Dec. 24, 2007

The George Mason women's basketball team is partnering with the campus community to promote networking and mentoring amongst the players and female faculty and staff in a program called "Womentoring."

Recently, the Mason Gazette profiled the program in an article by Ryann Doyle. Below is an excerpt from the article, while the full article can be read here.

Tiffany Reaves and Courtney Exum, both junior sports management majors, are working to open up new opportunities for the 13 members of Mason's women's basketball team. In conjunction with head coach Debbie Taneyhill, they are implementing Womentoring, a mentoring program involving Mason female faculty and staff members and the players.

"When you are an athlete, you don't have time that a nonstudent-athlete has to join other groups on campus where you get some connections that are valuable down the road," says Taneyhill. "I thought this would be really nice if we could expose our young women to some of the great, professional women we have here at Mason."

Few college athletes go into the professional ranks, and the majority of Mason's women basketball players do not pursue basketball after college. Many have other interests and are majoring in fields such as communication, finance and nursing. However, by committing so much time to basketball practices, traveling and games, players may miss out on important networking opportunities that non-athletes get by building closer relationships with professors outside the classroom and by joining campus organizations.

The goal of Womentoring is to have at least one faculty or staff member be a mentor for each major represented on the team. Through open practices, luncheons, VIP access to games and workshops, a mentor can create a bond with an athlete so the player will feel comfortable asking for guidance and inquiring about what the mentor has accomplished and how she got to where she is today.