High school athletics provide various opportunities for students from rival games, to state championships, to playoff drama, to undying school spirit. These opportunities also allow athletes to demonstrate and influence leadership on and off the field.
The SALT, [Student Athletic Leadership Team] program, is composed of student athletes who are leaders within their own respective sports. This team, being a new addition to OHS, is creating strides of success.
“Kids in the SALT program are picked and are kids who coaches and myself feel are leaders on the team, or have potential to be leaders on the team,” said Jason Rypkema, athletic director.
Members of the SALT team are not only chosen for their involvement in athletics and satisfactory grades, but also for their actions and respect towards others. They stand out and strive to better themselves, as well as those around them.
“They don’t get in trouble on campus, they’re leaders on campus, they’re helping other kids here, but also in the community, and volunteering, and we try to find a wide range of grades,” Rypkema said.
The OHS SALT program works to find times every month where the athletes come together and collaborate on several projects as a team to better the environment around them.
“We usually try to meet during Talon Time either once or twice a month, and we just try to go through ideas of how to make our campus better, how to have good sportsmanship, and how to be leaders,” Rypkema said.
Being a student-athlete is a time consuming and rigorous task, and it is important to maintain a healthy balance between a sport and school work.
“We try to get a few students from each sport, but they are students who are getting good grades in the classroom, so they’re taking care of that first, and that’s a big thing we stress even with meeting during Talon Time,” Rypkema said.
One of the outreach events that this team participates in involves going to other schools with younger students and building up a community that is looking forward to becoming an O’Connor eagle one day.
“We’ve gone on field trips, like we’ve gone to elementary schools to say hi to the kids and get them excited about O’Connor,” said Bentley Corbin, senior.
The SALT program spans to several different schools in the district, allowing for a wide range of experience, opportunity, and collaboration.
“We meet up with the other schools’ SALT teams and just talk and learn. Last year we had a motivational guest speaker, so it’s just kind of about learning both the mentality, and how other athletes deal with being both a student and athlete,” said Cara Davidson, senior and president.
This program also develops closer bonds within OHS and its athletes, who are able to work towards a common goal with the same intentions and mindsets.
“In SALT you’re with all your friends, and you’ve played sports with them or have seen them around the school, but it’s fun to be able to talk and catch up and see how they’re doing with everything while also still working together and doing your stuff,” Davidson said.
As athletes look to the future, it is important to be involved in school and the community, which is something that the SALT team recognizes and provides opportunities for.
“Colleges look at football, but they also look at academics and what you’re doing at school, and the SALT team definitely helps propel scholarships,” Corbin said.
With the amount of pressure put on athletes to perform well both on the field and in the classroom, they recognize the influence they can have on others, and the importance of having a strong foundation to lean back on.
“Having a good base as an athlete is really important. You know, you have to be a leader, you have to be respectful, you have to show people what’s up in a good way,” Corbin said.
High school is an extremely influential time in a person’s life, and the SALT program recognizes that small actions can result in extreme outcomes, and that athletes have a choice in encouraging either good, or bad behavior.
“Right now there are about 2700 kids at O’Connor, and about a thousand of them play athletics, so if your athletic teams aren’t doing what they are supposed to do, we have about a thousand kids not acting how they are supposed to on campus,” Rypkema said.
This team is constantly working to put these characteristics and attributes to use, coming up with various ways to show their appreciation within OHS and their community.
“Some of the things that they’ve done are getting a gift card and card for our equipment manager, and just reached out to him and said how thankful they were for him. They’ll also do things for refs, and we went to all our feeder schools that feed into us and just got to know the kids a little bit there,” Rypkema said.
An important aspect of the SALT program is learning from others and continuing to grow in a student athlete mindset. Students on this team are able to hear and learn from keynote speakers who share their experiences and advice.
“Last year, doing the district SALT event was really good. We had a guest speaker who wrestled at Arizona State, and he was born with only one leg. He was a national champion in college wrestling at Arizona State, and so he came and spoke about overcoming, and about using the cards you’re dealt with and making the best out of it,” Rypkema said.
The SALT program, being new to OHS this year, is continuing to grow and expand in its influence and opportunities, even drawing in sponsors for certain events.
“Chick-fil-A actually sponsored lunch for [the district SALT event] and brought chicken sandwiches out, brought the cow mascot out and stuff, and it was just a great time to be with the other kids,” Rypkema said.
This program aims to stay true to its goals and purpose, and is building up student athletes who can then go out and continue to build up communities wherever they go next.
“We want to be eagle nation in the community all together, so we work to get that out there,” Rypkema said.
