Friends and family gathered outside the Washington YMCA Thursday evening to cheer on the local Girls on the Run chapter for their year-end 5K.

Girls on the Run is an afterschool program that inspires girls to build confidence and make intentional decisions, while fostering care and compassion for self and others. This year’s Washington chapter is comprised of 18 girls in third-fifth grade from Lincoln Elementary and St. James School, with four trained coaches that use physical activity and dynamic discussions to build social, emotional, and physical skills in each girl while encouraging healthy habits for life. The girls ran a 5K with parents and other adult buddies near the Wellness Park and on the Kewash Nature Trail, where relatives and other supporters wore various costumes and waved signs to cheer on the runners. Head Coach Katie Quinn comments on the program’s local support, “This is the best community, just the support for the girls, getting the girls here, picking them up on time, following along. We send out some questions that go along with each lesson for the parents to talk to the girls about what they learned that day and how they can use it in their everyday life. But even just looking around, all these people here to support the girls is just incredible.”

Quinn shares how she hopes the girls leave this program, especially those in their final year, “Just sending them on with a greater sense of self worth and the ability to encourage others and support others, how to stand up for themselves, just girl power in general, that they just go on and keep up all the values that we’ve learned over the past eight weeks plus three years for some of these girls.”

Another component of Girls on the Run is a community impact project, which the group chose to collect cans and bottles for Hawkeye Cans for Cancer in the YMCA parking lot. Washington Girls on the Run will return next spring.