BATON ROUGE — LSU student-athletes participated in the 10th-annual Big Buddy “Day of the Mentor” program on Friday, including breakfast and lunch with their Little Buddies and various activities around campus throughout the morning.
Student-athletes from the softball, gymnastics, men’s tennis, football, track and field and soccer teams, along with women’s basketball assistant coach Yolanda Wells-Broughton, participated in the event.
In the morning, the participants ate breakfast with their Little Buddy at the BREC Administration Building. Following breakfast, the student-athletes met with their Little Buddies on campus for some fun. They were able to attend classes with the student-athletes and tour the campus and the university’s athletic facilities. The event culminated at noon when the mentors said goodbye to their Little Buddies.
It marks the 10th annual “Day of the Mentor” program, which was established in 1988 to show the benefits of mentoring and to give community leaders a chance to make a difference in the lives of children in our area by mentoring them for a day. Over 100 individuals from all around the Baton Rouge area participated in the event, which had 95 elementary and high school-aged Little Buddies this year.
The student-athletes participated in the “Day of the Mentor” program in conjunction with the Shaquille O’Neal CHAMPS/Life Skills program. The CHAMPS (Challenging Athletes Minds for Personal Success)/Life Skills Program was designed by the NCAA to help student-athletes realize higher academic achievement, increase likelihood of graduation and enter a chosen profession with a higher level of vision, knowledge, motivation, self-responsibility and greater overall success. In Spring 2003, the CHAMPS/ Life Skills Program at LSU honored one of the Tigers’ most memorable graduates, Shaquille O’Neal, by naming the program after him.