On January 10, 2022 Girls Gone Gazelle Run Club began an 8 week training program through a partnership with Canadian Women & Sport’s Game On Leadership Program and a local chapter of Pathfinders.  

This is the first time that we have ever trained in the WINTER and the first time we have limited our participants to one group (i.e. Pathfinders only). It was very difficult to turn girls away but we were unable to mix our participants with Pathfinders per their policy and this is the first time we have actively recruited girls 14-15. Plus winter (kidding, Coach Stacy finds the freezing temperatures worse than the Gazelles).

So far our practices have been outside in freezing temperatures and on zoom. The pandemic has taught us to be flexible and we will roll with whatever format we have to use to keep our connections with young female leaders. 

If you have been patiently waiting to train with Girls Gone Gazelle Run Club, our next session will begin training in April. We will be reaching out to everyone on our wait list and we will announce our intake period on our Facebook page. We don’t want to miss anyone.

More on the Game On program and why it is so necessary at this moment in time.

Canadian Women & Sport created this program designed to foster leadership skills and increase participants’ motivation to be physically active by supporting coaches to create safer, more inclusive, and more engaging sport and physical activity experiences for girls because Covid has had a terrible impact. 

Prior to COVID- 19, as many as 62% of Canadian girls were not participating in any kind of sport and physical activity across adolescence (Canadian Women & Sport, The Rally Report, (2020)). Now, 1 in 4 Canadian girls who were previously physically active are not committed to returning to sport post-COVID (Canadian Women & Sport, COVID Alert Study, 2021). Not only do girls who leave sport prematurely miss out on the full benefits of their participation, but this also limits the pool of potential future women coaches and sport leaders who would help to boost representation of women in leadership and to engage and retain the next generation of girls in sport (Canadian Women & Sport, Actively Engaging, 2012). Through 8 weekly sessions, Game On combines girl-centered programming with leadership training opportunities to increase participants’ perceived value of sport, social connection, and leadership skills. These factors are key to helping keep girls in sport. And there is nothing that we at Girls Gone Gazelle want more!