Devereaux Peters and No. 4 Notre Dame were frustrated heading into Tuesday night’s game against Providence. Their exasperation only grew when they got off to a slow start. Eventually, they shook it off in a big way.The question – something about personal goals – is a softball, of course. A great, fat, full moon of a softball, just begging to be pasted.
Should have known MiQuale Lewis would never take the bat off his shoulder.
“Personally?” he says. “I’m more of a team player. I set a lot of team goals. With them, personal goals will come.”
And that is all you will get from him on this subject, even if the subject begs for more. This is, after all, a guy who enters his last college football season a mere 669 yards shy of Ball State’s career rushing record. If he scores five touchdowns this fall, he’ll own the career record for rushing TDs. If he goes for at least 100 yards in five games, he’ll have 20 100-yard games for his career, yet another record.
The little man – he’s listed generously at 5-foot-6 – will stand tall. And shrink from the air up there, and the attention it brings, at the same time.
Here in the lobby of the football complex at Scheumann Stadium, days before the season opener against Southeast Missouri State, he folds himself into a chair and never mentions any of it, the records or the posterity that will come with them or the individual acclaim.
What he will say is this: He petitioned the NCAA for a fifth season of eligibility this year for one reason and one reason only, and the reason is out there on the field.
Where a green Ball State team stumbled to a 2-10 season last fall. Where it went from perennial (and, in 2008, landmark) winner to can’t-win-for-losing. Where too much was left unresolved and unrequited.
“Last year, as seniors, that wasn’t the legacy we wanted, to go 2-10,” Lewis says. “It’s not the season we’re used to having. We’re used to having a winning season, and going 2-10 is a lot of motivation to come back and try to improve that record this year.”
And so Lewis petitioned the NCAA and won his fifth year. He got back in the weight room. He dropped 20 pounds he knew he needed to lose, emerging, for 2010, a more resolute version of the 2008 Lewis, who rushed for 1,736 yards and a school-record 22 touchdowns.
“He’s a different player,” Ball State coach Stan Parrish says. “He’s faster. I see a more determined guy. I see a more serious guy out there. I think that’s why the players picked him as one of our captains. I think they saw a change.”
Just coming back for more did that.
“I think that says two things,” Parrish says. “No. 1, it says a lot about him, because I think it would have been very, very easy to walk out. And secondly, he doesn’t want to go out losing.”
There’s a possibility, albeit slim, that will be the only legacy he takes away from this season. Parrish has made no secret of the fact that he’d like to get not just Lewis but fellow tailbacks Cory Sykes and Eric Williams more involved. Lewis will get his touches, Parrish says, but not exclusively as the workhorse he’s been in the past.
“If Quale rushes for one yard and we win, winning’s the most important,” he says.
The quiet man without a private agenda is on board with that.
“My team goal is to help this team win by any way possible,” Lewis says. “If that includes special teams, offense, playing wide receiver in the wildcat or running back, I just want to help this team win.”
