Cori Dayton and Xavier's Use of Prep Steps

Monday Evening:  All of your classes are done, your team had a great lift, and you’ve made it through practice. Now you’re heading to the women’s center on campus for a group meeting in which you will have food to replenish your body and a group of fellow female student athletes to nourish your soul.  This is a real Monday for 10 of our sophomore female student athletes thanks to an idea which was inspired by Charity Butler’s book Prep Steps: 31 day guide to success for female Student-Athletes. So…How did we go from a book purchased from a speaker in a women’s breakfast to a weekly empowerment group to benefit our female student athletes?  Let’s start from the beginning.

After getting the book at the Cscca conference I decided to give it a try personally and see how it would apply to my life now, as well as maintain a reflective view from when I was a student athlete.  I found the book to be extremely flexible and applicable to my life as well as helpful for when I was a student athlete.  I felt this had potential to benefit our young ladies; we just had to figure out how to implement the idea.  After discussing with our strength staff, we met with the Academic Department.  They were excited and supportive and together we were able to come up with some ideas.  But first, we had questions….

1.       Who would this most benefit?

Freshmen have seminar classes and are almost overwhelmed with resources to help them be successful as a student athlete. Juniors have leadership and next step resources and groups to help them as they are gearing up for their next step in life.  Seniors have many resources from resume, interviews, internships, job connections and more.  We identified the sophomore year as the most beneficial for this program.

2.       Are there any NCAA complications?

As long as it is an optional group, there are no NCAA complications.  The group has no relationship to countable athletic activities (purely volunteer basis by the individual athlete).  No information including attendance will be shared with anyone outside of the group including coaches.  If you are getting sponsors for the meals, supplies, or books; make sure they are cleared through the compliance department.  We utilized the NCAA athlete opportunity fund to purchase the books for the group.

3.       What information are we going to present and discuss?

This is where the Prep Step book played its biggest role.  We discussed a few different approaches.

-Follow the book 1 day at a time and every Monday discuss the last 7 days.  (4-5 weeks)

-Break the book up into sections that contain similar information (10-12 weeks)

We decided second option would be the best fit. 7 days is a lot of material to cover, as well as separated some similar topics.  For example: Day 1-5 is about you, and your goals.  Day 6-10 deal with you/time management, and then 11 moves back into goal setting. If we discussed by week,  the first week would stop mid management discussions, then pick up the next week with that while moving on to other topics beyond goal setting up to day 14. Using the second strategy we clumped together days in the book that had similar concepts and found natural sections in which a new topic is introduced. 

                As we were breaking it down we had a lot of discussions regarding the individual style of the book.  It is really great for personal reflection, but we were unsure of how successful it would be in a small group.  That is when our original concept took its biggest change.  There was a GA in the Academic department who had counseling/psychology background, who was a student athlete, and had a special interest in female populations.  Her experience and unique view inspired the idea of a Socratic style group in which the girls become leaders themselves and decide what the group will discuss.  The counselor took ideas, topics and concepts from Prep Steps, and then added more psychological and social issues.  She developed concepts to discuss with the group but no strict syllabus or timeline to follow.  The girls were truly empowered to discuss issues that were relevant to these 10 individuals.

                Our final product became a small group able to talk about hard situations or issues that our female student athletes may be facing. We also were able to incorporate more material specific to the females because we were not repeating information from Prep Steps that was already covered in the freshman seminar the year prior.  The group is a guided introduction to working through and understanding yourself and your actions.  After the group is done meeting, we will give them Prep Steps so they can continue their journey individually, but with some help.  Ultimately we hope they develop the skills and confidence to overcome challenges and become successful women in the community.