SE: NCAA Student-Athlete Leadership Forum a Life-Changing Experience for Terrell Smith
Jan 05, 2017 | Track & Field
Terrell Smith was surprised when he was selected to attend the NCAA Student-Athlete Leadership Forum and cried when he had to leave. The four-day experience in Baltimore, Maryland, far exceeded all expectations the K-State track and field sprinter held coming into it.
“Everybody cried the day we left,” he said of the forum, which took place on November 10-13. “It was very emotional.”
Smith, a junior for K-State, applied for a potential nomination to the forum on the urging of Cori Pinkett, director of student-athlete development at K-State Athletics who served as one of the forum’s facilitators.
“Terrell is full of potential and has been recognized by his coaches as someone that has an opportunity to be an influential leader,” Pinkett said. “I believe that was apparent in his application and given the leadership roles he currently holds on his team and within our athletic department, he was viewed as a great representative of the conference.”
When Smith found out he was selected as the Big 12’s male representative from all sports, he was overwhelmed with excitement.
“I was, like, ‘Oh, my God. I made it,’” he said. “I thought this would be such a progression for not only my career as an athlete but also as a career as a person, and to understand my values as a person when I went, it just helped me move forward so much more.”
Smith was one of more than 285 student-athletes from Division I, II and III schools to attend the forum at no cost, as the NCAA paid for airfare, shuttle transportation, lodging and meals. There were also 70 athletics administrators, coaches and faculty from across the country in attendance.
In the forum, student-athletes and the athletics employees were divided up into smaller groups for projects, exercises and discussions. This, Smith said, provided each side some insight into how leadership works in other phases of life.
“That was a new perspective on how people work together in offices,” Smith said. “If you don’t have the same values or goals, you won’t be able to accomplish as much.”
“The Student-Athlete Leadership Forum is a game changer. It provided Terrell with opportunities to examine who he is as an individual and identify the type of leader he desires to be,” Pinkett said. “He left Baltimore with new perspectives and insights on what it means to be a transformational leader that leads from the inside out and the tools needed to make an impact not only on his team but on the K-State campus as a whole.”
Upon returning to Manhattan, Smith said he gained “so much” from the forum, including personal growth, inspiration and perspective.
“When you’re an athlete, you struggle with certain things or whether you want to continue with your sport, whether it’s going well or not,” he said, “and going to this helped bring back my fire and my flame to help me go out there and do better. Most people were there because they love what they do and they also love to give back to themselves, their team and their community. Those types of things stayed with me.”
Smith said he met a number of inspirational people at the forum, but Jake Grindstaff from Gallaudet University, an institution for deaf or hearing-impaired individuals, left a lasting impression.
“He’s seen everything from a totally different view than what I did,” Smith said of Grindstaff, a baseball player. “His inspirations and how he got energized for things, I feel like that’s the way I should run my team, with passion, enthusiasm, energy, logical problem solving, calm responses and being enthusiastic about what I do.”
Groups also went through team-building exercises where the importance of communication, trust and open-mindedness became evident, Smith said.
In one activity, groups assembled stuffed bears as part of a large number of care packages put together for children in the community. Smith said after observing two members of his group, both high achieving student-athletes in many aspects of life, he took a step forward with his leadership, which he realized required setting more than a good example.
“I tried to lead by example. That was a big thing, but you can’t just lead by example, you also have to aspire for people to be better than they think they are,” he said. “It’s going to be a process but I’m going to be able to get through it. My team overall will become a better team if I become a better leader.”
Individually, participants had to narrow down their core values out of a list of more than 25 words to only three. Smith’s list whittled his words down to respect, learn and authenticity.
Respect and learning both start with listening, he said, and are essential traits in leaders.
“You listen, I listen, and we’ll have a better understanding. We might not have to like each other, but we have respect enough to understand each other,” Smith said. “In order to learn, you have to listen, you have to react logically, you have to pay attention to even the small details to understand what others don’t understand and be able to formulate an idea and interpret that to other people.”
Authenticity made the cut, he continued, because it represents individuality, something very important to him.
“I love for people to be themselves. I don’t want them to follow the crowd. I want them to be their own standout person,” he said. “So many people are influenced to not be themselves, and I like for them to stand up, be able to speak in front of a group and speak their mind. If something’s bothering you, speak up, or if you don’t want to do something for some reason, be able to speak up, because your opinion matters. You should always feel like it matters.”
Smith, who will compete at the Bill Easton Classic Friday in Lawrence, said being selected to the Leadership Forum made him feel like his presence at K-State truly matters, a belief he aims to build on in the future.
“At the leadership forum, it was just an amazing feeling and gave me reassurance that I do make a difference. People do see things in me that are positive,” he said. “I should go forward with that and I should be more involved and make sure I make a difference and give them something to remember me for and not just another student who came through K-State.”
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