Watergrass girls on the run

Watergrass Elementary school counselor Meredith Ward joined forces last year with third grade teacher Amanda Hoffman to start a girls running club.

Since Watergrass doesn’t have organized school sports, they felt it was a good way for their students to get active and develop interpersonal skills.

“I had heard about how girls running groups really helped promote empowerment and that kind of girl power mentality, and I just thought, ‘Well, this would be really cool if I could start this here at Watergrass,’” Ward said.

The Watergrass Elementary Owls Run Club — for fourth grade and fifth grade girls — promotes healthy choices, and tries to build positive self-esteem and teamwork. It also focuses on setting goals and developing perseverance, as the girls begin their transition to middle school.

The club has provided an outlet for Watergrass students to socialize, outside of the regular school day.

“I’ve had some girls who’ve said, ‘I’ve made some new friends since being part of the group,’ and that’s important,” Ward said. “We’re focusing on positive relationships with other girls, and how we need to work together and build each other up.

“It’s kind of a byproduct to the health and fitness, and goal setting that we’re doing,” she said.

Ward, an avid runner in her own right, was initially surprised in the amount of interest the afterschool club generated.

She had hoped to attract about 15 students or so. But, the club wound up with double that, at 30 members last year. Currently, it has 33 members.

“We weren’t really sure what we were going go get, but we were thrilled to have so many fourth (grade) and fifth grade girls who wanted to come out and do this,” she said. “The response from the parents has been great, too.”

The Owls Run Club meets every Thursday after school, exercising in various open areas, as well as in nearby neighborhood communities.

It welcomes all skillsets—no matter how fast or how slow.

“We have a varied ability level,” Ward explained. “We have some girls that, maybe, without this group wouldn’t be very active, and then we have some that are already running a couple of miles a couple of days a week.”

Watergrass fifth-grader Elizabeth Parsons said the club is “really fun” because “we get to have more exercise.”

“I recommend (other schools) have running clubs, because it’s really good for you,” said Parsons, who’s in her second year with the club. “Some think that girls are not strong enough to run something, so we try to build up our self-esteem, and we encourage people.”

The encouragement aspect of the club is especially important for students going through personal issues, Ward added.

“Sometimes we’ll do mini-sessions before we start running where everyone shares a compliment or shares something positive that has happened during their week,” the school counselor explained. “Some of our kids may be going through family changes or may have experienced some kind of a loss.”

Ward said a few adult volunteers from the school have stepped up to help supervise the group, thereby accommodating the girls’ varied running and walking paces.

“We try to kind of break the groups down…where one of us will push up so the girls who are capable of running more consistently can do so, and this year we’ve had some other adults walk…forming a barrier in the back,” she said.

The presence of other adults has been a positive motivator for club members, Parsons said.

“They really encourage us,” the fifth-grader said. “For people that are behind, they say, ‘You can do it’ and ‘Keep up the good work.’”

The running club is currently training for the Watergrass Elementary Parent Teacher Association 5K on March 7.

Since the group meets just once a week, Ward said the training program is loosely based around the ‘couch to 5K’ program — jogging sessions at a comfortable pace, gradually adding more distance each week.

“Each week, we’ve been building our stamina…and the goal is for the girls to be able to participate in that race, and finish that race,” Ward said. “For some of them, it’ll be their very first 5K.”

After the race, Ward plans to scale down the club until October, bypassing the warm weather conditions at the beginning and end of the school year.

“It’d be nice to do it all year, but once it gets extremely hot, there are some concerns about overheating and hydration,” she said.

Published February 17, 2016