BAWSI

Through my job search I found out about a women's sports organization called the Bay Area Women's Sports Initiative (BAWSI, pronounced bossy). They are located in San Jose and run after school programs all over the Bay Area to get elementary school aged girls active, involved in sports, and build self esteem. It is a very cool organization and I would really like to work there, or run my own organization like it someday. When I contacted them and went to San Jose to learn more about it, I found out they weren't hiring at the moment so they encouraged me to volunteer at an elementary school.

Hey, why not? I have plenty of free time and it would be great to learn about a non-profit women's sports program in the process of helping the community.

Today I went to Taft Elementary School in Redwood City for my first time volunteering. The BAWSI Girls program at Taft is for girls aged 2nd-5th grade. About 35 girls are members (or that is how many I saw today) of BAWSI.
One of the goals of BAWSI is to make local female athletes visible in the community. Every school that participates in the BAWSI Girls program is adopted by a Bay Area college team. Taft Elementary school just happened to be adopted by the CSM softball team. Small world. I know one of the girls on the team and a few recognized me from pitching lessons when I was in high school (they must have been in elementary school at the time they watched me pitch. Weird to think about!). Above are some of the CSM players. At Towson we used to do community service projects too, but nothing as cool as working with BAWSI.
The BAWSI Girls program runs like this: All of the girls run out to the playground and meet the group leader and the college players (and me the volunteer) in the "Locker room" which is a bunch of cones set up. Inside the cones is a special area just for BAWSI Girls. All of the girls have special Tshirts they are allowed to wear to school on Thursdays that says BAWSI Girl. I could tell that they are proud of their shirts because it identifies them as belonging to this group. When everyone is settled in the locker room, the leader starts the "locker room talk." Each session has a word or value that they learn about for the day. Today was courage, but some of the other words are respect, leadership, acceptance. All of the girls write down the definition of courage in their journals and then set a goal for the day.

After the locker room (about 10 min) the girls are divided up into 5 groups and everyone spreads out into stations that are active games. They did agility courses, jumping, running, and today there was a special softball station with the CSM players (I wish I had that station! hahah). Each station lasts about 10 minutes and then there is a closing locker room chat at the end.
I was in charge of a station called scatterballs that is a combination of kickball and baseball. Three bases with cups next to them and three tennis balls. The offense has to throw the three tennis balls as far as they can and then run around the bases before the defense puts the balls in the cups next to the bases. Basically the girls "scatter" the balls in the field and then everyone runs like crazy while I cheer and give high fives. Above is one BAWSI girl running home after throwing a home run.
At the end of the session all of the girls come back to the locker room and talk about their day. A few shared a time when they were courageous and others reported to the group if they met their goal for the day. The locker room ends with the BAWSI Girl cheer (which I need to learn!), a song and dance that starts low and quiet (pictured above) and then at the end everyone stands up and sings as loud as they can. Looked like fun.

I had a good time volunteering today. The girls are precious. When I introduced myself as Coach Claire (everyone is called coach whoever) and gave my special fact about myself (my favorite color is purple), the girls stood up and cheered. It was really cute and I felt very welcome.

When BAWSI was over the leader told the girls to give high fives to the CSM players and me as a thank you. I received mostly hugs, a very nice compliment from a shy girl "Coach Claire, you have pretty eyes," and one girl gave me one of those crazy bracelets that are all the rage right now. I hope the girls went home with higher self confidence today because I certainly did!

From today I learned that running an after school program isn't exactly what I want to do, but I do like helping out with BAWSI. I think over the next few weeks I am going to learn a lot, related to promoting women's athletics and how to inspire girls to be strong athletic minded leaders (larger goal/dream) and get a little taste of how fun it is to be 8 years old on a playground again.

Looking forward to next week.