Ready to Serve: Community-Based Leadership Learning through a Student-Athlete Mentorship Program

Mentoring works. One of the most powerful outcomes associated with mentoring is the mutually beneficial social, emotional and academic outcomes for both mentor/coach and mentee/apprentice (Ohlson, Shope & Johnson, 2020). Supporting this notion of mentoring leading to an improvement in a variety of skills, numerous studies further support the impact mentoring can have upon a student’s social skills, college and career readiness. development of emotional supports and peer relationships (Coles, 2011; Crisp, 2010; Schwartz, Rhodes, Chan, & Herrera, 2011). The context of the mentoring relationship also matters. For example, the significance of community-based learning (CBL) initiatives in sport affiliated academic programs have been emphasized in varied publications recognizing the benefits of community-based learning (CBL) and service learning (SL) and their connection to effective pedagogy (Lee, Bush, & Smith, 2005; Lee, Kane, & Gregg, 2016). The purpose of this article is to examine an impactful CBL initiative featuring student-athletes engaging in leadership-themed mentoring of urban middle school students