Mentoring Program Launching at West Muskingum High School

ZANESVILLE, Ohio — There’s a new program at West Muskingum High School set up to help connect high school athletes as mentors for grade school students.

The Big Little program is getting high marks from administrators at West Muskingum.

“We feel that developing relationships between our big athletes, varsity athletes and our little athletes with the West Muskingum Youth League, just building these relationships through mentoring,” says Erin Serdy, West Muskingum Youth League President.

“What we’re looking for is to build that bridge between little kids and our high school athletes. Gives our high school athletes a chance to mentor, be role models for the athletes when they’re involved with some of our games,” adds Pete Woods, Athletic Director at West Muskingum.

The school district is working-in a 500-dollar scholarship to one male student and one female student athlete for each sport season.

“I started it because, growing up here at West Muskingum, going through athletics, as we were younger, we had varsity athletes that we looked up to and we did have occasions where we had interaction with them. To us, they were like the major league players for us. Somebody we looked up to, these guys created a good environment for us, it was guys we looked up to,” says Jared Jesse, Big Little Program Founder.

“We want our kids to have great role models and we have great role models at the high school level. We want our high school kids to see those kids. As Jared was, I had Jared as a student and as an athlete. I think it’s great that people like him are coming back to give back to our youth,” says Chad Shawger, Superintendent of West Muskingum Local Schools.

Big Brothers Big Sisters says children who have a mentor are half as likely to skip a day of school, 55-percent more likely to enroll in college.