There is little research in the sport psychology literature examining athlete leadership, and relatively few instruments exist to measure the leadership ability or potential of athletes. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a new instrument, the Scale for Leadership Potential (SLP). The SLP is for athletic coaches to evaluate the leadership potential of current and prospective athletes. The SLP items were developed based on the recommendations of a focus group comprised of leadership experts and the previous literature regarding characteristics of successful athletes and leadership. The 10-item five-point Likert scale was created with possible scores ranging from 10 to 50. Sample items reflected confidence, flexibility, and resourcefulness aspects. A total of 228 collegiate athletes and 26 head and assistant coaches from six universities in the southeastern US were involved in this study. The dimensionality of the scale was assessed by exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to subsequently fit a single factor model to the data using the AMOS 5 program. Other psychometric evidences including convergent evidence of validity and internal consistency for the SLP were also investigated. EFA and CFA results indicated that the SLP is unidimensional (i.e., only one factor was extracted with an eigenvalue of 6.96), and the single factor model fit the data well (i.e., relative chi-square = 2.28, CFI = .95, RMSEA = .08, etc.). In order to establish convergent evidence of validity, the SLP was compared to an existing scale, the Leadership Potential Scale (LPS; Pearce & Maxwell, 2003). There was a moderately high correlation between the two measures (r = .77). The 10-item SLP also had a Cronbach's alpha of .90. In addition, a cut-off score was established so that coaches are able to identify if an athlete is high or low in leadership potential based on the total SLP score. The contrasting-group method was used to establish the cut-off score, and coaches' classifications of each athlete into high and low in leadership served as a criterion. The result showed that SLP scores ranging from 10 to 29 indicate low leadership potential, whereas scores ranging from 30 to 50 indicate high leadership potential. A contingency coefficient of .92 was established indicating the high accuracy of athlete classification into high and low leadership potential groups. Thus, it appears that the SLP is a valid and reliable measure of potential leadership ability. Keyword(s): coaching, leadership development, measurement/evaluation