About 12 years ago I had a Husker fan’s peak experience. My oldest son and I were visiting some of the areas below Memorial Stadium. As we wandered, we came to the old weight room facilities and the team eating area. Both of us felt like kids in a candy store as we saw Mike Rozier’s and Johnny Roger’s Heisman Trophies. We also were awed by many other historical items such as pictures of all-Americans, jerseys of award winning players, championship and bowl game trophies and other mementos of past glory.

Just as we were thinking things could not get any better Coach Tom Osborne himself came down the hallway. We had only seen the coach on TV, so seeing him in person was quite a thrill. As he came closer, we wondered if we were in trouble. We had no building passes and were not sure if we needed any.

When he reached us, he did not ask for identification or show us the direction of the exit. He simply made eye contact, smiled and said, “Hi, how’s it going?”

Needless to say that is a memory that is etched in both of our memories. Therefore, you can understand my excitement when I again had the opportunity to meet Coach Osborne when he spoke at the New World Inn last week. He talked about the TeamMates Program that he initiated in the early 1990s.

The program started with 22 players befriending troubled students in the Lincoln Public Schools.  Since then, those 22 mentors have grown to 3,800. It has expanded from Lincoln to the whole state of Nebraska. It is now also in some Iowa cities including Des Moines, Council Bluffs and Harlan. The hope is to spread it across the Midwest. 

Dr. Osborne shared the positive impact mentors are having on our youth. They include improving school attendance, reducing grade failures, and increasing high school graduation rates among the lucky group of young people who have mentors. His goal is to have the number of mentor/mentee matches increase to 5,000 by 2010 and to 10,000 by 2015.

Thanks to many good Columbus people, especially its director, Tricia Faust, our community has a very strong chapter. Even so about one third of the young people who are referred to the program do not have mentors. This is because it needs more willing adult volunteers.

Dr. Tom succinctly described what mentors do for children. They provide them with an adult who cares for them unconditionally. For many of these young people, they do not get this type of acceptance anywhere else.

Secondly, mentors provide youth with the affirmation they need to gain self-confidence. As Dr. Tom said, this means finding the strengths of the young people and helping them develop those abilities through encouragement, interest and support. Once young people discover their gifts and are motivated to develop them, success often results.

Thirdly, mentors provide young people with a vision for their lives. Mentors do this by being role models. Many of the young people in the TeamMates program are badly in need of positive adult examples on which to pattern their lives. Such adults give them an idea of what a successful life looks like. They also help young people learn to develop their abilities and take advantage of the many opportunities for advancement in our country. Providing this vision of hope and possibility may be the biggest contribution of all.

As the talk ended, one could not help but marvel at the difference Coach Osborne has made in so many lives. He has done it by simply genuinely caring about others just as he did for my son and me when we were wandering the halls of Memorial Stadium back in 1996. His example is one all of us should follow. Being a mentor is a great way to start.

To volunteer your services, call Tricia Faust at 564-6248.

For more information, contact the Web Master.