New Season of Girls on the Run-Shreveport Now Underway

The nationwide Girls on the Run program has been available in Shreveport for a little over a year, and this season is the biggest so far.

The first season started with two teams and 31 girls. This past fall, it increased to six teams and 63 girls. The Spring 2015 season began February 2, and there are now 104 girls on nine teams at eight different sites. The spring season culminates with a celebratory 5K on May 9 at AC Steere Park. But if you think this is just a running club for girls, you're wrong. It's so much more than that.

"Girls on the Run is a character development program for girls in 3rd through 8th grade," said local administrator Beth Ann Menger. "We're actually an after-school program for girls to teach them things like how to stand up for yourself, how to handle gossip in a positive way, how to have positive self-talk, how to have positive peer pressure, and how to navigate all those tricky situations that come up during those critical teenage years."

The program uses running as a tool to teach all those important life lessons. This helps the girls' physical health by running, and their emotional and social health by the lessons that are taught.

Menger, who's a runner herself, said she first got involved with Girls on the Run - by accident - in Washington, D.C., back in 2010. She also had the misconception that this was just a running club for girls. But while she was volunteering, she noticed just how much this program changed these young ladies' lives.

"Seeing them come across the finish line with this profound sense of accomplishment, and they would just feel so proud of themselves, and it's like...there's more to this program than meets the eye," Menger said. "So I became more involved with it in Washington, D.C., and eventually became their race director."

Then, Menger moved to Shreveport, where we didn't have a program yet. She ended up quitting teaching to help get one started.

Menger said every season has a finish line story. She shared a couple of those with me.

"One season, we had a girl who participated. She has Cerebral Palsy, and so running is a little bit different for her than it is for the other girls. She was the last girl to come in and all the girls saw her a distance away, making her way toward the finish line, and they all dropped what they were doing and ran out to meet her, and they all ran in together."

In another season, a teacher had emailed Menger about a student she thought could really benefit from the program. Her entire family came out to the 5K, and as she was approaching the finish line, the other girls all ran out to meet her and the group ran in together, holding hands and cheering her on.

"It was really quite an accomplishment for this child. You could tell that this was one of the first times that she had been really fully celebrated and accomplished something of this magnitude."

There is a cost to register for the program -- $150, but scholarships are available. Schools participating this year are Caddo Middle Magnet, Eden Gardens Magnet Elementary, JS Clark Elementary, Montessori School of Shreveport, South Highlands Magnet Elementary and Riverside Elementary. For girls whose schools don't have a program yet, they can go to Shantel Hardison Sports Center or the Broadmoor YMCA.

CLICK HERE to find out more about Girls on the Run Shreveport.