The BCS comes under fire every year for its somewhat arbitrary ranking system. Should what a team does off the field contribute to their success on the field? Should the BCS try to make players better people?

All the major sport leagues work hard to keep a clean, family-friendly image. However, from steroids to violent crime, professional athletes continue to disappoint adoring fans. Nonetheless, Americans keep watching and athletes keep getting paid. Does it really matter what athletes do outside the lines if they take our breath away inside the lines?

When you think Anna Kournikova, do you think tennis player or "hot" tennis player?

Often the appearances of female athletes can overshadow their talent in competition. Do you think we oversexualize female athletes in a way that undermines their athletic ability?

In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we're highlighting the work some amazing organizations and people are doing to improve women's health. Last week, I interviewed Susan Roberts, executive director of Girls on the Run of the Bay Area, a program in San Francisco. Girls on the Run is a curriculum-based exercise program that cultivates self-confidence, physical fitness, healthy decision-making and teamwork in girls 8 to 13. In Girls on the Run's words, "We believe it is critical to reach girls at an early age in order to teach them these important life lessons and to prevent at-risk behavior such as eating disorders, substance abuse, depression, obesity and adolescent pregnancies."

Me: How did you get involved with GOTR?

Susan: I started at Girls on the Run in fall 2004 as program director. I had previously been working at an after-school program in the Outer Mission/Excelsior district of San Francisco, and we had Girls on the Run at my site. I immediately saw a lot of changes in the girls who were in the program-- on the playground and in the classroom. Teachers said girls were raising their hands and participating more and standing up for themselves.

In 2004, I ran the Lollipop Family Fun Run with my girls, which is a great event. Then I was hired as program director for Girls on the Run, and last year I was promoted to executive director.

Me: Girls on the Run is an international organization. Where are there chapters?

Susan: Yes, it is international. It started in 1996 in Charlotte, NC, and there are 165 chapters all over the United States and Canada. Girls on the Run of the Bay Area has been its own 501 (c)(3) nonprofit since 2002. It started as a program with five girls, and this year we served 500 girls in 39 locations throughout five counties.

Me: You work with girls ages 8 to 13. Why is running beneficial for girls of this age? What kind of skills do you think Girls on the Run teaches participants?

Susan: We have a program for elementary girls in third through fifth grade and then a program with a separate curriculum for girls in sixth to eighth grade. It's a preventative program, providing a positive, supportive environment for young girls. We teach important life lessons, covering topics including gossiping, bullying, nutrition, healthy decisions, teamwork, cooperation and community improvement. We implement a community service project as one of the lessons. The program is a supportive network for them-- encouraging social, emotional, physical and psychological health. We have two to three volunteer coaches who work with a group for ten weeks, meeting twice each week. Our girls really bond during this time. It's a non-competitive program, and it's open to girls of any shape, size or ability.

Me: How much does the program cost?

Susan: The cost depends on each community. We partner with schools so we can meet in the after-school hours, where there is the greatest need. 75 percent of our girls receive scholarships. The full cost of the program in a high-income community is $225. which includes 20 one-hour sessions, a water bottle, T-shirt, snacks and the final Lollipop Run. At another school, the cost is $125, and the average participant paid $67. In low-income communities, the cost might be $0-10 for participants. We write grants and fundraise to offset the cost.

Me: How can girls use the skills they learn at Girls on the Run outside of the program?

Susan: Educating these girls has a ripple effect. They teach their families and friends how to make healthy decisions. Families will tell us their daughters influence the grocery shopping and what they eat for dinner-- the girls encourage them to make healthier choices. Parents and other family members come to the Lollipop Family Fun Run at the end of the program, and they are inspired to complete their own 1 mile or 5K run. A number of the girls go on to join the cross country and track teams when they get older. They gain confidence and exposure to running.

Me: Do girls tend to continue with the program for more than one session?

Susan: Yes, 40 percent come back season after season. Some programs have as many as 60-70 percent of participants come back.

Me: What do your participants say about their experiences in the program?

Susan: The girls really enjoy the program. They are very enthusiastic about it and get very excited to participate. The girls make new friends, learn to make healthy decisions and get to experience setting and reaching goals. We get a lot of feedback that the program is really fun.

Me: Does each session work up to a large running event?

Susan: We have a Lollipop Family Fun Run every December and May at the end of each session. We had about 1,000 people come out this last May in Golden Gate Park. Each girl has a running buddy who runs alongside her. About 200 of our girls came out for the last run.

Me: How can people get involved with Girls on the Run?

Susan: We definitely always need volunteers and funding, and there are a lot of ways to get involved. You can be a one-time volunteer by coming to the Lollipop Run and spending three to four hours handing out water or T-shirts. You can also be a coach and meet twice a week for an hour for ten weeks. You can also be a running buddy, whether you're male or female, and be paired with a girl to meet for one practice and come out to the final run. It's a great point of entry-- a lot of people end up going on to a longer term role as a coach or committee member. We also have internships for high school and college students. There are committees of people who plan the Lollipop Runs and do marketing for us. You can see all the available volunteer opportunities on our site.

Me: At YN Play City, teams of young activists are starting their own sport-for-social-good projects. What advice could you give them for creating successful projects?

Susan: Listen to the needs of the community-- what is it people need? Especially for after-school programs, it's important to be in tune with the barriers that might prevent kids from getting to the program. We need to offer our programs on campus after school because it's more challenging to have practice at a gym or a park at 6 p.m. A lot of families have transportation barriers to get their kids there, as well as language barriers and other challenges. We need to make sure all our materials are bilingual and we have translators available. When you work with youth, the coaches you have will make or break the experience. You need to make sure the people leading the program have great energy and are really supportive and encouraging.

Me: How do you think sport-for-good programs benefit communities as a whole?

Susan: Sports-based youth development is a very powerful tool. Sports teach youth life lessons-- cooperation and learning how to win or lose gracefully. They also educate youth at a young age to have a healthy and active lifestyle as part of their daily habits. The costs of obesity-related diseases like type 2 diabetes are skyrocketing. The more a community is active and outdoors, the more it benefits everyone.

Me: Thank you so much for your time!

Take action with Girls on the Run of the Bay Area:

• Be a volunteer
• Donate to support the program

If you don't live in the Bay Area, find a Girls on the Run chapter near you.

Jonah Canner and Eyal Dimant, the coordinators of Bike 4 Obama, are so dedicated to making Barack Obama the next president of the United States that they are going to ride their bikes more than 1100 miles to campaign for their candidate. I talked to Jonah and Eyal on the phone about their project’s goals and their advice for other sport-for-good activists.    

Me: You guys are doing a project called Bike 4 Obama. Can you describe what exactly that is?

Bike 4 Obama: It’s a bicycle ride from Jacksonville, FL to Washington, D.C. It’ll take place starting October 9. and go for approximately 16 days through Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia and end up in D.C. We plan on arriving in D. C. on the 24th. From the 9th to the 24th, we’ll be riding.

Me: How many miles per day will you be riding?

B4O: About 80, between 70 and 80 average. A couple days are longer than that, some less.

Me: That’s pretty intense. Have you guys been training for this for awhile?

B4O: Yes, we started training in July and have been pretty much training since then.

Me: What inspired you guys to do this bike ride?

B4O (Jonah): Well…the state of this country. We’ve been talking, us and several of our other friends, throughout this spring that we wanted to do something for campaigning. We weren’t really sure what. As it became clearer that Obama was going to get the nomination, we got really excited and wanting to do something. I think one day I called up Eyal and said, “Hey, why don’t we just ride from Florida up the coast and campaign during that?”

Me: That’s really awesome. What are you trying to accomplish in each of these cities? What are you trying to do on this trip?


B4O: We’re trying to do a few things. The first is obviously just get out, and we’re going through small towns, and meet people in small areas who do or don’t have preconceptions about Obama and his campaign and the leadership he’s hoping to bring to the White House. And just talk to them… see where they stand, get beyond what we see on the news. If we can find a common denominator and understand where they’re coming from and see if they can understand where we’re coming from and hopefully get them to vote for Obama.

We’re also trying to raise money on our website (www.bike4obama.com), which goes directly to the campaign. We’re hoping to reach a goal of $20,000. We just put it up a few days ago, and we’re already at $1,000. We’re also going to be filming the ride—we’re going to have video cameras as well as still cameras—and on our website, there’s going to be a blog that we’re going to update daily with stories of people that we come across and film from each day. As we upload, we hope to get some conversations going over the Internet. We’re going to be in dialogue with at least one high school from New York City called the Community School for Social Justice and we’re going to be working with their history department and some students are going to be viewing our blog daily and writing to us with questions they might want to ask people we meet.

Me: What makes you guys so passionate about electing Barack Obama? It’s pretty ambitious to ride so many miles for a candidate.

B4O (Jonah): For me, I’ve been really passionate and political during my life in an action-oriented sense, through education, through teaching, through the nonprofit I founded. I’ve not really been motivated by politics and the political realm. And recently in the last few years, since Obama has become a national figure, I read both of his books, I started watching some of his speeches on the Internet and his thoughtfulness, the way he goes about understanding the problems of our country, the way he goes about including other people in his campaign, in the ideas that he has for addressing some of the issues our country is facing—that was something I didn’t ever expect to see from a political figure. It got me thinking, “Oh, this is something I could actually participate in and be a part of.”

(Eyal): For me, very much the same in the sense of being inspired by his policies and politics and speeches and ideas. I, however, am very much a news junkie and a politics junkie. I hold a dual citizenship—I’m Israeli and American—and I have a lot of family in Israel who actually have served in the Israeli army. And I’ve seen what the policies of the government here have done to both America and the rest of the world and I think it’s very dangerous for the entire world the direction everything is going- almost all of the policies that have been implemented by the Bush administration, which I think will be continued by the McCain campaign. But beyond that, this is not something I’m doing against McCain, it’s something I’m doing for Obama because he’s very refreshing as a politician. It’s been very rare for to be inspired by a politician, and he did it.

Me: How can people help out with your project?

B4O: The donation button on our website goes directly to Barack Obama’s website—and it goes directly to him. Every donation will be doubled by another donor. But to help us, if you go on our website, the route and the cities we’ll be stopping in are listed, as well as the dates we’re arriving and our email if you want to contact us. We would love to meet anybody that’s on the route for support and conversation and Gatorade or a beer. Anyone who wants to ride, from 100 feet to 100 miles, and ride into the town or out of the town with us, I think that would be very cool. I’m not expecting for this to be a Forrest Gump thing, but it would be cool to have four or five fresh faces in each city to show support because we’ll be in very Republican territory. We’re hoping to meet friendly faces. But also if people are reading your article and don’t agree with us and would like to talk to us about it, that would be very welcome as well. That’s the whole purpose.

For people who aren’t going to be in the southeast in October, we have a Facebook page, Bike for Obama. Join the group, send it to all your friends—we would love to break 1,000 and get as much exposure as possible. At the end of the day, we’re just hoping to get people interested in Obama and getting involved. We’re going to also have our daily blogs on the trip and people should read them and comment on them.

Me: We’re working with a bunch of activists who are starting sport-for-good projects. Do you have any advice for people just starting out?

B4O: Just do it. I think people get bogged down by the bigness of things when they try to do them and try to think about them too much. One day, I just called Eyal and said, “OK, instead of this one thing we’re talking about doing, let’s just do this bike ride.” And we kind of got ourselves to decide to do it. And some other people we know decided they wanted to join us. There’s going to be two other people joining us on the trip for the whole thing. Things just grow when you get out there and do them and tell people about them and aren’t afraid of doing it and putting it out there. It’s also nice to be healthy while doing it. It’s a pretty good workout, get in pretty good shape.

The whole idea going down to Florida is that we both have family who are the elderly, Jewish grandparents who live in the closed off compounds in Ft. Lauderdale and Delray Beach and all the good people that punched the wrong hole in the 2000 election. There are a lot of misconceptions about Barack Obama, and I don’t know if you can call it prejudice or just misunderstanding. The original idea was to go talk to the older folks down there. That is going to be a very big swing vote and state. The point I’m making to anyone younger is before you go out and talk to anyone else, talk to your parents and talk to your grandparents because they’ll listen to you. They trust you and they know you. And that is a big barrier with the older generations.

Me: I really appreciate you guys taking the time to talk to me. I’m looking forward to reading your blog posts as you go along. Thank you!

Get involved with Bike 4 Obama: 

• Check out the Bike 4 Obama website and blog. 
• Join the Bike 4 Obama Facebook group.
• Contact Jonah and Eyal. 

Photos courtesy of Bike 4 Obama