We’re Offering a 20% Donation to Bike Like A Girl
Silver Sage Sports & Fitness Lab is now offering a 20 percent donation to Bike Like A Girl for anyone who mentions Bike Like A Girl when they sign up for physiologic testing, bike fitting, gait analysis or a year of coaching, paid in full.
Bike Like A Girl organizers Julie Young, Michelle Faurot and Sian Turner formed the organization with a mission of creating an environment for girls that promotes social and emotional learning, as well as a lifelong love of cycling. Since then, they have added in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) elements like understanding the math involved in planning bike trips and engineering in repairing bikes.
“It’s more than just learning how to ride a bike,” Young explained. “It’s about the self-esteem, confidence and empowerment that comes from the power of sport. We want to develop lifelong athletes.”
Bike Like A Girl started in Reno, will expand to Roseville and then the sky is the limit. “We’re working with educators on the STEM aspects, as well as psychologists to help with confidence-building, then we’ll create a template that can be picked up and used anywhere in the country,” Faurot said.
For the inaugural Bike Like A Girl program, eight girls, ages 10 to 12, were recruited from local Girl Scout and soccer programs. During the four-week program that ended in November 2015, the girls learned cycling skills, mechanics, safety, rules of the road, and engineering skills to design their own obstacle courses.
The three women are currently recruiting female cyclists to act as instructors and mentors, while also reaching out to potential sponsoring organizations. “It can be a cost-prohibitive sport and we don’t want a girl to be left out because she can’t afford a bike,” Turner said. “So we want to partner with organizations that share our goal of helping girls become healthy, well-balanced young women.”
For more information on Bike Like A Girl, visit https://www.facebook.com/Bike-Like-a-Girl.
For more information on Silver Sage, visit www.silversagecenter.com/sports-and-fitness.
