Tues, 11/18: Being good sports!

Good googley moogley, it was cold out there this morning!

Today’s focus was on being good sports and showing courtesy. Coach Tanya lead the discussion about how to be good sports and how important it is that we all remain encouraging and positive about our sporting experiences. Some of the girls shared their experiences how others they know may not have wanted to be good sports, and in some cases, our girls were able to change the minds of those that wanted to act out or be unsportsmanlike. Our girls deserve a big A+ for the stories!!!

Our girls did their best to stay warm while they ran their laps around the blacktop. We started our warm up running fartleks. We played a line game where the last person had to speed to the front of the line. Sounds easy, huh? Well, you try sprinting past 10 other girls who are running!

It seemed the girls didn’t mind running today, as the movement helped keep them warm. In fact, although we didn’t count, we estimated that they did 5-6 laps before they realized they were running! (and running fast to boot!)

We then integrated our promises into our lap running. After each lap, the girls received a ribbon that had one of the GOTR promises written on it. Since there are 14 promises, everyone ran another 14 laps….yes, on top of the 5-6 they had already done!!! Our ladies were cold, their cheeks were red, and their noses were running. But by golly, they finished the challenge with smiles and cheers. The best part was when the quicker girls who had collected their ribbons began to cheer on the not-so-quick girls. Now that, parents, is the embodiment of sportsmanship.

….So where are the ribbons, you ask? You’ll see them on Friday. We are transforming them from individual 18” ribbons to colorful bouquets that will hang from a hair scrunchie. We’ve done the ribbon scrunchies before, and we can tell you that our ribbon scrunchie girls are a big, big hit at the race (not to mention they make it easy to spot our girls in the sea of young runners!)

Check back on our blog tomorrow. We’ll have more information about our end of season party (this Friday) as well as details about the race. For now, plan to be at the Germantown Soccerplex no later than 6:30am! (yeah, we said “a – m”!)