Girls on the Run celebrates girlhood, goals and grit

A Florida running program helps young girls learn critical life skills, improve their emotional well-being and find their inner strength.

“Girls on the Run is a 10week program for girls in grades three through eight, and they meet twice a week to learn life skills and healthy habits,” said Bailey Toole, program development specialist for Girls on the Run Central Florida. “We teach the value of goal setting and building a healthy lifestyle by training for a 5K race.”

This spring’s 5K event was held April 30, and proceeds from the event benefit the program.

The work that this organization does is extremely important according to Emily Gorentz, who volunteers with the program at an elementary school in Kissimmee.

“The girls that stick with it, you just kind of see them blossom. And become so confident and so much stronger,” Gorentz said. “The girls see their strength, they see their own confidence.

“There’s the physical aspect of it, you know that staying healthy and feeling good about your body, but also there’s a curriculum component to it [where] we talk about leadership skills, we talk about how do you stop and take a breather and calm down and use different strategies to work through conflict, all of which they need going into the classroom.

“We had a girl in my second year coaching, who cried every day of school,” Gorentz recalled. “We signed her up for Girls on the Run in September. And by December her teacher told us she wasn’t crying anymore [and] by the end she brought flowers for everyone who finished the 5K and she gave all her friends hugs.”

This type of radical transformation and confidencebuilding is what this program is all about according to Toole, who says the mission of the program is to “give girls some physical activity after school and also to show them that they can accomplish anything they set their mind to.”