Kellogg, Lodge, Moran Summarize Experience at NCAA Student-Athlete Leadership Forum

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Lane Kellogg (men's lacrosse), Sarah Lodge (softball), Maddie Moran (women's golf), and Keetrone Singleton (assistant football coach) recently had the opportunity to attend the NCAA Student-Athlete Leadership Forum. Created in 1997, the forum has provided over 5,000 student-athletes with invaluable leadership skills, a refined understanding of the relationship among personal values, core beliefs and behavioral styles, and the support of a close personal network of like-minded peers to provide continued connection and dialogue after the program concludes. The experience serves as a transformational opportunity for student-athletes and administrators to build a leadership toolkit and develop vital self-awareness that allows them to realize their potential. Kellogg, Lodge, and Moran share their experiences below.

Thursday, Nov. 21 – Lane Kellogg

We flew to Charlotte, North Carolina, and arrived in the late morning for the Student-Athlete Leadership Forum. In the afternoon, each student-athlete was assigned a random roommate, who we met after arrival. Shortly after 3 p.m., the main session commenced. Here, we were introduced to our team leaders and key staff members. After the main gathering and orientation, we were split into our color teams and sent off to meet up with the new group we would spend most of our time with. Our first team session involved a few icebreakers to get us to know each other. We also had to work on our skits for "Americas Got Talent." This involved putting together a choreographed skit that highlighted our names, our schools, the conferences we represented, and a few cool facts.  

The main message on Thursday was about a growth mindset. This session reminded us why it is important to grow and change as a leader. We followed this theme throughout the weekend. Each of us was tasked with crafting our leadership flag. This reminds us of what we think are good traits of a leader. After this, we were led to identify how we can continue to grow and push through challenges. We talked about identifying hard challenges to face as a leader and how we can combat them. After our team session, we reconvened with the entire group and ate dinner. 

Friday, Nov. 22 – Maddie Moran

We started the morning with breakfast, a giant group round of Just Dance, and a review of the day's upcoming events. We went into our color team sessions to talk about our core values as leaders. We were given 50 notecards which each had a positive value on it and were asked to rank them based on what is most important to us. Picking a top three from 50 positive traits was harder than one would think. The selections showed us how different leaders value various aspects and thus may be a better fit in certain situations. We wrote on our own little blocks of wood that we took home after the forum, filling in the end with our most impactful values. Following this session, we met with our respective divisions to talk about issues in NCAA governance, the national student-athlete advisory committee, and the overall structure of it. Some of the topics student-athletes shared opinions on included NIL deals, sports betting, sportsmanship in Div. III, mental health, and operations of student-athlete advisory committees at our own schools.

After lunch, open interviews were offered for student-athletes who wanted to share some of their experiences. Sarah attended this session. Following a short break, we were back off to our color teams to discuss our leadership strength results from the CliftonStrengths assessment we took prior to coming to the conference. Everyone was given time to review their top five strengths, share with others who all had differing aptitudes, and add them to our blocks. We then attended a talk by the guest speaker, Dr. Jhanelle Peters, who is the sports psychology counseling coordinator at Pepperdine University. Dr. Peters' talk centered on mental health and managing performance anxiety. We debriefed with our color teams after and held a rock-paper-scissors tournament between all the teams. While coaches and administrators headed to a more professional dinner, student-athletes headed to our own to network and relax with games including basket pong, air hockey, cornhole, table tennis, mini-golf, and have fun with the 360-degree slow-motion photo booth.

Saturday, Nov. 23 – Sarah Lodge

I had the honor to be on the green team for the weekend. These small groups allowed us to have in-depth and meaningful conversations. Saturday morning started with color team pictures before breakfast on stage. Everyone wore their color sweatshirts and their best sneakers for a competition. After pictures, breakfast, and a round of Just Dance, the participants stayed in the ballroom for a presentation by Kevin DeShazo from DoBetterLeaders. His talk was about fear and failure and how these hold us back from living our purpose. As student-athletes, the fear of failure can creep in during performance. DeShazo discussed that fear does not define us and neither do our fears. We can use failure as learning opportunities, data for the computer. This talk set up the rest of our day, where we focused on emotional intelligence, our purpose, conflicts, reflecting on our habits gameplan, and inclusive leadership.

We had three color team sessions throughout the day. In our sessions, we completed worksheets, watched videos, engaged in large group conversations, and had the opportunity to pair up in small groups to share. Our leaders took us through an activity called traffic jam. This activity forced us to work together and practice the communication skills we had been working on. After completing these sessions, we added to our blocks of wood, formally known as the visual representation of our journey. It was exciting to add to our visual representation of our journeys because it meant we completed another component of our learning.

During the afternoon, we had the opportunity to help Cool Kids Campaign, a local organization which helps kids who are fighting cancer and their families. After dinner, we ended the night with a lip sync competition. Each color team had 10 minutes to prepare a 90-second lip sync performance. Our team decided on Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus. We ran back to our color team room to prepare and grab props. Our team took on the nickname "Team Money" and used fake bills throughout the week to make deposits into our own leadership banks. We used the prop money, our team's torch, and our green necklaces in our dance. This was my highlight of the day.

Sunday, Nov. 24 – Lane Kellogg

Sunday was a day of reflection. We opened our day with a speech from guest speaker, Jonathan Sprinkles. He summed up our time of growing in our leadership over the weekend. He talked about his own personal experiences and how it molded the man he is now. He highlighted that being an athlete is not everything, and if we are not willing to let go of some things, we cannot change and grow into better people. He also preached that you have to listen to your inner voice to help you do better by others. This summed up a major aspect of the weekend which was lead with love.   

We finished up and moved into our final color team session. This session was mostly about reflecting on the good times we had over the weekend and reflecting on all the learning from our time at the forum. We also got a moment to share our most important takeaways from the weekend. We closed by telling each other some positive affirmations about each of each other. As our time came to an end, we realized the special bonds that had been formed over the course of just three days, and how much we had grown from just 72 hours of being with other leaders.  

Div. III institutions within an identified region are able to submit nominations to attend the Student-Athlete Leadership Forum on a first-come, first-served basis. Wooster is located within NCAA's Region 3, which was this year's region.