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NIU guard can't wait to join Army after she graduates

As a young grade-schooler in 2001, Ally Lehman has vivid, very impactful memories of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

That's also when the Northern Illinois basketball star says she started paying more attention to soldiers stationed in her hometown of Nineveh, Indiana, about 50 miles south of Indianapolis.

Camp Atterbury, training home for the Indiana National Guard, is located there.

"I would see the soldiers out in the stores and I really started paying attention to them and thinking about all the sacrifice that was there with their families and everything," Lehman said. "All you have is respect for what they do.

"I remember thinking that I wanted to have some kind of impact in the world like that, too."

Lehman is certainly having an impact on the basketball court. A junior guard, she has guided the Huskies to an 8-5 start with her team-leading 13.5 points per game. She is also the top rebounding guard in the nation with a whopping 12 rebounds per game. And at 5-foot-10, she is the only player under 6 feet ranked among the top 10 rebounders.

Soon, her impact will likely reaching much further. Despite her heavy involvement in basketball over the years, she never forgot about how the military and its soldiers piqued her interest as a young kid.

She is now a military science major at Northern Illinois and a member of the school's ROTC program. In November, in a ceremony before Northern's home game against Wisconsin Lutheran, Lehman was officially contracted by the United States military, meaning that after she graduates from Northern in 2017, she will enter the Army for eight years of service.

She hopes to become an active duty artillery officer or become a part of the combat division, which recently became open to women.

"The danger part of it really isn't on my radar," Lehman said. "This is something I think I could be really good at. I think I could be a leader and really make a difference. I'm not going to do anything halfway."

Lehman hasn't so far at Northern.

She rises early and stays up late to fulfill her ROTC obligations, such as physical training and community service projects.

On most days, she'll do a workout with the ROTC, involving anything from a 3-mile run to sprints for an hour to workouts of pushups and situps that last as long as the instructors fancy, and then head off to class. Then she'll meet up with the basketball team for a practice that involves even more sprinting and weight-training.

"There aren't many athletes who try to do ROTC, too," Lehman said. "Some who do have tried to get out of (the ROTC physical requirements) because they say they are athletes. I don't want to do that because I want to earn the respect of everyone (in the ROTC program)."

At one point, Lehman believed the ROTC program was going to be her only option coming out of high school. She wasn't sure she'd get noticed for basketball.

"I went to a really small high school," Lehman said. "I didn't know if I'd be able to get recruited. So I would always talk to the military recruiters when they came to my high school. I thought that's what I'd be doing."

One day, Lehman did more than just talk.

"They asked me if I could do pullups, and I was in a dress that day," Lehman said with a laugh. "We had a volleyball game and we had to dress up (on game days). But I busted out some pullups in a dress during my lunch hour. It was pretty funny. I remember telling my parents about that and my mom (Paula) wasn't too happy about it. She used to tell me that she wanted me behind a desk someday, not in the military. But I don't want to be behind a desk. I think she's becoming more comfortable with the idea now, though."

Lehman's entire family, including her mom and her sister Meghan, who flew in from Las Vegas, were in the stands at the NIU Convocation Center in November to witness the contracting ceremony. It was a moment Lehman will never forget.

"It was unbelievable," Lehman said. "To be able to have two things I absolutely love in basketball and the military come together like that was really cool. I got the best of both worlds in one night."

pbabcock@dailyherald.com

Follow Patricia on Twitter: @babcockmcgraw

Photo courtesy of Northern Illinois AthleticsWhile leading the Huskies in scoring at 13.6 points per game, junior guard Ally Lehman also ranks as the top rebounding guard in the country.
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