Right before the holiday season last year, I got a handful of emails from friends telling me I HAD to write about this thing called “Girls On The Run.” Since I don’t get a lot of requests like this, I figured I’d check it out. At first, it was hard to connect to the idea, you know, being a mom of two boys and finding the only motivation for running myself is to stop a child, mostly like my own, from doing something dangerous. Then, I remembered the 5k I ran in my tween years. I had never really considered myself a “runner” though I did play softball and eventually basketball. When you’re a 5-7 your freshman year, you end up on the basketball team pretty fast. What I do remember is feeling very proud, kinda strong and also shocked that people finish 5ks in less time than I took to curl my bangs. I experienced my first second wind as I approached the finish line and I have a picture of me running the race that reminds me of that moment. (I just took 20 minutes looking for that picture; thankfully I cannot find it at the moment.) The ball is really rolling on a “Girls On The Run” program here in the Edmonds School District and after speaking with Executive Director and Founder Megan Wolfe, I am excited to share the details and tell you how you can help.

First, I had to know how a mom of two young boys got involved in a running program for girls! Wolfe told me she started as a running buddy for Girls On The Run Puget Sound, which has seen 700 girls so far, and was taken with the program and the impact on its little runners immediately. Deciding what to do next in her career after having her second kid, Wolfe saw this as a great endeavor. Being the aunt to an Edmonds School District girl and having many friends in the area, she didn’t see any equivalent programs. So, if all goes well with their application to Girls On The Run International, the Snohomish County Chapter hopes to start in as many as four schools in September. The program would start out for girls from 3rd to 6th grades and each session would run for 12 weeks, meeting twice a week.

The Girls On The Run website says its mission is to “inspire girls to be joyful, healthy and confident using a fun, experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates running.” When talking to Wolfe I learned what that really meant. While the program, which has a ‘Girl Scouts with running feel,’ does include physical health, it also covers emotional health, healthy friendship, addressed negative self-talk, and gives media awareness. She explained that a portion of the after- school meetings includes taking a real look at what the media is showing young girls. She gave me the example of the Rainbow Brite TV character, because that is who she loved as a kid. In the program, girls see today’s Rainbow Brite versus our version of Rainbow Brite and get to talk about the differences and how they make them feel. I am happy to report that in Wolfe’s experience, the girls “like the old version better.”

The program sounds so great, but I wanted to find a few stats on the impact sports and physical activity had on girls to back up why I felt so excited talking with Ms. Wolfe on the phone. The info is compelling and easily found. I just did a quick search on girls and sports and even had an article pop in my Facebook feed, mentioning Girls On The Run, about how running helps girls with pre-teen stress.

Off the field, research demonstrates that girls who participate in sports and physical activity are more likely than inactive girls to have better physical and emotional health, get better grades, and are at a reduced risk of getting involved with drugs or becoming a teen parent. — America’s Girls Need Sports, Women’s Media Center

 

Adolescent girls are twice as likely as boys to suffer anxiety and depression, according to the World Health Organization, which says regular physical activity can be as effective a treatment as antidepressants, psychotherapy, mentalhealthinnovation.org/xanax-alprazolam/. — Running Helps Young Girls Cope With Pre-Teen Stress, Runner’s World

 

More than four out of five executive business woman played sports growing up, and the vast majority say that the lessons they learned on the playing field contributed to their success in business. — The Next Generation of Title IX: Athletics, National Women’s Law Center

The program not only gives girls usable tips to navigate day-to-day goings on, but “each team creates and executes a local community service project.” At the end of each season, the girls and their running buddies, like Wolfe, complete a 5K running event for which they receive a medal. While Girls On The Run does come with a fee, there will be scholarships for those who can’t afford it and the Snohomish County board has already decided to make raising scholarship money a priority. They will also have a sliding scale for the fee depending on what families can afford.

There is just a step or two left until the program is official in our school district and the group, which has five Edmonds moms on the board, can use your help. There are a few different ways to contribute: You can donate funds to help get the program off the ground, you can tell your elementary school you would like a Girls On The Run program, or you can volunteer. For more information, you can reach the group on their Girls On The Run Facebook page or email Megan Wolfe.

– By Jen Marx

Jen Marx, an Edmonds Mom of two young boys, is a traffic reporter by dawn and writer and PBJ maker by day. She is always looking for a fun place to take the kids that makes them tired enough to go to bed on time. You can find her trying to make sense of begging kids to ” just eat the mac n cheese” at SnackMomSyndrome.com. If you have a kid-friendly event you’d like to share, email her at play@myedmondsnews.com.