By CHRIS COOK
LongwoodLancers.com

In college athletics, leadership comes in many forms.
 
There's the hype man who can spur on a team-wide adrenaline rush with his vernacular and cadence. There's the all-star who can take over a game in crunch time, willing a victory with his or her skillset alone. There's the relentless grinder who approaches any given task with a contagious tenacity that inspires teammates to do the same.
 
At its very core, Longwood men's basketball senior Isaac Belton's leadership style is beyond all of those things.
 
Longwood's unheralded senior captain is not the rah-rah type. His in-game exhortations rarely escape the boundaries of the huddle, and he would selflessly defer to a hotter-shooting teammate with the game on the line. And while his physique and academic resume speak to the hard work he's put in during his four-year college career, the example Belton provides for his teammates is not something that can be easily replicated.
 
What Belton brings to the table is more subtle, but equally as important to building a program as any locker room rousing or buzzer-beater.
 
Instead of stirring locker room speeches and game-changing scoring bursts, Belton's biggest contribution to Longwood's program has been his innate ability to reach people, to foster relationships with teammates who come from all walks of life and who deal with pressures beyond what simply happens on the hardwood. He works behind the scenes to keep the team together, and in sports, there's a term for that.
 
"He's a glue guy," said Darrion Allen, Belton's fellow senior and team captain. "Ike's one of the guys on the team that everyone gets along with. He's just one of those guys who can see what's wrong with somebody, go up and ask if they're alright or they need help. He really does it all. He helps with classwork, or just generally if he sees somebody who's struggling, he'll ask if they want to go eat or something like that. He always keeps the team together."
 
Belton is to Longwood basketball's team chemistry what Brock Commons is to Longwood University's campus. He is the backbone of the locker room, the path upon which one end of the roster connects to the other. In his senior season, he has emerged as a go-to confidant for his underclassman and upperclassman teammates alike, doing so by establishing a unique rapport with each of his fellow Lancers.
 
"He just has that gift of communication that automatically shows the people he's speaking to that he respects them," said head coach Jayson Gee, who signed Belton as part of his first Longwood recruiting class. "He gets welcoming attention no matter what he says because of the tone and the vernacular he uses to reach people in a very deep way.
 
"We see a lot of what Ike does in those terms, but we also find out a lot from talking to other players. They'll tell us, 'Yeah, Ike told me that,' or 'Ike encouraged me on that,' or 'Ike told me not to do it.' It's just something that comes natural to him. We have really benefited from that."
 
Belton has long been a unifying force in Longwood's locker room, but the leadership he displayed after Longwood's 2015-16 season ended in the Big South quarterfinals drew the attention of Longwood's coaching staff. As one of two seniors on this year's squad, Gee appointed him as a team captain alongside his fellow senior Allen and redshirt juniors Damarion Geter and Khris Lane.
 
"I wouldn't say that I'm a 'rah-rah' type of guy in the locker room, but I think that's why people gravitate towards me," Belton said. "I'm a lot more comfortable just pulling somebody aside, which I guess makes me a little more relatable."
 
"I pay special attention to certain people," he said. "Like I know that I have to approach DJ differently than I have to approach JaShaun [Smith], and I just understand that with my experience and with some things I want do later in life, I need to learn how to work different with people. It's something I take a lot of pride in."
 
A business administration major, Belton's talent to inspire unity among his peers has been put to the test this season as the Lancers have suffered injury after injury after injury…after injury. What remains of a once deep and promising lineup is down to just seven healthy scholarship players.
 
But despite all that adversity – which persisted even this week when Gee announced redshirt sophomore point guard Bryan Gee would miss the rest of the season due to prolonged overtraining syndrome – Belton has maintained an ironclad grip on Longwood's locker room.
 
His influence allowed the short-handed Lancers to shake off a grueling non-conference slate to open Big South play 3-0 for the first time in school history. Despite a five-game losing streak, they still own the program's best conference start through eight games since joining the league five seasons ago.
 
It's no coincidence that Belton has also emerged on the court in his final season, starting all eight Big South games after coming off the bench in the first 81 games of his career.
 
"This year it's just been about trying to make sure everyone realizes we don't need to feel sorry for ourselves," he said. "We can get more done with less. We've had a bad draw, a lot of injuries, but we started the conference playing great, and that lets us know that despite the numbers, we can still make a great impact in the Big South. It lets everyone know we have what we need."
 
That forever-forward mentality has served Longwood well in 2016-17, just as it has Belton throughout his career. A career reserve for his first three-and-a-half years as a Lancer, he is now on pace to set career highs in nearly every category as a senior. He has ascended from lightly used role player to key starter, averaging 6.5 points, 2.6 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game in Big South play – all more than twice his career average.
 
"I think Isaac Belton should be a poster-child for student athletes that don't get what they want right away," Gee said. "He had limited playing time for three years, and it hasn't impacted him negatively in his attitude, his personality or his work ethic in practice. Now he's a starter – a contributing starter, and a very important starter.
 
"I think it's just a great story of perseverance, stick-to-itiveness and character that despite how his career started, he didn't have negative body language, he didn't quit, and he didn't transfer."
 
More importantly, even as his on-court production has improved, he is still the same Isaac Belton whose teammates, both young and old, seek him out in times of struggle.
 
"I still look to him all the time as a leader," said Allen, a 72-game starter who is just 53 points shy of reaching 1,000 for his career. "Especially in the heat of the game, he and Geter can both see me get frustrated if I'm missing shots or having a bad stretch. Ike can see things from the outside, and he always knows when to come up to me with things like, 'DJ you have to do this or that,' or, 'I know you're mad but we need you". He's can diffuse any situation and I – we – really need that sometimes."

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