While most graduates walk to get their diplomas, a program to empower young girls has its graduates running to get theirs. Saturday (12/3) was the 6th 5K graduation event for Girls on the Run of the Big Bend.
The course was around Tallahassee Community College and the finish line was a very happy and noisy place. Girls on the Run Executive Director Erica McKibbon said everyone who made it across the line was a winner.
"We want them to know that they're amazing and it starts with yourself, but we have a community here that is supporting girls to be successful, not only today, but for a lifetime!" she said as a seemingly endless stream of runners completed the run amidst cheers and applause from onlookers
. Among those supporters, newly-elected Leon County School Superintendent Rocky Hanna whose wife Christy, a teacher at Montford Middle School, works with Girls on the Run.
"She gets up at 6:30 a.m. three days a week and meets those girls at 7:00 and there's a lesson on character and leadership and then there's the running part, which is great!" Hanna said, "Get 'em off the couch and get them moving."
More than 300 girls, their families and fans, took part in Saturday's run.
