On Thursday morning, the Michigan football team announced that it had officially named six players as captains for the 2023 season through a team vote. The captains include three seniors in running back Blake Corum, defensive lineman Kris Jenkins and offensive lineman Zak Zinter, and three graduate students in linebacker Michael Barrett, cornerback Mike Sainristil and offensive lineman Trevor Keegan.
With the second-largest cohort of captains in the Wolverines’ 144 year history addressing the media, each newly minted leader explained what they understood their unique role to be and how it would change with a new title. And throughout their conversations, one point of emphasis came up repeatedly — for each, the title of captain means that they must be more than just consistent, but vocal.
“I’ll definitely (step up),” Zinter said. “I’ve been, this offseason, becoming more of a vocal leader. These past few years I’ve been a big guy to lead by example, and I think that still goes along with (being captain). It’s like, who are you going to be when no one’s watching? I’ve done a really good job of that, and I’m definitely going to be a more vocal leader this year.”
But what being vocal means is different for each captain. Jenkins emphasized speaking up and following through, Corum stated that he felt the best approach was to continue “being me” and Sainristil, the only returning captain, espoused a much more fluid approach to leadership.
“I do my best to read the room,” Sainristil said. “As you figure out who your teammates are, every person needs a little something different. Some people you can’t talk to a certain way some people you can talk to a certain way. … The way you lead a whole unit is you say what you mean to them, and you mean what you say.”
With a large room of captains, and over 120 players on the team, each is looking to embody a different style of leadership. And that’s clearly apparent based on who they name as their inspiration from the captains who led before them.
Jenkins, for his part, wants to be an energetic firebrand, making that clear in his praise of former captain Mazi Smith. What Smith did for him, he wants to do for others.
“My biggest goal is to embody what Mazi did,” Jenkins said. “Mazi was definitely one of the key factors in getting us hyped before a game. That’s my biggest goal, to embody his type of energy. Because whenever we were about to play a game he definitely got me ready to run through a wall.”
That sentiment, of wanting to be for others what past leaders were for them, was consistent.
Both Keegan and Zinter, looking to inspire work ethic, showered praise toward their former teammate Andrew Vastardis, a two-time captain between 2020-21, and how he impacted them.
“He really changed football for me,” Keegan said. “Everything he did daily just trickled down through this program.”
Coming off a year in which two of Michigan’s five captains had transferred to a rival Big Ten school before the season’s end, this year’s cohort laid out their expectations very clearly. For themselves, the expectation is to use their voices — in unique and nuanced ways — to provide the leadership that they once needed.
And for the teammates around them, the expectation is that they try to emulate their captains — just as the current six once did.
“We have 120 leaders on this team,” Keegan said. “Everyone is built as a leader.”