True mentors in life are strong, compassionate, kind, smart, helpful, loving and, most importantly, willing to listen. When someone finds a good mentor in your life, they will know without a doubt. Finding a mentor in life, though, doesn’t come easily to some. Bad experiences and memories make creating that relationship harder, creating distance and distrust from anyone who gets too close. TeamMates Mentoring works to fix that.
In 1991, former University of Nebraska-Lincoln football coach Tom Osborne and his wife, Nancy, had an idea to make an impact on the community. Osborne was a firm believer in the impact that athletes could have on kids, as many people’s mentors are athletes. So, they started small. Twenty-two football players for Osborne were paired up with twenty-two middle schoolers throughout the Lincoln Public Schools District. From that group, 21 went on to graduate high school and 18 went on to post-secondary education. Now known as “TeamMates”, 35 years later, Lincoln Public Schools has over 1,200 different students involved, and the organization has spread to Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, South Dakota and Wyoming, reaching 10,000 students nationwide. In 2008, this community program came to Gretna.
“Our current superintendent, Travis Lightle, was our first program coordinator and got TeamMates started in Gretna,” co-program coordinator Terry Dostal said. “Collaboration between Mr. Lightle and Dr. (Kevin) Riley felt TeamMates would be a good fit for Gretna.”
Many mentees in the program enter at the very youngest age offered, in third grade, and exit or graduate from it after their senior year. Many start that young, as at a younger age, students are more willing to let someone else into their lives. Meanwhile, older students tend to stick with and lean on relationships that they already trust. On the other side of the partnership, to become a mentor, candidates fill out an application, and then they are screened by the National TeamMates office and go through a series of training and background checks. If they pass through the screenings successfully, Dostal and the other co-program coordinator, Kiely Hermeling, work with the building coordinator to find and pair the mentor with a mentee.
“Currently, in Gretna, we have 72 matches,” Dostal said. “Matches are our number one goal each year. As Gretna continues to grow, we are always looking to add new mentors to our program.”
The program is run on a schedule that accommodates both the student and the mentor. Each week, the mentor and mentee meet either before school, during the school day, during free time throughout the day or after school. Each meeting lasts roughly between 30 and 60 minutes and can be used for whatever the mentee needs, whether that be playing a game, making a craft or even just talking.
Senior Roxy Lightle is a personal testament to what this program can do for students and how it can impact lives.
“My counselor in elementary school, Ms. La Mountain, was kind of talking to me about this, like, opportunity, that they have where I could have a mentor,” Roxy said. “And we would meet once a week, and we would just hang out. And I don’t know the process as to why they picked the kids. So I don’t know how I was picked or chosen to be in it, but I was. And I was, like, sure, why not?”
Throughout the years, Roxy has had three mentors, forming a deeper and deeper relationship with them as she’s gotten older. When entering high school, Roxy met Desiree Stednitz, and things clicked between the pair.
“I was a little nervous – would she like me? It was great though, as Roxy is super easy to talk to and has some similar interests to mine,” Stednitz said.
Every Wednesday, Roxy and Stednitz meet together to talk about anything ranging from friends and family to how classes are going and different activities in each other’s lives. Through these conversations, Roxy and Stednitz have built a bond that is special to them.
“Now that I’m with Dez, it’s really nice to just have a break in the day where I can just talk about everything that I’ve been going through, really sort out my emotions while I talk through it because she’s interested in all the things that I’m listening to and she wants to know about my life,” Roxy said. “Everybody needs a person in their life to check up on them once in a while, and it’s really nice to have that.”
TeamMates Mentoring has also brought Roxy and Stednitz together outside of just their allotted time every week. Common interests and other opportunities provided by Dostal and the Gretna TeamMates Board have given them time to connect with each other.
“I really have enjoyed spending the day with her at the zoo outing TeamMates does in the spring and the end-of-year bowling party,” Stednitz said. “I have been fortunate to see some of Roxy’s many performances with one act and show choir.”
After high school, TeamMates has begun to offer continued support and opportunities for pairs who have entered post-secondary education or are entering the workforce. While Roxy and Stednitz don’t plan on continuing their friendship through this program, they will stay connected in different ways on their own.
“She used to live in the city that I’m going to college to, which was not an original plan; it was just something that happened,” Roxy said. “She’ll come visit me, come visit her old hometown, or I’ll come visit her. We’ll get coffee once in a while when I’m coming back.”
When going out into the community, many people have heard of this organization, whether it’s from the multiple posters in businesses or just from their own knowledge. If you ask the people who are closest to those who are actually affected by TeamMates, though (which are their own classmates), many have no idea what this organization is or what it stands for.
“I honestly have no idea why no one (students) knows about it,” Roxy said. “I see murals of it at the mall, and I see posters and ads for it at stadiums, and yet I never see people in TeamMates, or I never meet them. I don’t know if it’s because they’re trying to keep privacy, like, keep it more of a private thing.”
While little is still known about this program by many, awareness is still growing in the community day by day. Some ways that the program here is doing that is by just having conversations about it and reaching out to strong voices in the community, like businesses.
“From a community standpoint, we’ve talked about this on the board, and partnering with businesses is a way we hope to engage more mentors,” Stednitz said. “A recent event with Pinnacle Bank brought in both new mentors and board members. As Gretna’s business presence grows, hopefully this success will be repeatable.”
