Kramer looking for new leaders

BOZEMAN - As Montana State's spring football camp passes the halfway mark, coach Mike Kramer isn't worried about completions and tackles or yards and sacks. His mind is on something less quantifiable.

"As hard as it is to replace great players," Kramer said, "it's equally hard to replace great leaders. We're working our way through that process right now."

The Bobcats finished a run of three Big Sky titles in four seasons last year, and the heart of that team contributed to all three titles. MSU lost all-conference performers such as Mac Mollohan of Kalispell and Nick Marudas on defense, Travis Lulay and Jeff Bolton and Rick Gatewood on offense.

"Those guys did things the right way," Kramer said. "They learned how to work hard, how to practice, how to dedicate themselves in the weight room, from guys that won championships."

Kramer is hoping this year's bunch learned well from the outgoing group of seniors, but says that leadership is not a trait with which a player is born.

"I prefer to call leadership discipline rather than latency," Kramer said. "It has to be taught, talked about, practiced, and it becomes perfected. There's no such thing as a natural leader."

Kramer said that the leadership vacuum MSU football operates in this spring has been enabled by a familiar situation.

"Essentially we are still in the expository stage," Kramer said. "This team is still mostly led by the coaching staff. After eight practices, the yolk of leadership is being forced on the veteran guys, the Clive Lowes and Aaron Papiches and Brant Birkelands, and certainly the quarterbacks."

In terms of earning the rol of leader there remains no substitute, Kramer says, for the experience of simply working and growing each day.

"It's an educational process," he said. "The primary requisite is just simply mental toughness, the fact that you're walking out of the locker room every day knowing you've got to be a war-daddy. That's how you grow into a player, and that's how you grow into a leader."

NOTE: After taking Wednesday off, the Bobcats practice today at 4 p.m., then scrimmage Friday at 4 p.m. The scrimmage is tentatively slated for Bobcat Stadium.