Annual Leadership Summit Once Again A Success

By Natalie Ward

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, January 20^th, 2020, the sixth-annual Carolina Sports Leadership Summit kicked off promptly at 10 a.m. Carolina student-athletes who are part of the Richard A. Baddour Carolina Leadership Academy welcomed about 150 middle-school-aged kids to the Loudermilk Center for Excellence to learn about different types of leadership and how to foster that leadership.

The Carolina Sports Leadership Summit is a two-hour event split into four 20-minute stations. Tar Heel student-athletes channel their own leadership skills to lead each station's activity. Each station within the summit focuses on a different level of leadership: personal, peer, people, and public leadership. Each is equipped with a different activity and habitude (habit and attitude) based on what the organizing committee choses to focus on each year.

This year's organizing committee challenged student-athletes to implement and commit their leadership experience to building this event starting back in August. The hard work ultimately showcased an incredible event for those in the Carolina community to explore their own leadership skills early on in their lives.

One specific station, the "people" leadership station, attempted success at an activity called "bull ring" in which each member of the group must hold a string that is attached to a ring and work together to lift a ball lying on the ring, rotate it, and put it back down. This complicated activity challenged not only the kids attending the summit but also the UNC student-athletes to work together to be successful. Working together as a group is something that the "people" leadership station wanted to drive forward, and many groups had great success after the first attempt.

In the closing moments of the leadership summit the facilitators of each station led a discussion with the kids on what they had learned throughout their experience, and how that could be applied to the final activity: The Tree of Knowledge, in which each piece of knowledge acted as the leaves to an ever-growing tree. One attendee, Josh, said the Tree of Knowledge taught him "that communication is important. I also learned about how to become a better leader."

Another attendee of the summit, Sydney, said it helped her learn to believe in herself and others.

The sixth-annual Carolina Sports Leadership Summit allowed for an opportunity to learn from current UNC student-athletes about what it takes to be an effective leader. Tar Heels on the women's basketball, fencing, field hockey, football, rowing, men's soccer, swimming and diving, and track and field teams worked together to make the event possible. It was yet again a successful experience for everyone involved.

Natalie Ward, a former member of the North Carolina swimming and diving team, is a UNC senior and Richar A. Baddour Carolina Leadership Academy participant.

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