DeKALB | Ally Lehman, women’s basketball senior guard, received a text message around 10:45 a.m. on Sept. 20 from Lieutenant Colonel Jerome Morrison.

The message notified all the cadets to come into Morrison’s office at noon to find out the results from their U.S. Army Components, which would tell if they were going into the Army on active-duty, Reserves, or National Guard upon graduation in May.

Lehman, the first student-athlete to go through the ROTC program at NIU, was competing for active-duty, but it wasn’t guaranteed she would receive the opportunity. She was panicking, texting her friends to have chocolate ready because she was going to eat away her emotions if things didn’t work out.

Once Lehman was in Morrison’s office, Morrison jokingly asked her about her resume for a civilian career—a career outside of the Army for Army Reserves and the National Guard. If Lehman didn’t receive active-duty, she would go to the Army Reserves to try to play basketball overseas, but she didn’t have to worry about that because Morrison informed Lehman she would be going active-duty. Lehman responded by jumping up and high-fiving Morrison, although Morrison was unsure whether he was going to be receiving a high-five or a punch as he said Lehman can be a bit intimidating.

“She was thrilled,” Morrison said. “She was so excited. To see these young men and women put in the hard work over two, three, four years of their college careers and want something like this and be able to get it, is really remarkable. It’s a great experience and she was floored and extremely happy about the day.”

On Dec. 3, 2015, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that beginning in Jan. 2016, all military occupations and positions will be open to women, without exception, according to the U.S. Department of Defense website. Though more than 111,000 positions had opened to women in uniform since 2013, until Carter’s announcement, almost 220,000 positions remained closed to women, including infantry, armor, reconnaissance, and some special operations units, Carter said according to the U.S. Department of Defense website.

On Nov. 16, 30 minutes before having to take the floor for the Huskies’ game against University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Lehman found out she would be the first female student from NIU to branch infantry, one of the Combat Arms women previously didn’t have the opportunity to partake in.

Morrison said the last two years he’s been with the ROTC program, one infantryman, a male, has come through the program.

 “So, that tells you how exclusive it is,” Morrison said. “It can be a tough and challenging branch [and] probably the most physically demanding branch over the longevity of one’s career.”

In the game, Lehman broke her own school record and tied the Mid-American Conference scoring record with 48 points and tied her career-high of 21 rebounds.

Lehman said she likes to think the news fueled the fire for her historical game. Her head coach Lisa Carlsen said what Lehman is asked to physically do is unlike what any other student-athlete is asked to do.

“Basketball in and of itself is extremely physical and demanding, and on top of that, she’s got the same demands put on her from an ROTC standpoint,” Carlsen said. “I just don’t think people understand, unless you really know, what she’s asked to do on a day-to-day basis, and that she’s been able to sustain that all the way through graduation in May is pretty remarkable.”

Lehman woke up at 5:50 a.m. on Mondays this semester to go to physical training for ROTC and then went straight to classes.

She had an individual practice for basketball at 10 a.m., then she went to more classes before weight lifting at 2 p.m., a team practice until 5:30 p.m., and another class from 6 to 9:40 p.m.

Cassidy Glenn, women’s basketball redshirt senior forward and Lehman’s best friend and roommate, said Lehman is a “freak of nature” because of all the demands she’s able to take on, and the senior guard has never complained about it.

“As time has gone on, she’s gotten better and better at handling everything,” Glenn said. “I really don’t know how she does it. I know I personally wouldn’t be able to do it. It’s just crazy how amazing of a person she is.” 

Going active-duty has made all of the training, practices and mornings when she questioned waking up worthwhile for Lehman.

As of right now, she would love to be in the Army for the rest of her life. She wants to be a barrier breaker for females in a society that tells females they can’t handle the same things as men.

In the Occupational Physical Assessment Test taken over the summer, Lehman scored as the number one female in her company—there are four different platoons in a company and each platoon had 40-60 cadets.

 She also finished above some of her male peers.

 “I want to show women that it is possible,” Lehman said. “I want to show men that we can hang with them any day.”