The link between resilience and peer friendship in certain high risk students is examined by describing the relationship between two measures: a measure of effective peer friendships completed by students and their parents (My Child's Friendships, B. Doll, 1993) and a second measure of resilient beliefs (Adolescent Resiliency Belief System, C. Jew and K. Green, 1995). Results from both measures are described for a population of 104 rural middle school students, all of whom were participants in an effective education program, the Wellness Project, intended to foster resilience. Results show the expected positive correlations between friendship competencies and optimistic beliefs. Students with more competent friendship qualities were also the students with optimistic beliefs about their competence in other domains. However, this relationship did not extend to parent ratings of student friendship competencies. The parent and student versions of the scale might be assessing somewhat different constructs. In addition, the correlation between the student form of the friendship survey and the resilience survey may be an artifact of their shared status as student self-report measures. Also, the reliability of both forms of the friendship scale and the resilience scale is not entirely satisfactory, so that the described relationships cannot be considered stable. (Contains 4 tables and 27 references.) (SLD)