This year marks a new beginning for the Student Athlete Mentor (SAM) program at Elizabethtown College. According to senior softball player and SAM Elly McCarthy, the program wasn’t meeting its desired goals in the past, so a greater effort is being made this year to make several beneficial changes.
SAMs are student-athletes who serve all sports teams at Etown and give athletes a supportive athlete for any issues they are facing. They strive to be a support system for all athletes and may step in to intervene in certain situations if necessary. While the program was great in theory, it was not entirely successful in carrying out its plans. “We had good ideas, but we didn’t do anything with them,” McCarthy said of the program in the past.
Determined to make the program more of an effective resource for athletes, three SAMs – seniors Lindy Hamp and Sam Earle and junior Ian Hamilton – went to an APPLE Conference in Charlottesville, Va. to learn more about making the SAM program stronger at Etown. This NCAA-affiliated conference offers teams “an opportunity to evaluate the [alcohol, tobacco and other drug] AOTD environment within their athletics departments and develop specific action plans to enhance prevention efforts,” according to their website, www.apple.studenthealth.virginia.edu.
Earle recognized the benefit of attending this conference. “It inspired us to revamp our program and to take things more seriously and build our purpose on campus,” she said. “We also got ideas about applying to be in the program versus being picked, and we created an executive board of three leaders with equal power instead of having a president and vice president.”
With those ideas fresh in their minds, the SAMs started off this year with a retreat at the end of the summer during which they defined their mission and objectives as a program. The students were also trained to be certified peer educators. During the retreat, the group defined their three core values: educate, support and mentor.
Once school began, the SAMs held a first-year night on Wolf Field Sept. 10. During the program, the SAMs introduced who they were and what their purpose as a club was. They also had both educational and recreational activities for the first-years. For example, in one session, the first-year student-athletes participated in yoga, while another session taught the students valuable lessons about proper nutrition.
The SAMs are planning other events throughout the year, specifically working with each team to have a game dedicated to raising awareness about certain illnesses. For this largely student-run program, the SAMs are hoping to continue to increase their roles and relevance in the lives of Blue Jay athletes. “We’re moving in the right direction, and we want to continue moving,” McCarthy said.