My experience serving as a coach for Girls on the Run
Serving Community Needs
This week, Missouri State students have been challenged to put the Public Affairs Mission into action by serving Springfield in the ways it needs the most help. Various projects including the Community Focus Report and Community Listen meetings have helped determine what the true needs of the Springfield community are. These reports provide a great deal of information on where our community struggles, as well as what it struggles most with. This week, I want to focus on a need that resonates with students.
At Missouri State, many of us fall into the category of students who are required to complete service for one reason or another. All too often, we are guilty of completing our service as just that, required. Many of us, myself included at times, complete service like an item on our to do list, we find one Saturday that we are free and find any service opportunity that will result in “approved” service. While giving your time, however you decide to do it, is valuable, what the community truly needs is individuals who volunteer on a regular basis.
Long-term volunteers are individuals an organization, a community, or an individual can count on to be a consistent contribution to change. This could be volunteering biweekly at the Community Gardens of Springfield, providing childcare at The Fairbanks every Thursday, or whatever way your interests and skills can benefit the community best. For me, it was serving as a coach for Girls on the Run of Southwest Missouri.
Girls on the Run
Girls on the Run is a program that inspires confidence and healthy choices in girls in the 3rd-5th grade. After a full year of avoiding the organization because I was not a runner, I first became involved with the program in the fall of 2014 as a full-time coach. I was assigned to work at a Title I school in Northwest Springfield. I was told this was a school that sometimes had a great deal of behavioral issues, as well as a difficulty with coach retention.
My first season was not easy, and there were many hurdles in volunteering. It was scary to commit a semester’s worth of Monday and Wednesday afternoons to volunteering. There were a lot of behavioral issues and girls who had a hard time listening to a group of college-aged coaches they had never met. However, it was not long before I recognized the difference we were making.
I continued to coach at this school for five consecutive seasons. Myself, and another coach actually scheduled our classes around our “Girls on the Run Time.” As the seasons continued, we built relationships with the girls, their parents, and the faculty at the school. As those relationships grew, so did our girls. We have a mixture of girls who are repeat participants and brand new participants each season. Girls who were our most problematic girls in our first season turned into leaders who were the first to answer a question or help out another teammate.
I graduate this December, so this Monday I coached my very last practice with the school I have spent five seasons and two and a half years with. I have had the fortune of serving an organization that I am passionate about and seeing the results right in front of my eyes. I can say that I have made a difference in the lives of girls who have also made a huge difference in mine. It is the relationships that I built through my commitment to this cause and these girls that allowed me to make a bigger impact than I could have ever hoped for.
It is tempting to get caught up in tomorrow’s exam, next week’s work schedule, and that meeting every Tuesday that always goes over time, and convince yourself that you do not have the time to commit yourself to one more thing. However, I challenge you to find the time. Find something that you are passionate about and commit yourself to change. By doing this, we as Citizen Bears can make the greatest impact on our community, the impact the community truly needs.
If you need assistance finding a long-term service opportunity that fits your interests, visit the Center for Community Engagement in PSU 131. You can also contact us at 417-836-5774, or by email at volunteer@missouristate.edu.
-Melissa Stallbaumer, Student Specialist in the Center for Community Engagement