Nathan Summers: Lindsay’s toughness shines through on cold, wet night

By most accounts, toughness can't be taught.

Standing on a chilled, soaked football field inside Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium late Tuesday night, Dominique Lindsay recounted how his own level of toughness had been altered while he was playing high school football for North Carolina powerhouse Independence.

Although the greatest accomplishment of Lindsay's high school teams was its collective 77-game win streak, which meant four straight undefeated seasons during Lindsay's career there, perhaps the true value of the experience is still being measured in Lindsay's case.

Lindsay embodied strength and determination Tuesday night when the senior East Carolina running back ignited an ECU win with a display of uncompromising tenacity.

Running on a bum ankle, having already injured his shoulder this season and having sat out the entire 2008 campaign with a knee injury, Lindsay has likely lost track of where the pain is coming from.

No weakness, physical or mental, was evident while the senior from Charlotte was chewing up host Memphis for 139 rush yards. From the first play of the game, Lindsay was moving effortlessly, and after not being able to practice for most of the previous week leading into the game.

While he was on the rain-drenched field, Lindsay was obviously reminded of those days back at Independence, days when Lindsay learned the non-stop pile of victories was a product of ignoring the intangibles, and often the pain, and just playing.

Lindsay admitted he rolled his tender ankle a couple of times against Memphis, yet he rarely showed even the slightest limp as he splintered through the Tigers in the Pirates' 38-19 win.

And while his shoulder pads, game tape and tattoos could not mask the goosebumps on his arms in the late October air, Lindsay said he was following through on the words of former Independence coach Tom Knotts, who would not allow his Patriots players to wear sleeves during games, or to show that things like pain or rain would stand in the way of winning.

“I remember playing in the state title game as a junior, and it was 39 degrees, and he was like, ‘You're not cold! You're not cold!'” Lindsay said, echoing the kinds of words he said he heard throughout his high school years at Independence, saying it was important to Knotts that his teams never show they were bothered by outside elements, especially while Independence was romping to four consecutive state championships.

“One of his things was if you play any position where you're going to get the ball, you cannot wear sleeves no matter how cold it was,” he said.

A year ago, Lindsay's impact at ECU was still in question.

Entering his fifth season in the program, he had spent most of his career stuck in someone else's shadow, waiting for his chance.

Lindsay is now the leading man in a Pirate offense that has spent much of the last two seasons waiting for a replacement for tailback Chris Johnson, the man who powered the Pirates with one electrifying senior season in 2007 and who is now among the National Football League's premier backs.

As it turned out, the guy who was Johnson's backup is that guy.

When it comes to the wisdom of toughness, perhaps no one said it better than Lindsay, during the game and after.

“You try to eliminate all the things you can't control,” he said. “You can't control the fans, you can't control injuries and you can't control the weather. You control the things you can control between the lines.”

Contact Nathan Summers at nsummers@reflector.com or (252)329-9595.