The Story

I ran competitively in high school and college.  I stuck primarily to long distances working in the 5-10k genre.  My father was my best friend and trainer since we were a military family that moved constantly.  Making friends was hard for me and I always found running to be the one place I felt safe and most felt like I could be myself.  I could be angry, happy, sad, or excited and going running was like my best friend.  My feet meeting the road and reflecting on my day and getting out of my house (where I had 4 siblings!) was the best parts of my memories growing up.  The few miles that I would get to be completely alone.
I joined the Air Force and soon found I had a knack for helping others enjoy running.  I worked with people training them and even competed on a run team with a group of young women, many of whom I still keep in contact with to this day, over ten years later.  It was during this time that I realized how much I wanted to coach one day.

Years passed and I started a family and a career.  Leading me to now.  And every one’s favorite question:
How/why did you get started with girls on the Run?  You don’t even have a daughter old enough to have heard about this.

Now let me tell you, this part still brings tears to my eyes and tells me there is fate.

Over the summer some friends of mine lost a neighbor of theirs to cancer.  She had been active with her daughters with running and she had been a big part of the Annapolis chapter Girls on the Run.  In lieu of flowers or cards they had set up a hyperlink to donate to the Girls on the Run.  My friends know my passion for running and how much I love working with kids and sent me the information.  Sitting at work I clicked unknowingly on this link and read Molly Barkers words, the motto’s, and the whole reason for the existence of Girls on the Run.  I literally cried at my desk.  I can tell you that at the age these girls are at and middle school, I would have given anything for a program like this.  And even more so, I really believed in what this program is trying to promote.  The first thing I read was this “We inspire girls to be joyful, healthy and confident”.  Did you catch that?  We inspire girls.  Not only to be healthy but we want them to be joyful and confident.

I was sold on that line alone.

As a woman who knows what the girls still have to face in life, and as a mother myself to two amazing little girls, I only hope I can do that, inspire them every day and hopefully it will spread from them to the peers around them.  I know already it has changed my life and made me more healthy, confident and joyful.
I coach every day and remember the mother that can’t be there to watch her girls grow up into beautiful young women.  I coach for my daughters so that they have a healthy and confident mom to look up to. And I coach most of all for those little girls who come every day to practice and say some of the most amazing and astounding things and inspire me to be a better person to my own peers.