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Dangerous Women: Article 1 A Woman on the Run (continued) <prev| page 2 of 4 | next > by Lynne Hybels |
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During Elizabeth's first year of coaching, her girls decided to call themselves the "Cheetah Girls." As part of the program, each girl received proper running shoes. During their first "Cheetah Girls" meeting, Elizabeth provided ribbons, stickers, glitter and markers, so each girl could create her own personalized shoebox. The first week also included games designed to help girls get to know one another and begin the teambuilding process. Throughout the 10-week experience, some girls found the weekly running goals most challenging while others found participating in the weekly group discussions even harder than the physical workout. For Elizabeth, one major pay-off of coaching was to witness the steady transformation of girls' self-image as they pushed themselves physically and relationally. "One little girl had a physical deformity and had been teased all her life, and her family seems to have one run of bad luck after the next. This adorable little girl just keeps getting battered up by life. But during one of the discussion at the end of the course she said, 'I feel good about myself.' To hear that little girl say that was worth every hour I invested in that team." Elizabeth's second team named themselves the "Road Runners." For their community service project the Road Runners weeded the flowerbeds at their school. With gardening gloves, clippers, and goggles (for allergy-sufferers), the girls dug and pulled, sweated and groaned. While they worked, Mr. Trimner, the school maintenance person who normally tends the landscaping, sat in a lawn chair and sipped lemonade from a glass the girls refilled through the morning. Not only did the girls beautify their school property, they also gained a new respect for Mr. Trimner. "He works really, really hard!" "In high school," explains Elizabeth, "running saved my life. My mother was an alcoholic and a drug addict—and that was just the beginning of problems in my family. Then my gym coach challenged me to run cross country. What I experienced through running provided such a release for me. When I was running, I was free from everything going on at home. I felt most like myself when I was running. I think my story today would be very different without that experience." Twenty years after high school, Beth had long since given up running, but she knew she was fit enough to do the workouts with the girls. She signed up to be a coach.
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