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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Girls Find Their Stride in the Middlebury Community

“I wouldn’t be who I am today without athletics,” Casey Watters ’15 said.

Watters – along with Emily Attwood ’14 – worked over Winter Term as a coordinator and publicist for the Stride Foundation, a non-profit that provides access to athletics for elementary and middle-school girls in Vermont.

Leslie Wright ’84 established the Stride Foundation in 2001, with the goal of empowering girls and young women through athletics and mentoring. With a recent New York Times report that girls’ athletic involvement in childhood can lead to higher education and employment rates and lower teenage pregnancy rates, not to mention higher self-esteem and immeasurable health benefits, Wright’s program provides an important supplement to Vermont sports programs, providing girls who may not have access to sports or the motivation to participate a fun and affordable way to get active.

Stride provides access to both alpine and Nordic skiing for disadvantaged and at-risk elementary and middle school girls through its “Snow Stars” program. The girls are outfitted with equipment and warm winter clothing from donations and sponsors, such as the Addision Outfitters, Middlebury’s Ski Haus, Alpina Sport USA and Turtle Fur. For alpine skiing, girls from local schools are enrolled in a six-week lesson program at the Snow Bowl through the Middlebury College Ski and Snowboard School and are assigned a “Mountain Buddy,” a female mentor and college ski instructor who skis with them before or after their lesson.

The Snow Stars Nordic program gives girls the opportunity to learn Nordic skiing in the Bill Koch League Ski program, which provides lessons, games, and races for the girls to participate in each Saturday during the winter with other kids from the surrounding area. Once a week, members of the Middlebury College’s women’s Nordic ski team mentors the girls, providing entertainment and instruction.

Attwood, a member of Middlebury’s Nordic ski team, has served as a mentor for the Nordic Snow Stars program and believes the program transcends pure sports instruction.

“Having these mentors that work with you over the course of several weeks, we got to the point where we weren’t just talking about skiing, we were talking about their school and their friends,” Attwood said.

Stride’s first program, “Sisters in Sport,” pairs middle school girls’ basketball teams with college women’s basketball teams, both in Middlebury and in Winooski. In Middlebury, the Middlebury College women’s basketball team mentors Middlebury Union Middle School’s seventh and eighth grade basketball teams, providing these young athletes with positive role models, lessons on sportsmanship and teamwork and exposure to sports at a higher level.

“It’s hard not to want to be the star, to be the one scoring all the baskets,” Watters said.

As a means of combating this attitude, the mentors had the middle-school players all share what it means to be a teammate, Watters said.

According to Attwood, mentoring has a huge impact on how girls view sports and their participation in them, motivating them to continue playing sports in high school and beyond.

“They see what fun a team sport can be at a college level,” Attwood said. “It’s sort of this whole system of igniting a passion early so that they can move forward.”

In the summer of 2012, Stride began a new eight-week initiative called “Moxie Sparks,” through which local girls learn to mountain bike as part of the Vermont-based non-profit “Little Bellas” with mentors from the “Mountain Moxie” women’s biking team. The Little Bellas program was founded by two Middlebury alumnae, Sabra and Lea Davison. Through the collaboration of three women’s organizations, girls have access to new opportunities and can discover the positivity, camaraderie, and fun of sports.

Stride has a come a long way since its inception in 2001 and will keep expanding as its impact on the communities which it serves becomes apparent. Stride aims to not just be another sports program, but to provide the foundation for a lifetime of sports and the development of skills that can be used in every aspect of life.

“Mentoring is a key part of Stride’s programs, because we recognize the value of mentoring in reinforcing all of the positive aspects of participation in sports,” Wright said. “We know that girls who play sports perform better in school, build self-esteem and gain health benefits that last a lifetime. In the end we want girls and women to reach their potential so they can become tomorrow’s leaders.”


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