Leadership Summit Boosts Middle Schoolers' Skills

By Margaret High

In the early daylight of Monday morning, third-year members of the Richard A. Baddour Carolina Leadership Academy gathered in the Loudermilk Center for Excellence and prepared for the fourth Carolina Sports Leadership Summit. After coffee and bagels, the UNC student-athletes were ready to greet the 200 middle schoolers that enrolled in the program.

Student-athletes from various sports put on CSLS for middle school-aged children. The purpose is to teach participants the leadership skills that the student-athletes have been learning since joining the Leadership Academy.

"It's a challenging day," said Maria Marroquin, a junior on the rowing team. "The energy was really up, which was great. I learned really quickly that you have to be clear and straight to the point."

CSLS has been in the planning stages since May 2017, when student-athletes met during a reading day before summer break to hammer out the details and logistics. Among the members in their third year of the Leadership Academy, known as Incubate, teams were formed to handle different aspects of the event, like media, marketing, registration, and logistics.

On Monday, the months of preparation paid off.

"I thought today would be fun and I could learn a lot of things," said Jenna Newhart, an eighth-grader at Butner-Stem Middle School in Granville county. "I want to take what I learn back to my team."

Newhart plays softball and basketball, two of the most popular sports in Granville county, according to Raisse Ward, a guidance counselor at Butner-Stem. Newhart's entire basketball team attended CSLS. Her counselor said she got an email from a teacher at Butner-Stem about CSLS and immediately sent it out to the school's coaches. Since basketball is in season, the girls' and boys' team coaches were able to offer a bus to get kids to Chapel Hill.

"I was surprised that we were able to get all the permission slips back in time," said Ward. "I found out about this very last minute, but I knew a lot of our kids would benefit from a program like this. All the parents were really excited about it."

Ward says a lot of kids from Granville County are only able to attend college because of athletic scholarships, with most high school graduates getting offers from Division II schools. She credits the county's poverty levels for this trend.

"Any time we can get these kids out of trouble and into sports, it really helps," said Ward. "We would love to see more programs like this. It's best for the kids to learn about leadership and learn from athletes at UNC in middle school, that way they figure out they need to work hard in high school."

With high hopes for the day, the kids from Butner-Stem climbed into a bus and made the 35-minute drive to UNC's campus. Although hesitant upon arrival about being split into different groups, the students from Butner-Stem eventually warmed up to their group members and participated enthusiastically.

"Encouraging kids to talk was challenging at first," said Selina Zhang, a sophomore on the gymnastics team who was helping with the Leadership Summit.

Various activities that each group completed were designed to bring kids out of their shell and teach them about important components of leadership. The most popular game involved one teammate being blindfolded and relying on another teammate to guide them through a minefield of cones.

"You have to learn to block other voices out and only listen to the person that matters," said Eva Einaudi, a sixth-grader at Sherwood Githens Middle School in Durham.

Some kids were quiet when asked what they felt were their strengths as a leader. The student-athletes in charge agreed it was challenging to get answers from some of the kids, but eventually all the participants were able to identify one of their natural talents. In a wrap-up session at the end of CSLS, one group was happy to say they learned leadership didn't always mean you have to be loud.

"I learned how to connect with younger kids and help them figure out what their strengths are as leaders," said Jack Messenger, a freshman on the UNC swim team who was helping out with CSLS.

"It was really important to make sure they came to their own conclusion," said Noah Cairns, a junior on the swim team who is part of Incubate.

The Leadership Summit benefited all in attendance, from Incubate members who planned the Summit, the volunteer student-athletes who helped Incubate members, and the middle school athletes.

"I'm normally not this authoritative, so it's been challenging to step up and lead differently than I normally do," said Brendan Feehery, a sophomore on the Tar Heel swim team.

After all the participants left CSLS, Incubate members and other student-athlete volunteers gathered to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the day.

"Overall, it was a success," said Morgan Goetz, a junior on the field hockey team and an Incubate participant. "The day went very smoothly from start to finish. It seemed like the kids had a lot of fun and also learned some valuable lessons on leadership."

Out of the members in Incubate, there were representatives at CSLS from nine different sports, including gymnastics, lacrosse, golf, football, soccer, field hockey, volleyball, golf, rowing and swimming/diving. This year marked the most participants in program history.

"All of our kids said that if they had the opportunity, they would come to the program again," said Ward.

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