening month of the season, both her and her Mountain Hawks came to life in the second half of the season. She batted .385 with three home runs and 36 RBIs after March 18, while Lehigh went on a 28-4 stretch that culminated in a Patriot League Tournament title and NCAA Regional appearance. As of nomination time, she had appeared in 133 career games with 105 starts and was a career .297 hitter with 15 doubles, four home runs and 65 RBIs. Her Lehigh team has won six straight Patriot League regular season titles (including her first three years) as well as the 2015 and 2017 tournament crowns. She participated in the 2015 and 2017 NCAA Regional Tournament with the Mountain Hawks.