Girls on the Run of Arizona has established programs at a number of schools in the Verde Valley and is looking to expand to even more with the help of volunteers.
GOTR is an after-school program for girls in grades three through eight that teaches life skills through exercise.
In the Verde Valley, GOTR currently has branches at ClarkdaleJerome Elementary School, Cottonwood Community School, Mountain View Preparatory and Sedona Charter School. The season runs for 10 weeks in the fall and ends with a 5K run. Events take place twice a week during the season.
Kelly Teeselink, council director for GOTR of Northern Arizona, gave positive self-talk as an example of the techniques the program uses. During a session, the girls will discuss the concept, perhaps sharing examples from their own lives, then do activities and games involving the concept. As part of the physical activity in the second half of the lesson, the girls will be given a negative self-talk statement and have to think about how to turn that into a positive self-talk statement while doing a lap.
“We’re called Girls On the Run, but we really just want girls to move forward and find what we call their happy pace, whatever that means for them,” Teeselink said. “We are really trying to teach girls that they can do what they put their minds to.”
“The hope is that these skills are not just learned and applied in practice but that they’re going home, they are going to school, they are with their peers and that they are able to use all of these skills that they’re learning from GOTR,” Teeselink added.
At the end of the 10-week program, the girls participate in a 5K run. This final run was previously held in Flagstaff, but this past fall, the girls from the Verde Valley and Prescott-area schools ran in Camp Verde, allowing the community to be more involved and family and friends to be present.
Teeselink said that one of GOTR’s biggest priorities is to have a low barrier to participation, specifically though their no-questions asked financial aid policy. GOTR provides 50% of financial aid to girls they serve to make it easy for girls from any background to participate.
GOTR has run programs at Camp Verde schools in the past, but found that the biggest barrier to hosting a program was getting volunteers.
“It is a very rewarding and magical experience to be a Girls on the Run coach,” Teeselink said. “It was probably one of the best decisions I ever made 11 years ago when I first got involved with GOTR … We also recognize that it’s a big volunteer ask.”
Many coaches are teachers who are able to see the effect the program has on the girls in their own classrooms and how they use the skills they’ve been taught.
Teeselink said that when she was a coach, she realized that many women were still trying to learn the skills that GOTR teaches to young girls.
“We’re really trying to build those strong social, emotional, empowerment and confidence-building skills in our girls so they continue to use those throughout their entire lives,” she said.
When Teeselink was a GOTR coach in Iowa, she taught the same group of girls for four years and was able to see them grow and evolve.
“There’s one girl in particular that had gone through the program and I really saw her come into her own and blossom and build so much self-confidence,” Teeselink said. “As she got older, she’s been able to reflect back on her time with GOTR and be able to say that this shaped who she is as a person and who she chose to be as a person. To hear from her that it truly made a difference in her confidence, her decision making skills and the kind of person she decided to be, is pretty remarkable.”
If a school is interested in hosting a Girls on the Run program, staff can fill out a site application. All GOTR asks of the school is a space and coaches; they provide training, materials and anything else needed.
“I’ve never had a season where we didn’t have to cancel a team because we didn’t have the volunteers,” Teeselink said. “We are really trying to bring GOTR to more girls in the Verde Valley.”
Coach and site applications opened on Tuesday, Jan. 16. For more information, visit gotrna.org.
