Tom Osborne is pitting his Teammates Mentoring Program against former Kansas State coach Bill Snyder's mentoring program.

The friendly competition has a serious message: students need caring adults in their lives.

"My mentor, he's a cool guy and stuff and so we get along good and he became my best friend," said Jesse Janulewicz.

He's had the same mentor since third grade.

"Sometimes we talk about stuff, like how I do in wrestling and football and baseball and if I have a problem going on then we kind of talk about my problems," said Janulewicz.

Now a friendly competition between two former coaches is challenging more people to mentor kids like Jesse.

"It's called the Coaches Challenge and it's between Teammates of Nebraska and the Mentors of Kansas since Dr. Tom was coach of the Huskers and Coach Snyder was coach of Kansas State," said Director of Grand Island Teammates Nancy Jones.

But the challenge isn't the only thing motivating Grand Island to recruit mentors.

A grant from the Department of Education requires G.I.'s program to mentor 35 more students this year.

That means 35 more mentors.

"From the numbers that we have just started with we probably need a good 28, 29 because this is our prime recruiting time," said Jones.

She said the program's benefits aren't one-sided.

"It's mostly about learning about each other and the mentor helping the student through their life experience, and what they've experienced and help a student along the way," said Jones.

It's help Jesse encourages others to provide.

"Just makes you feel like someone cares when someone like that's around," he said.

The Teammates Program currently helps more than 3,000 Nebraska kids.

But in the Coaches Challenge Nebraska is being beat by Kansas.

Kansas is winning by about 300 mentors.

The winner will be announced during the Nebraska/Kansas State game.

For more information visit: http://teammates.org/
or call: 877-531-8326