A Captaincy For The Ages

Boston College is known for fostering different student-athletes. The school's academic reputation blends with its power conference athletics affiliation to cause a special, unique proving ground. The school's mission of "men and women for others" is an additional layer, one built around service to the world as part of a larger, Jesuit-based foundation.

It's a combination requiring great personal sacrifice at all levels, and the captains of all teams understand the earned honors of that identity. It is why their leadership is even more special, a tightrope walk of elite brains and physicality. On the football gridiron, the names that rise into those positions create lineages of greatness, one cited by recruits and transfers as a gateway to the sport's next level.

This week, a team-based voting process produced the next group of captains: running back Travis Levy, offensive linemen Zion Johnson and Ben Petrula; linebacker Max Richardson; and defensive lineman Marcus Valdez.

"Coming (into this season), our staff had to work really hard to lead this team," head coach Jeff Hafley said. "We've had to do a good job, and I give the staff a lot of credit. But the leadership had to come from the team in order to work. These five guys are some of the biggest names to get it done."

"I feel great that my teammates respect me that much," Johnson said. "It's going to make me want to work that much harder for them, and I'm ready to ride this year. I'm ready for us to give our all and fight for BC."

Captaincies are the product of team-based votes and require unique interpersonal skills, but the 2020 year places a unique strain and maximum pressure on the role. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic alone is a constant threat to sever the natural progression between seasons, and any typical springboard or lineage on the football field is subject to the rolling conditions caused by the worldwide health crisis.

It's a heated, emotional discussion with a continuous beam of white-hot spotlight, and it's only intensifying as the season's opening game draws nearer. That timeline itself requires precision and dedication to the team's health protocols, and the personal sacrifice often entails confusion and isolation.

The captains are the intermediaries between the coaches and the players, and any ability to step on the field next Saturday against Duke is the collective result of how the team, from top to bottom, is able to respond to those protocols. That requires a constant reboot and reinforcement - by the team and for the team - in order to successfully make BC's return to play happen.

The vote therefore signaled a team-based trust in a select group of individuals, all of whom are the key representatives to continue educating and building comfort and trust with the process.

"I really need to thank all of my teammates for believing in me," Levy said. "It's a blessing. It's a collective effort, and we're going to keep pushing. I love my guys, and I appreciate my brothers for this opportunity."

That's a historic, unprecedented event in and of itself, but this year is also occurring in the backdrop of a social justice revolution. It's an incredibly difficult conversation by itself and requires brutal honesty and raw emotion, and the continued events forced difficult discussions among the coaches and players.

The captains had to understand the importance of those events as they first began, and they had to foster those constructive talks among their peers. It entailed breakdown of personal walls and a reconfiguration of individual beliefs centered on the sacredness of the team's locker room culture. As stewards of that culture, it's an equally-unprecedented requirement for this year's group of leaders.

"I think it's important to understand what's happening in the world," Richardson said in mid-August. "My parents preached to research and read, and I like to tune into the news in the world. It's good to hear what happens in the outside world. We talk about the election and the Black Lives Matter movement, and the COVID-19 pandemic. We want to have conversations that are important.

"It's normally about football and going to meetings," he continued, "but now there's a second part to that. It's about the rights and wrongs in the world and what is going on. I think it's helped me develop my leadership."

The environment is why true leaders are stepping to the front in ways never before seen or discovered. BC will play football in a real game for the first time this season, a national unveiling for a new coaching staff that would be noteworthy by itself. The added circumstances, though, are especially focused now, and how the Eagles respond will be the direct result of its players, its coaches, and, perhaps most importantly, the captains who hold everything together.

"I feel great that my teammates respect me that much," Johnson said. "It's going to make me want to work that much harder for them, and I'm ready to ride this year. I'm ready for us to give our all and fight for BC."

"We wouldn't be able to get through all of this, with all of our negative tests and through the tough times, without our players," Hafley said. "You can demand and motivate as a coach, but at the end of the day, we're not around them all of the time. So it has to come from them, telling guys to clean up a locker or to put on a mask. That's where we've had success off the field, because of the leadership of those guys."

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Zion Johnson

Travis Levy

Ben Petrula

Max Richardson

Marcus Valdez

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