Running shoes plus fun: Girls on the run
What do you get when you combine third- through fifth-grade girls, silly games, health and nutrition information, and running shoes?
It’s called Girls on the Run (GOTR)—an after-school program that stresses health, fitness, and self esteem—and to hear the coaches describe it, it sounds like a blast.
Mary Lohkman
“After they run their first 5K, they come up and tell you, ‘I can do anything!’ They realize it’s possible to get things done if they follow a plan,” said Mary Lohman, an MSW/MPH graduate student who is the director of the Girls on the Run council in Columbia.
GOTR started in 1996 in Charlotte and has spread to 160 sites across the country, serving more than 40,000 girls in grades 3-8 every year (Girls on Track is an affiliated program that serves sixth through eighth graders). USC exercise science professor Russ Pate helped get the first club started in Columbia; there are now 14 teams in Columbia, and 11 USC graduate and undergraduate students serve as volunteer coaches and assistant coaches.
Debbie Sturm, a clinical assistant professor in the College of Education, coaches a GOTR club at Epworth Children’s Home in Columbia, and several of her graduate students in counseling are assistant coaches.
Debbie Sturm
“We do a lot of silly stuff like vote on who smiles the most while running. And we make a really big deal over handing out the official T-shirts—we call it T-shirt Induction Day, and we’ll be as rah-rah as you can possibly stand,” Sturm said.
Embedded in all of the fun and camaraderie are nuggets of advice about self esteem and fitness. “They kind of realize the lessons they’re getting, but it’s done in such a fun way that before you know it, 10 more girls are showing up at the next session because their friends invited them,” Lohman said. “The main thing is showing the girls that they don’t have to be in the ‘girl box’—trying to meet society’s unrealistic expectations of what they have to be to fit in.”
GOTR clubs meet twice a week for 12 weeks every fall and spring; some of the girls sign up for both sessions or for more than one year.
“Girls on the Run is about much more than running. The girls are learning lessons in positive body image, self esteem, respect, teamwork, and much more,” said Falon Tilley, an exercise science graduate student who helps coach one of the Columbia clubs. “It was amazing to watch the transformations of these girls as the season progressed. Girls who were reserved broke out of their shells and made new friends.”
In Erin Howe’s group, friendships formed between third and fifth graders who hadn’t even known each others’ names even though they attended the same school.
“In our last practice we played a silly game, and one of the girls came up to us and said, ‘We really have to work together to do this,’” said Howe, a doctoral student in exercise science. “It was rewarding to see the popular fifth grader compliment the quiet second grader and vice versa.”
Lohman started coaching a GOTR club in Atlanta when she was still in high school. She also helped coach the first team that started in Columbia in 2005 when she was an exercise science/Spanish undergraduate at USC. “Running can be very empowering if you do it in a constructive way,” she said. “We make it as non competitive as possible, so it’s more about having fun.”
GOTR clubs in Columbia will run their next 5k on Dec. 5. An affiliated program called SoleMates helps raise funds for GOTR club scholarships for girls whose parents can’t afford the registration fee. SoleMates participants—usually adult women—solicit donations when they run or bike in any competitive events, and many plan to run in the Nov. 13 Governor’s Cup half-marathon in Columbia with a goal of raising $262 per person ($20 per mile).
To learn more about GOTR or to participate in SoleMates, contact Lohman at melohman@gmail.com.
By Office of Publications