Sports Leadership Summit A Success

By Emma Layton

            CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – On the morning of January 21, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, North Carolina student-athletes who are part of the Richard A. Baddour Carolina Leadership Academy hosted the fifth-annual Carolina Sports Leadership Summit. A total of 150 local middle school students arrived at the Loudermilk Center for Excellence to experience Carolina's commitment to instilling leadership skills in both collegiate students and those younger than the Tar Heels.
The Carolina Sports Leadership Summit is a three-hour event comprised of four 30-minute stations, each led by UNC student-athletes, with the goal of providing hands-on experience and understanding of personal, peer, people, and public leadership skills. All four categories of leadership help to facilitate the ability to lead yourself and others.
            Interactive games were used to keep the kids engaged while effectively promoting the leadership skills unique to each station. One of the games entailed a scavenger hunt in which the group members had to work together to find all the items before the other teams. This facilitated a better understanding that working as a team and listening to all members can help a group complete tasks faster and more efficiently.
            Participants such as Mere, a competitive jump roper, felt they learned about themselves as leaders. "This will help us learn how to direct ourselves then we'll know what to do, and we'll know how to lead others and have the skills to stand up for others," she said. Through activities at the personal leadership and team leadership stations, young athletes learned what their strengths as leaders were and how they could use those on their teams.
            The UNC student-athletes leading the event also found themselves having to utilize their own leadership skills as they began planning the Summit back in August, devising ways in which to teach leadership to young kids. The student-athletes, representing rowing, gymnastics, swimming and diving, track and field, and fencing teams, also supervised and guided groups of participants through all four stations.
            "These kids are getting comfortable working as a team and also learning how to influence people," said Bryanna Cameron, a junior on the swimming and diving team. "I think it's really important for kids to learn from a young age how to interact with each other and communicate effectively."
            She also went on to say that the Leadership Academy taught her the confidence and skills to be an effective leader and communicate with both peers and authority figures such as coaches.

            The fifth Carolina Sports Leadership Summit once again successfully promoted leadership skills and understanding in young athletes while carrying on the Carolina way of service and leadership, and the Leadership Lab is proud to continue the annual summit to reach more young athletes.

Emma Layton is a sophomore on the UNC women's swimming and diving team and a member of the Richard A. Baddour Carolina Leadership Academy.

University of North Carolina Athletics

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