BROOKINGS – A Brookings program that seeks to empower and encourage healthy living habits among young girls continues to take off, with the program wrapping up its first season at Camelot Intermediate School and leaders looking to bring in other schools.
Girls on the Run, a program with an international reach, first came to Brookings this past spring, starting at Hillcrest Elementary for its third-grade girls.
The 10-week, 20-session program has meetings that last for an hour and 15 minutes and feature running and a curriculum component with lessons to instill important values and life lessons.
An important part of the program is the community project, which is selected and planned by the girls without input from the coaches. After the Camelot girls narrowed their options down to four potential projects, they chose to fundraise for the American Cancer Society.
Two of the girls have parents who went through surgery and chemotherapy in the past year, and another has a parent going through treatment right now, so it was a project that was close to their hearts. They ended up raising $1,400 for the American Cancer Society. They presented their check to an American Cancer Society representative on Nov. 13.
That came right after the final and main event of Girls on the Run, the 5K held in Sioux Falls. Held on Nov. 12, it brought in 800 girls.
It was a proud moment for Camelot Girls on the Run Coach Kristine Cassen and the other volunteers.
“Some of the girls can only run a few laps at the beginning, and every single one finished that signed up for the 5K in Sioux Falls and totally rocked it out, knocked off a substantial amount of time” from their practice times, Cassen said.
Initially, there were 11 girls at Camelot who signed up for the program, but by the time the season ended, they had 20 and a waiting list. Word of mouth played a big role in getting those others on board.
Girls on the Run will continue to grow in 2018, too, when Dakota Prairie Elementary School begins in the spring.
Cassen said that they’re looking to bring it to Sioux Valley in Volga as well, and that they’d like to see the middle school version of Girls on the Run, Heart and Sole, brought to Mickelson Middle School.
The reasons the girls have in signing up vary. For some, it’s because it’s a good way to be more physically active in a noncompetitive setting. Some of their parents talked them into it, “but I don’t think I had any girls say they were here only because of mom or somebody else,” Cassen explained.
But that so many signed up because they heard those first girls talking about how much they enjoyed the program means a lot to Cassen.
“We’ve had so many compliments, emails from the parents saying their daughters love it and they’re happy and feel great when they come home,” she said.
She’s one of the program’s nine volunteers, a parent who volunteered to help lead the group after her daughter talked her into it.
“A note came home from school and my daughter said, ‘I’ll do it if you do it,’ so I ended up coaching and I love it,” she said.
One thing she’d like to see is more parent involvement as volunteers in the program. Right now, only two of them are parents of a child in the program, six are teachers and one is a volunteer from the community.
Although she’s used to running – “I’m not the fastest person in the world, but I can go out there and run right next to them and encourage” – physical fitness is no requirement for being a volunteer with the group. Just as the program looks to get young girls of any fitness level to participate, they’ll accept any adult looking to encourage the girls and improve themselves in the process.
“The parents that get involved improve from beginning to end because … as you’re leading the activities and you’re doing those little runs, just like with the kids,” Cassen said.
As a parent, she said you get a new perspective on what issues your daughter and her peers face when you volunteer.
“If the parents get involved, I think it helps them see more of what their child is dealing with day to day. You hear more about their stressors, how good or bad their day was. It’s cool to be able to give them the tools to learn how to be stronger and how to cope and stuff like that,” Cassen said, adding that those lessons can be useful for the volunteers, too.
To volunteer, to coach or receive more information, call Linda Duba, the Girls on the Run coordinator, at 605-336-3662 ext. 227 or email at lduba@embe.org.
Contact Eric Sandbulte at esandbulte@brookingsregister.com.
Courtesy photo
