Running Start: Girls program helps cultivate self-esteem

Daily News, March 2, 2009 
By Cathy Zimmerman

Note: Pacific Surgical Institute has been a major sponsor of Southwest Washington Girls on the Run since 2007. 

Krysta Fuger’s new running shoes could not have come at a better time. “My other ones were squeezing me,” said the Butler Acres 10-year-old. “I could hardly tie the laces.”

Krysta and 15 of her classmates in the Girls on the Run program laced up their bouncy New Balance shoes Thursday before heading outside to run laps.

They aren’t the only ones stepping into new shoes.

Christy Van Curen and Keri Verhei take over leadership roles this year for Girls on the Run, a national program fostering exercise and self-esteem in girls from fourth to eighth grades.

Van Curen, 24, a nursing student at LCC, oversees the board and fundraising, and Verhei, 29, who directs sports programs at the YMCA, organizes coaches and sites as GOTR program director.

They take over from local founders JoLee Ford, a school nurse, and Longview dietitian Peg Norman.

Last spring, Norman moved to Tacoma when her husband, Mark Norman, took a job there.

Then Ford, who first envisioned and organized GOTR of Southwest Washington, discovered she’ll be moving to Gig Harbor, Wash. for the same reason; Dr. Dennis Ford has taken a position at a new hospital there.

Ford and Norman grew the program from eight girls at one school in the fall of 2005 to 12 programs at nine schools this spring, with 26 coaches guiding 185 girls.

Girls on the Run has an advisory board of 13 and lists 52 local business and individual sponsors on its Web site.

Contacts led Ford to Verhei and Van Curen, who flew to the North Carolina headquarters of GOTR for training last fall.

They learned about “the girl box,” the program’s term for the expectations and judgments that can crush a pre-adolescent female – or any woman, Van Curen said.

Novice leaders remembered their middle-school years, when girls can get mean or be deeply wounded by the meanness of others. “It’s like you have to be mean before someone can be mean to you,” Vehei said.

Going through the exercises, women at the training were hugging and crying and laughing themselves, the two Longview women said.

“It works on adults,” said Van Curen. “It does.”

She said the self-esteem lessons she and Verhei practiced in order to pass on to Girls on the Run participants are “so easy, so beautiful a way to get the message across – that you are perfect the way you are. … You are accepted the way you are. We don’t want you to change.”

The goal of GOTR programs is to help girls make better choices and believe in themselves: “I’m a girl. I can do what I want and be what I want.”

Verhei, who has two baby daughters, laughed about how she has incorporated into her own life the GOTR imperative to “take the sludge out and put the sparkle in.”

“This was our first true involvement,” she said. “I really felt connected to the program. It’s definitely what I want to do.”

Store lends a hand

At Butler Acres last week, the foot gear arrived from Bob’s Merchandise, where the girls had previously been fitted and helped to choose from among the snazzy shoes, provided to the program at cost by the outdoors store.

The exuberant Kelso girls bounded around like Tigger, stopping only to tell us why they joined up for Girls on the Run.

“It sounded like fun,” said Taryn Stone, 10. “I’m a really good runner, and I want to run the 5K.”

Courtney Davis, 9, loves to run and to “feel more fit.” Rylee Whitesides, 11, wants to be more active, and 11-year-old Mollie Kissinger heard it will help her get ready for middle school.

“It helps people earn their confidence,” added Hailey Haas, who’s also 11. “You can be fit and take care of yourself.”

Teachers Koko Musgrove, Jesse Atkinson and Lisa Jones lead the group, following a set GOTR structure, starting each session with a healthy snack and “getting on board,’ which involves self-esteem and team building, then a warm-up, and finally hitting the track. “They run laps for a positive card,” said Jones. “You don’t just get out there and run for two miles.”

Not worrying about speed

As a fourth-grader at Olympic Elementary, Melina Taskey was in the first group of Girls on the Run.

“It was just us girls, and we were all friends,” said Melina, now a student at Monticello Middle School. “We had our nutrition lady, and we learned about being healthy.

“The coaches ran with us and talked to us. That’s when I really started going, and not worrying” about being fast enough.

Melina took part in the culminating 5K events, and as a fifth-grader, she spoke in front of the Longview School Board.

“I wrote a speech,” she said. “Girls on the Run makes you not as shy. You get to be around people. You get to feel better about yourself; it makes you more open and social.”

JoLee Ford vividly remembers Melina’s first 5K event. “I think the weather that day was about 25 degrees,” Ford said, and the girls finished after dark. “Tears were streaming down her face. … She was just so dang proud she finished.”

Melina sometimes takes her dog Peevo out and runs to Monticello and back, but she’s glad Girls on the Run are in session again because it keeps her on track.

“Sometimes, I want to choose a doughnut instead of an apple,” she said. “When the program is going, it’s easier to eat healthy. And the running relieves stress.”

What is the single most important thing about the program? Melina pauses for a second.

“It doesn’t matter how fast you go,” she said, “if you try and do your best.”

You can help

Girls on the Run of Southwest Washington has several levels of sponsorship, from sponsoring one or more girls to gifts of $500, $1,000 and up.

Sponsoring a girl pays her $100 registration fee, which covers her brand new New Balance shoes, 12 weeks of healthy lifestyle lessons, T-shirt, water bottle and healthy snacks, and her participation in afternoon running training and a culminating GOTR 5K run or walk. (Sponsors may join the girls in this event.)

According to the local founder of Girls on the Run, 85 percent of this year’s participants are on full scholarship.

For more information, please contact Christy Van Curen, (360) 430-1770 or at christyvancuren@yahoo.com