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FOOTBALL: Leadership making impact off the field

With preseason well underway, Ball State football is looking at leadership to carry the team into the season the right way.
Coach Pete Lembo said the team's captains and leaders have already done a great job particularly because of their impact during the summer workout months.
"In the summer when the coaches can't be around you're really counting on the players to make sure things get done the right way," Lembo said. "One of the things I'm really excited about is even though we're just beginning our second year in this process, the guys know the expectations and know the type of culture that we want to have."
One of the team's captains, senior linebacker Travis Freeman, said they can't take credit for the team's initiative without the coaches around because it's been a team mentality all summer long.
"It was more just the team coming along," Freeman said. "They understood what we're trying to do and they followed. They wanted to get better over the summer. Every guy wanted to get better so it made our jobs easier."
Ball State is coming off a 6-6 year in Lembo's first season and finished bowl eligible. Despite the improvements made, the defense lost multiple starters after being the worst team defense in the Mid-American Conference last season.
Freeman said the defense plans on getting back to the fundamentals and tackling and expects nothing less than a MAC championship this year.
"At this point I don't expect anything but a MAC championship," Freeman said. "That's what we've worked for. That's the goal. We worked all winter."
Lembo is confident that a second year in his system is going to breed more success. It's already shown improvements in the team's practice routines so far.
"It's more about what we're not doing than what we're doing," Lembo said. "What I mean by that is the guys know the system now. So now let's get better at what we do, let's get more detail with what we do, let's execute at a higher level than what we executed before."
Lembo has already gotten the type of leadership he desired from the Cardinals. Now, all Freeman intends to do is to give the players around him a positive example to look up to.
"Just showing guys that when things get tough or anything like that when you face adversity, as a leader you want to be that guy who steps up to the challenge that it can be done," he said. "I think guys kind of rally around that."
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