Michele Laubach may have resigned as Freedom High School’s softball and girls wrestling coach, but she doesn’t rule out a comeback.

“I’d like to consider it a pause for now,” she said on Friday. “I don’t think it’s the end of my career. This is not goodbye forever. It’s something I need to do right now.”

Laubach has two sons participating in sports.

Conner is an eighth-grader at East Hills Middle School who is playing JV fall baseball and will wrestle in the winter. Another son, Nelson, is a Freedom sophomore and he’s playing both JV and varsity football and will play baseball in the spring.

Aly, her daughter, is playing Division I college field hockey at Mercyhurst after being a three-sport athlete at Freedom and was the school’s senior athlete of the year for the 2024-25 school year.

Keeping track of her kids will keep Laubach busy, something she was used to as the head coach in two sports at Freedom.

In softball, she led Freedom for seven seasons, including the 2020 season, which was short-circuited by COVID-19. She posted a record of 99-42 and won Eastern Pennsylvania Conference titles in 2021 and ’25. She was named coach of the year by two media outlets, including The Morning Call, in 2021. Her teams also won three division titles and reached the District 11 tournament.

Previously, Laubach was the softball coach at Liberty and went 52-33 in four seasons from 2004-07.

In wrestling, she helped to initiate the start of the Freedom girls program, first coaching the club team in 2022-23 and then leading the Patriots the past two seasons as a sanctioned program. In 2023-24, she produced four EPC medalists and four District 11 place-winners. Last winter, she coached three EPC medalists, as well as three district place-winners, and sent two to PIAA regionals.

“I feel like it’s a blessing and a gift that I have to have a mentality that if an opportunity exists, what do we need to bring that to fruition,” Laubach said. “For me, it all started after my four years of coaching softball at Liberty. I became a stay-at-home mom with my three kids, and I got involved at Egypt Memorial Park as the softball and field hockey director. There was no youth team at Egypt, so I said, ‘Let’s start one.’ I joined the board at Egypt, and we put out a proposal, and it was accepted. When I left there, we had 80 kids in the program.”

She had the same thought process when girls wrestling found its way onto the local sports stage.

“I went to college at Lock Haven and worked as an assistant manager in the wrestling office,” she said. “I followed wrestling a lot and went to the Penn State wrestling match every year. I met some of the big names in the sport, and I felt I knew wrestling. Honestly, my daughter wasn’t even interested in wrestling at the time, so it had nothing to do with her. It was a situation where I was in the building, and this was an opportunity for female athletes, and we needed somebody. We had nobody. Who’s going to take this on? I have the ability and knowledge to start something up because I did it at Egypt.”

She did and was successful, and won EPC championships.

“It’s about developing relationships, and it’s nice being a phys ed teacher because I see all of the kids in the gym,” Laubach said. “Some were athletes, some had never played sports. They all came from different backgrounds, and I’m like, ‘Listen, just come and watch. Give it a shot.’ For some of them, it truly changed their lives, and they became a part of something because at a big school like Freedom, it’s easy to get pulled into something else.”

She’s just as proud of her softball success at Freedom, where the program had no titles before winning the EPC in 2021 and following it up with another league title four years later.

The 2025 softball team went 18-6, 13-3 in the EPC. In the league tournament, the Patriots beat Stroudsburg, Liberty, and Nazareth to win the title. Unfortunately, the successful run ended in districts where Freedom fell to eventual District 11 champion Easton, 2-1, in the quarterfinals.

No Freedom team has ever won a district title or made a run in states the way Laubach’s Central Columbia team did when she was a player.

“Softball can be brutal to coach,” she said. “It’s a tough road to navigate. There are a lot of subjective opinions involved, and there are a lot of parents who coach and a million travel teams. I have always coached with integrity, even when others around me tried to persuade me in a subjective way. I have always tried to sit down with myself, clear my mind, and remember it is my job as a coach to decide a lineup that’s based in integrity and what is best for the program. You earn what you get.”

Laubach said people wondered how she could manage being the head coach of two varsity programs.

“I told them I just don’t know any other way,” she said. “It’s what I love. I do feel it’s a gift. This is what I can offer and what I can do because there are other things I can’t do. I always told the girls that it’s important to give back. It’s important to be a good citizen.

“That’s why we went into the elementary schools every year and did free clinics. We load up all the equipment and drive to the schools and work with the girls. The girls are doing this at 7 o’clock in the morning on an off day. But it’s about giving back. We do clinics in the winter, in the summer heat, and we participate in the Miracle League of Northampton County. And then the girls umpire for youth teams at the North Bethlehem fields. It’s all important.”

Laubach was also a driving force, along with Northampton’s Kristy Henritzy, in running a summer tournament in 2020 after COVID-19 wiped out the high school season.

She was determined to give the girls an opportunity to play one last time for their high school teams after so many were heartbroken to lose full seasons, especially the seniors.

“I get choked up just thinking about that day at Coca-Cola Park and seeing how it all ended,” she said.

Laubach has two master’s degrees and certification to become a principal. But athletics will be also be close to her heart.

“I think if the right opportunity presents itself, I would take a look,” she said. “Coaching two sports and seeing the sports my kids are playing, I think I have a wide-open view of all facets of an athletic program. I want to stay involved and continue to give opportunities. To me, that’s more important than the wins and the championships.”

https://www.mcall.com/2025/09/19/championship-winning-coach-in-2-sports-resigns-at-freedom/