BROOKINGS – With the weather warming up nicely, people driving by Hillcrest Elementary after school lately might notice a group of third-grade elementary school girls and volunteer coaches running laps around the block.

As the girls make their laps, a volunteer coach with a timer and a clipboard shouts out their times and encouragement (as well as reminders to pace themselves). The runners stop at the chain link fence for a quick drink of water before they hurry off around the block again.

What’s happening is that these girls are learning a lesson in wellness and character development as part of the Girls on the Run program.

Girls on the Run is a national program now wrapping up its first year at Hillcrest.

Each week since they began on March, 12 third-grade Hillcrest girls start off their practice after school in a classroom, where they go over a lesson that strives to instill important values and life lessons. They keep track of these lessons with an identity card on which they write down these virtues they’ve learned.

And the lessons stick with them, Hillcrest third-grade teacher Suzy Gehring said. One lesson, for example, taught them to “stop and take a breather.”

For example, if “you get a bad grade on an assignment and tell yourself, ‘I’m dumb.’ No, stop and take a breather. … Breath, think, respond and review,” Gehring said.

There’s also a community project component to the program. The girls will come up with a project idea by themselves to complete.

They also set goals for themselves, outlining how much they want to run and how fast, and then listing their actual results. Before they run, they also get the chance to have a healthy snack.

In their running practices, they run five laps around the school, going as far as the tennis courts north of the school. By doing that, they actually run a 5K. They go at whatever pace they feel like; some try for speed, but they can walk out parts if they feel like it. That’s because competition isn’t the goal. The goal is instead to just get them up and moving.

“We don’t say to run right away; just get up and move. We had a girl who just went home and would lie on the couch, her mom said. This has gotten her off the couch, out moving to running. Not full time running, but she’s out,” Gehring said.

And not all of the girls were excited about joining the program at first. One started out hiding because she didn’t want to run, but she’s made quite the turn around through the weeks as a strong runner.

Girls on the Run continues until May 20, when they go to the University of Sioux Falls Sports Complex for the wrap-up event, where they run in a 5K with other girls in the program from schools across the region, such as Dell Rapids, Harrisburg and Rock Valley, Iowa.

Like the program itself, it won’t just be about completing the 5K while they’re there: each participant will get a shirt, and there will be a Happy Hair Station for anybody who’d like to have her hair colored before the run. Water and bananas will also be given out to the runners after they finish their run.

Overall, it’s a great chance for these students to meet twice a week after school and build relationships and a physical fitness routine.

Girls on the Run volunteers would like to see the program expand into the other elementary schools and even to the middle school and Camelot, if possible. But at the moment, the program isn’t well known, although they’re working to change that.

They discussed it as part of a presentation to the school board, for instance, and now that the weather is nice, they can practice outside where curious parents and even other students can ask about what the group is doing.

But what about boys who express interest in this kind of non-competitive program? Why is it important to focus on girls?

Hillcrest reading specialist Kathy Schiesl is one of the coaches for Girls on the Run, and although she said there are opportunities out there for girls, there just aren’t as many compared to the options boys have.

“So we wanted to provide an opportunity for the girls also, and also an opportunity in a less intimidating environment that they are comfortable with. That way you might have some kids that wouldn’t normally try something like this,” Schiesl said.

As a woman and as a mother of a daughter, she appreciates the empowering message of the program that young girls really need.

But there is a spin-off of the program for boys that could also be implemented if demand is there.

“If this program really takes off and we would see people start to ask for something like that in the community for boys, there is a program out there that we could also incorporate,” Schiesl said.

Contact Eric Sandbulte at esandbulte@brookingsregister.com.