What would you do?

Athletic director at Peabody High helps captains become leaders

Athletic director Phil Sheridan leads a weekly Captains' Council meeting at Peabody High School. (Globe Correspondent / Lisa Poole)

This is Phil Sheridan's hypothetical situation:

A star athlete - the ace of the pitching staff, the top scorer on the basketball team, or the leading rusher on the football team - steals a car. He is arrested, and the newspapers publish the story.

The next day, the same kid is on the field, pitching a shutout, dropping 50 points, or shaking tacklers under the lights.

Is it fair?

Is it right?

Sheridan wants to know: "What do you do?"

So every few weeks, the Peabody High athletic director gathers the captains from every team in the athletic department, sits them down in the old wooden chairs at tables in a smallish room called the Melting Pot, and holds what he calls the Captains' Council.

He wants them to talk, but more than anything else, he wants them to think.

Hence, the hypothetical.

"If they did that," he said, "then there should be some kind of consequence."

Krysten Kelley gets it.

She was the school's scholar-athlete of the year, but she was also the captain of the tennis team. She also knows there's a certain amount of responsibility as a captain.

"We're the ones that people look up to," she said, expressing things Sheridan wanted to hear.

He started the Captains' Council three years ago, because that responsibility was becoming harder and harder to find.

"I was growing a little frustrated with our leaders," said Sheridan. "Kids were having a hard time being leaders and we wanted to help them."

But somewhere in the process, he realized that leadership positions don't typically come with instruction manuals.

The kids are either picked by their coaches or elected by their teammates, but they're essentially walking into the job blindfolded.

"Sometimes they don't know how to be leaders," he said. "So we talk about what a good leader does."

Most of it has nothing to do with the score sheet.

Paul Misci keeps bottles of water in the trunk of his car so his teammates don't go thirsty. Danny Mello doubles as the Tanners' third baseman and their math tutor.

In fact, Pat Yeo said, the entire baseball team meets up for an hour before every practice for study hall.

"It's the little things," said Kyle Hughes, who can usually be penciled in for just about any event for the Peabody track team.

Hughes is the kind of captain who make a conscious effort to strike up a conversation with a freshman because he remembers when he was in the same position.

"Captains make you want to try hard," he said. "If you have a problem, you can talk to them."

What surprises Sheridan the most is how a captain can go through an entire season and not talk to a single freshman.

"You should talk to them and make sure you make them feel like they're important because they're the future of the program," Sheridan said.

Sheridan makes sure every captain gets the message. They come in cycles - fall sports, then winter, then spring.

"It's an opportunity to bring leaders together so they can express concerns about anything that goes on with their teams."

On this particular Thursday afternoon, the captains didn't have to tackle all the world's problems at once.

Josh Band can gripe about how the baseball team needs more dirt on the field.

"How much does dirt cost anyway," he asked, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. "Isn't dirt cheap?"

But the biggest item on their plate was delegating responsibilities for the Northeastern Conference middle school track and field championship that was about two weeks away.

Rhode Noise was in the corner of the room with a planner open wide across the table and a pen in hand.

"Some people are just natural leaders," Sheridan said. "And she's one of them."

She's a track girl herself, a standout in the 400 meters.

"They look up to us," she said. "They want to be the best they can be and we want to help them as much as possible."

Sheridan makes sure the Captains' Council reaches out. Over the winter, the athletes went to elementary schools around town and read to fifth-grade classes.

During the holidays, they started a gift-giving program for families in need. And they made a skit that was so good that Peabody's District Attorney John Blodgett, once a captain of the Tanners football, track, and baseball teams, shows a videotape of it to people in his office.

Their next project has to do with answering Sheridan's hypothetical. And eventually sharing that answer with the school board.

They call it the Good Citizen Rule, and the logic is simple.

"Any student athlete who brings dishonor on his or her team due to behavior unbecoming will meet with the athletic director, vice principal, and principal to discuss the behavior and possibly be removed from the team."

The way it works now, the school can't keep a player off the field for something they do outside the school. So the same kid that stole that car can come back the next day, go 3 for 3 with a homer, and all's forgiven.

That's not the kind of leadership Sheridan's trying to build.

"As a captain," Sheridan said, "you have a responsibility to the team, the coaches, the fans, and the school to do the right thing."

Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com.