TeamMates of the Month: Seth and Brayden

April 7, 2026

Many things lead Seth to describe his mentee, Brayden, as committed. One of them is his willingness to go all in with whatever he does.

“From sixth grade to now, he’s had about 14 different hobbies. But I feel like every time he finds one, he dives headfirst into it, and he commits to what he’s doing. It was all sports in middle school. Now he’s doing photography for all the basketball games and all of the athletic events here at the school.”

Brayden says that Seth’s willingness to travel alongside during these changes shows how supportive he is.

“I think it goes two ways. I mean, he was supportive on all 14 of my hobbies.”

Seth describes meeting a middle school Brayden who was timid, but now has what he calls the “typical orneriness of a high school boy.” What does he mean by orneriness?

“It's playing jokes. It's respectable banter here at school. I can watch him go back and forth with the staff here.” 

For Seth, who grew up in a small town where everyone knows everyone, Southwest High School seemed big enough for a kid to get lost in the crowd. He didn’t want that to happen to Brayden.

“I think that was a perk for him in the TeamMates program; it helped him develop those relationships with the school staff. We’d check into the office and check out in the office so they knew us by name.”

That orneriness is also about learning the edge of the boundaries between getting into trouble or staying out of it. Brayden is clear-eyed about that.

“I want to know. Where’s that line? You might need to get shocked by the electrical fence here and there, but that lets you know where it is.”

And Seth kept showing up, every Friday since middle school, to meet and often to shoot hoops. That’s what made Zoom mentoring during the pandemic so hard – no basketball. For Brayden, the basketball was key.

“I think the basketball side of things really helped. We were focused on shooting, but then it got to a point where I was so comfortable that I would be talking about my problems without even realizing, because we were just playing basketball.”

After graduation, Brayden will attend Southeast Community College in Milford to study auto body, something he didn’t want to tell Seth unless he got accepted. He’s excited and so is Seth.

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