Camp WIN is the kind of sports camp I wish existed when I was a kid. Over the course of four days, girls get to experience four sports per day, with an empowerment speaker after the lunch break. Girls are exposed to a variety of sports, taught by volunteer coaches: soccer, golf, pickleball, ninja games, fencing, football and gymnastics, to name a few.
Over the last several years, we have volunteered our time and expertise to coach the soccer station. This year, we brought 15 girls from our program to help inspire the next generation – it was a blast!
This year, I was asked to be a guest speaker and talk about the empowerment theme of the day: Believe.
We believe anything we tell ourselves
Players in our program have heard me say this dozens of times: we believe anything we tell ourselves.
At Finesse Soccer, we have two rules. 1) RESPECT. Yourself, your teammates and your coaches. 2) HAVE FUN.
Around respecting yourself, we emphasize self-love and the power of our words. We encourage girls to speak nicely to themselves and instead of saying “I can’t do this” try saying “this is hard, but I know if I keep working on it, it will get easier”. We give examples to support this. We believe anything we tell ourselves. If we tell ourself it is hard and we can’t, we believe it. If we change our wording and believe in ourselves, telling ourselves something is hard but we can do it – then we will do it.
The speech I delivered to 300+ young athletes was all around believing in yourself and our core belief: We believe girls are brave, strong and powerful.
My aim is to give girls tangible ways they can be BRAVE (by trying something new on the field, or standing up to bully behavior), STRONG (mental strength and determination to do what is right) and POWERFUL (to use our superpowers for good).
In a future post, I’ll share a story about a young girl who heard my speech at Camp WIN and later that week, told me how she stood up to a bully.
Play on and believe in you!
– Coach Carrie