TeamMates Mentoring continues recruiting trip with stop in Stanton

STANTON, NE - TeamMates Mentoring founder and former Husker football coach Tom Osborne was the featured speaker at the TeamMates luncheon in Stanton Thursday.

Osborne spoke on the importance of mentors in young people's lives and told the story of his grandfather and how a preacher mentored his grandfather and had an immensely positive impact on his life.

Stories like his grandfather's inspired Osborne to start TeamMates Mentoring with his wife Nancy in 1991. Husker football players served as the original group of mentors. They mentored a group of Lincoln middle schoolers. 

One of those middle schoolers, Eddie Brown, is still with TeamMates. He said during his speech that TeamMates came into his life at a critical time: when he was a young, impressionable teen. Brown said because of his experiences with TeamMates, he avoided making wrong decisions, graduated from the University of Nebraska and went on to study at Oxford University. Today he is in a band and runs a business, according to Osborne. He also serves as the Recruiting and Partnerships Coordinator for the program.

Osborne said Brown's story is an example of how mentoring can help people realize potential they didn't know they could reach.

"He's certainly one of our best examples of what mentoring can do," Osborne said.

TeamMates now has about 10,000 mentor-mentee pairings and has chapters in five states. There is still work to be done though. Brown said there are still multiple communities that have waiting lists of mentees waiting for people to be their mentors. 

Osborne said the effect of mentoring can be seen for generations.

"If you can change one life, you don't just change that one life," Osborne said. "You change the life of their children, the people they work with and a whole lot of other people."

More information on how to become a mentor or apply to be a mentee can be found here: https://teammates.org