Women’s Sports Foundation – GoGirlGo – Ambassador Team Awards Championed by Gatorade

Each year the Women’s Sport Foundation and Gatorade select 20 recipients for the Women’s Sports Foundation Go Girl Go Ambassador Team Awards. The Ambassador recipients will use the grant to buy equipment, uniforms, pay for transportation or use it for tournament entry fees.

To be considered for this award, teams had to submit an essay explaining what they do in their communities to try and get girls active.

The Northwest cheer squad, from Louisiana, heard about this award from their Big Sister Sarah, at UCA camp this summer. After hearing the program was about getting girls active in their community, they knew right away they wanted to help out. So they created a project called “A Walk in the Park.” There was only one rule, to get girls active so, they decided to walk from their park on the north side of town to a park on the south side of town. In total, participants walked three miles.

Before the walk started, their cheer coach, Kelly Oakley, gave a pep talk and thanked everyone for attending. Then, she led the girls through a warm-up exercise. Once everyone was done warming up, the participants lined up at the starting line, the police turned on their sirens and they were off!

Once everyone had completed the walk, a local doctor spoke about what it means to be healthy. They also had a nutritionist speak to the girls about nutrition and teach them the importance of a balanced diet.

“From this experience, we’ve learned that exercise is very important to our health. Being active, just walking, can give us a healthy body and a healthy mind which leads us into being a healthy girl at any age,” said cheer coach, Kelly Oakley.