Aztecs Elect Captains to Help Pursue an Enigma: Leadership

Leadership, if I understand it correctly, is something you don’t appreciate until it’s not there.

Leadership is intangible. This causes a problem. It is difficult to recognize that something is missing when it cannot be seen when it is there.

However, Denny Stolz, San Diego State’s football coach, has been stewing about leadership within his team since before the season began. The heart and soul of his 1986 Western Athletic Conference champions had graduated.

In those final apprehensive days before the season began, Stolz would recite a litany of missing people. He knew where he had tangible holes to fill. He knew where physical talents needed replacing.

But in the cool of a cloistered coaches’ office, he lowered his voice almost to a whisper and said: “What really concerns me about this team is leadership. I don’t see it yet.”

He’ll never see it, of course. He can only hope to feel it.

Little more than a month has elapsed, but what a month it has been. What a forgettable month. The Aztecs, 1-2 in Western Athletic Conference play and 1-4 overall, have virtually fallen before the first leaf. This stumbling, tumbling start has been caused by an erratic offense, porous defense and . . .

You guessed it.

Lack of leadership.

“It’s been relatively low,” said Brett Faryniarz, a senior defensive end. “We had such high leadership a year ago, but most of those guys graduated. It took awhile for people to come around this year. Maybe it took too long.”

Faryniarz is now a certified team leader. At least he is an elected team leader, as are quarterback Todd Santos, guard Reggie Blaylock and cornerback Clarence Nunn. They were elected captains this week.

“The kids hadn’t been rallying around anyone or anything,” Stolz said. “We wanted to define who the leaders were, and we wanted to let the kids decide.”

In the past, Stolz said, SDSU had gone with different captains for each game. The captains were elected at the end of the year and introduced at the awards banquet.

“That was an honorary thing,” Stolz said. “We needed something to represent leadership during the season, and I couldn’t be happier with the selections made by the team.”

Fine. Now that the leaders have been defined, what makes these fellows leaders? And what do they do?

Is a leader a guy approaching the career record for most high (or low) fives? Is a leader the first guy out of the weight room in April? Is a leader the guy who buys the keg for the postgame party?

Probably none of the above.

But who really knows?

“I don’t know how to define it,” Stolz said. “I just know it hasn’t been there when we’ve needed it.”

And when is leadership needed?

“When you’re in critical situations,” Stolz said. “When you’re going through adversity or when you’re on the road a lot, and we’ve been on the road forever.”

Indeed, the schedule has been murderous for the Aztecs. They play their second home game of the season tonight against the renaissance Miners from Texas El Paso. In the first five weeks of the season, the schedule has sent the Aztecs to Pasadena, Colorado, Oregon and Wyoming. It might have been a nice camping trip, but it was no way to start a football season. Four trips equaled four losses, and the Aztecs were saying goodby practically before they had said hello.

All might not be lost, but no team has ever won the WAC championship with two losses.

What the Aztecs have done is come home to an uphill road.

But they come home with defined leaders. And Faryniarz, for one, is not completely sure what that means.

“Leaders give maybe a focal point to the team,” he said. “Some people to look up to. An example or a motivator. Before, we had no leadership, no focal point.”

How do team leaders lead?

“Either vocally or by example,” he said. “I know on defense we have to get the team intensity level a lot higher. Maybe this is one of the answers.”

Leadership was apparently abundant in 1986.

“We had guys like Corey Gilmore, Todd Santos again and Levi Esene,” Faryniarz said. “Guys who had been around five years and contributed a lot. Guys like Duane Pettitt, Richard Brown and Doug Aronson.”

“I’d probably give you the same list,” Stolz said. “Those guys had a lot to do with the crucial wins on the road that won it for us last year. This team has a different personality, and it needs more leadership. We have an incredibly unusual roster. We have eight to 10 top-notch JC kids and three or four freshmen to go with our veterans. We have a lot of different elements we’re trying to pull together.”

What about the coaches? Shouldn’t this be their role?

“I’m talking more of a peer-type thing,” Stolz said. “There’s a separation between coaches and players. I’m talking about pulling together at dinner and at the study table and in class within the peer group. You have to have leadership there. Good football teams always have it.”

This has not been the good football team it was expected to be. It has been missing something, maybe missing a lot. However, Denny Stolz recognized that one element, the most intangible of them all, and did something about it.

Since leadership did not assert itself from within, he elected to elect it.