After struggling to adjust to his own busy college and football practice schedule, a former UCLA linebacker-turned-grad student dedicates his spare time to mentoring young students in his childhood school district.
Now pursuing his graduate degree in legal studies at UCLA Law, former linebacker Shea Pitts coordinates his fifth consecutive year of volunteering with K–12 schools in the area through UCLA’s athletic department. There, he speaks to students on campus about the importance of staying in school and balancing academics with sports.
According to Pitts, his passion for mentoring kids throughout the city stems from his childhood idolization of UCLA’s athletes.
“Growing up, I would always look up to the kids who played football at UCLA,” Pitts said in a statement last week. “To be able to use the UCLA platform to emphasize important things like school, being good with your family, just other stuff outside of football … that’s really cool.”
Touting thousands of followers on social media, Pitts uses the platform to connect with students across the city, having first started when he enrolled as a freshman at UCLA in 2018.
Among schools Pitts visits are 186th Street Elementary School in Gardena and Crenshaw High School, a historically “under-resourced” school serving one of Los Angeles’ predominantly black neighborhoods, according to a statement from UCLA on Jan. 4.
He is also part of a pen pal program at a local community school, which has allowed him to mentor students over several years as well.
Among Pitts’s mentees is a boy in middle school, who he had been mentoring since the second grade. Now in middle school, he is preparing to play high school football next year.
The student, who recently made a visit to UCLA to observe football practice, was eager to report to Pitts on his academic progress, according to a UCLA statement.
“You don’t really realize how much you can influence people at that age until you go back and talk to them,” Pitts said.
Pitts comes from a long line of Bruin athletes. His father, Ron, played defensive back for the Bruins in the 1980s. Having been raised north of UCLA’s Westwood campus in the suburb of Agoura Hills, both of his parents are also alumni of the school.
