Just over a week ago, Steelers Nation awoke to the tragic news that its team lost not only one of its biggest coaching assets, but also a beloved man described as a father figure.

In the days following the death of wide receivers coach Darryl Drake, players, fellow coaches and former teammates alike talked more about the 62-year-old veteran college and NFL coach’s impact on the game of life than the football field.

Wide receiver Ryan Switzer said it best. One of the few players who openly shared his grief, he told reporters that “Coach Drake always called us his sons … I’ll take the things that he instilled in me, and the things that he shared with me from his experiences, the rest of my life. I think that’s the best gift he could have ever given me.”

That’s huge in a day and age in which so many children are growing up with absent parents. It also speaks volumes about the power of positive role models in the lives of young people.

Mentors. They are a massive missing link in our society today.

In its 2016 National Mentoring Program Survey report, MENTOR, The National Mentoring Partnership found one-third of the nation’s mentoring programs struggling to recruit and maintain mentors. Data showed that in 2016, there were 413,237 youths served by 193,823 mentors and supported by 10,804 staff members. More alarming — over half the programs surveyed operated on shoestring budgets of $50,000 or less.

Mentors come in the form of teachers, coaches, after-school workers, youth pastors, band directors, caring neighbors — you name it. They step in and step up where a lot of people step aside.

These selfless individuals impart a sense of integrity, responsibility, civic duty and community to the next generation we’ve so often left to raise themselves by their own devices. We live in a day and age in which the facelessness of Facebook, YouTube and Instagram rule. How many “Likes” a kid gets too often determines their self-esteem and self-worth.

But mentors represent a powerful human connection — that bond and hope that society can somehow turn it all around before it’s too late. Coach Drake did it on a national stage, while countless volunteers across Butler County, Pennsylvania and the United States do it every single day, quietly making a difference in the lives of the young people whose paths they cross.

It doesn’t cost anything to be a mentor and so many organizations, neighborhood associations and volunteer groups out there are looking for people to step in, step up and help fill the void left by the world in which we’re living.

We can all learn from Coach Drake’s example.