High school athletes inspire younger students during LPS sports clinics

July 2, 2025

Lincoln Public Schools students like Lauren, Mani, Hannah, Sutton and Betsy are creating embers of enthusiasm across the city with their work at LPS summer sports clinics.

Students at all eight LPS high schools are gaining valuable leadership and communication skills by igniting knowledge for younger players at the camps. In addition to refining their own talents at clinics for grades 9-12, many teenagers are helping at summer camps for elementary and middle school students as well. Clinics for a wide variety of sports began in late May and will continue through late July.

Lauren, Mani and Hannah will be seniors on Northwest High School’s volleyball team this fall, and Sutton and Betsy will be seniors on Southeast’s girls soccer squad next spring. They said it was fun to offer supportive words to children who will one day hope to fill their high school shoes.

“I love it,” Lauren said. “I feel like a lot of them, when they keep learning and they do something good, their eyes just light up, and I love to see that. I love to see that they have a spark for the sport.”

“It takes me back to when I was younger and I was learning,” Mani said. “You can relate to what they’re doing and help make them better each day.”

Sutton and Betsy smiled as they watched girls race toward a stationary soccer ball in a skills game at their camp. They were part of “Jersey Day” activities where everyone could wear a favorite jersey, uniform or t-shirt. Both were impressed with how much students had learned from spending several days together.

“I feel people are more confident, because we’re slowly going from little drills to playing games with each other through the camp, and I think that’s fun,” Sutton said. “It’s also been great seeing everybody getting along with each other and getting to know each other.”

“At the beginning, they were struggling to understand what the drills were and how you would go about different things, but with our critiques and with the coaching from our high school coaches, I feel like they know more about what to do with all of the technical things that come with soccer,” Betsy said.

LPS coaches design each of the camps to feature a mixture of fun and fundamentals. At Northwest, students began one morning with a game that taught them how to make good passes in a fast-paced setting. They then learned how to properly plant their feet as they approached the volleyball net for an attack.

At Southeast, players split into groups to see how long they could keep a soccer ball in the air by kicking it to each other. Later in the morning, they played a teamwork game where they lined up on both sides of a small field. Random groups of girls then had to collect a ball and try to score a goal together.

For Sutton, her soccer mentoring had a family feeling this summer. One of her younger sisters spent the past three years at a clinic geared for grades 5-8 before starting her first high school event. Another sister is now in the middle school camp, which attracted a full lineup of eager faces. Sutton said it was exciting to work with her in a leadership capacity on the field.

“It’s fun,” Sutton said. “It’s cool seeing her in a different environment than home.”

Betsy first began helping at Southeast’s younger camp last year. She said the experience gave her good insight about what the future holds for the sport.

“It’s really cool to see new talent and how new generations of players are looking,” Betsy said.

Hannah said it has been eye-opening to see how advanced some of the younger players have been at this year’s Northwest clinic. Students as young as third grade successfully kept volleyballs in the air during one drill, which caused their newest fan to give them happy high-fives.

“I look at them and I’m amazed,” Hannah said. “I’m like, ‘You can actually pass a ball!’ When I was their age, I couldn’t do that.”

Hannah said LPS clinics give everyone opportunities to create great memories of being together.

“I love little kids. I like being around them,” Hannah said. “I just want them to associate volleyball with fun camps and having a good time. Yes, this is about volleyball skills, but it’s more about the fact that you don’t necessarily remember playing volleyball, you remember fun, silly moments with your friends on the team, and a camp like this helps build those types of bonds with people.”

Lauren lived out that mindset of making progress pleasant for others at the volleyball clinic. She noticed a younger camper was struggling to properly set the volleyball, so she pulled her aside and helped her refine her technique with a simple lesson and large smile. She said those moments were why she enjoyed spending part of her summer as a camp leader.

“When I was younger, I always looked up to the older kids that were helping,” Lauren said. “I always thought they were so cool and so good, and now I get to be in that spot.”

Want to sign up for summer clinics? Visit home.lps.org/athletics/summer-clinics for a full list of camps that are taking place at all eight LPS high schools. It provides information on grade levels, dates, times, locations and cost for camps at your local school.

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