INSPIRATIONAL TRIATHLON RACING
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Mission Statement
i-tri is an inclusive, immersive, community-based program that fosters self-respect, personal empowerment, self-confidence, positive body image and healthy lifestyle choices for adolescent girls. i-tri trains them to complete a youth-distance triathlon as a metaphor for life’s journey, giving them the opportunity to set seemingly impossible goals and helping them gain the tools to achieve those goals. What sets i-tri apart is our mind, body and spirit approach.
About This Cause
What would our world look like if EVERY GIRL, EVERYWHERE believed that she could do the SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE? As the world continues to address gender equity, i-tri is asking and answering different questions. What happens when we go beyond the question of SHOULD women be treated equally and talk about the questions of how we can ensure that girls feel empowered to take on the responsibilities and opportunities that equality brings them? For over 10 years, i-tri has said that we are helping to raise a generation of women who are CAPABLE, BRAVE AND STRONG, but what does that mean? It means that an i-tri girl doesn’t just have high self-esteem. She has high self-efficacy, which ensures that she knows how to see beyond the hurdles; an i-tri girl knows how to visualize her goals and what she must do to achieve them. Imagine if all girls knew how to see beyond all the things in their lives that hold them back. Imagine if all girls knew how to dream big and how to achieve big dreams. Imagine if all girls knew how to take the steps necessary to achieve the seemingly impossible. That is what i-tri does. We imagined it and we work every day to make that a reality in our local area and moving forward, we are working to make that a reality throughout our country. In 2008, we welcomed 8 girls to our first pilot program located at Springs School in Eastern Long Island. Since then, we have seen 664 girls from 10 different schools cross the finish line of a youth distance triathlon, and this year, we are planning to welcome 200 more girls to i-tri. And along the way, our girls have learned that they are worthy and have the ability to do things no one thought were possible. Every year i-tri invites girls to join our program. Prior to this, every girl in 6th grade completes a survey that helps us to identify girls who would benefit most. Our programming staff reviews these, and then with the assistance of school social workers and guidance staff, selects girls who we know will benefit from i-tri to become members. While we invite specific girls, we also open participation to any girl who wants to be a part of this because we know that some girls know they need it even when no one else does. And then, we tell these girls and their families that in 6 months they will cross the finish line of a triathlon. When we do that, they look around the room in disbelief. Many of them don’t know how to ride a bike or swim. Almost all of them hate running. And for many of them, no one has ever told them that they could achieve something so desperately difficult. You can see it on their faces, in their posture. No one believes this is possible. And yet… You can also see the spark of hope in their eyes as their peers who completed the program last year confidently tell them that not only WILL it happen, but that THEY will be there every step of the way! We don’t have our girls complete a triathlon because we want them to become triathletes. They are taught this sport because they aren’t triathletes. They are being given a goal that is seemingly impossible, that is overwhelming, that is scary. And then we give them the mental, spiritual and physical tools to achieve that goal. For 6 months, they meet thrice weekly in groups, creating a team even in this individual sport. In their Empowerment Workshops they learn techniques such as visualization and to find their light. In their Fitness Sessions, they learn to love their bodies no matter what they look like because it is strong and powerful. In their Triathlon Training Sessions, they learn that compassion, grace and science can be used to accomplish the hardest and most scary goals. Additionally, our Science of Triathlon (STEM) curriculum is integrated into everything we do, and we provide special programs throughout the year that include Hands on Family Nutrition workshops, Mentoring Day and Family events. We teach our girls to support one another, creating family and community for them. We teach our girls leadership skills when we ask them to teach a peer something they have just learned or mastered. We teach our girls communication skills when they write in their journals and speak about their feelings of fear, exhaustion, or being overwhelmed. You can always spot an i-tri girl. She is the one who stands straight, embraces people she didn’t relate to before, and tells you she’ll try something before she says she can’t do it. We know i-tri works. We know this because we see in the evaluations conducted by Dr. Tobie Langsum, an Adjunct Professor at Adelphi University and a Research Scholar at New York University, who focuses on Sport and Exercise Psychology. She developed a total Program Evaluation Tool that is now being used to evaluate all aspects of our program measuring both individual changes over time (each girl) as well as group changes over time (school groups AND total group of participants). The results are truly TRI-umphant! Academic Results: 100% of our girls graduate college and 90% of them go on to college. In 2019, more than 92% of our girls earned A’s and B’s on their report cards and the percent of D’s and F’s decreased by 67%. Physical Activity Results: i-tri girls show significant increases in both the number of hours they exercise and the intensity levels at which they exercise. More importantly to their continued success in physical activity, We see a growth to almost 74% of our girls exercising with close friends, which is particularly important, as we see the top reason for adolescents to participate in exercise is to “have fun and socialize.” Nutrition Results: Nutrition changes are affected as well, with the percentage of girls who eat vegetables once a day increased from 27.4% to 34.1% and the percentage of girls who ate junk food once a day decreased from 31.5% to 24.2%. In past years, we have also evaluated for the number of families who eat dinner together multiple times per week, and we have seen over 90% of our families begin or continue to do this after i-tri. Family dinners are directly tied to a decrease in drug/alcohol use, higher grades and school attendance, and healthier eating habits. We know that they achieve academic, social and behavioral growth despite coming from communities where 40-50% of students receive free or reduced priced lunch. 86% of our participants come from low to moderate income households and 45% of them have divorced parents and/or single parent households. We estimate that almost half of the girls we serve live without housing or food security or are in fear of a parent being deported. Our community faces issues of poverty, growing drug use, the highest rate of teen pregnancy in state outside of New York City, and the area has become a cluster point for suicide and drug abuse. The East End of Long Island has the fastest growing population of immigrants, and over half of our immigrants do not speak English. This is the world that our girls are growing up in. When a girl joins i-tri, she does not pay a penny. We provide her with all equipment, coaching, training and transportation that she will require to make sure she has everything she needs to be successful. Our program runs from February-July and the final 3 weeks take place during the summer vacation. During that time, we provide training and programming 3 days a week at Long Beach in Sag Harbor. Girls all receive door-to-door transportation during for those 3 weeks because we recognize that simply getting somewhere can mean the difference for our girls having access to summer activities. And our investment in our girls goes beyond Middle School. Last year, we introduced a year-round mentoring component for our high school aged alumnae, that will help them to answer the questions for themselves of what is next regarding career and education goals. We also invite our alumnae back to act as peer coaches, and for those who volunteer consistently, we offer paid employment as Assistant Coaches once they reach the 10th grade. tri was never about a race. It has always been about the girl and her journey beyond the finish line. In fact, we have a saying in i-tri: The Finish Line was just the Beginning…. That is as true for our girls as it is for our organization. This year, we are preparing to announce our national expansion plan that will start with a pilot program that will be our first outside of the Metro NY area. As we work to prepare for that, we are introducing new systems and policies that are guiding our own best practices so that i-tri can be copied throughout the country. Our vision is to answer that call to ensure that EVERY GIRL EVERYWHERE believes she can achieve the seemingly impossible, all while continuing to serve our local Long Island communities from Mastic to Montauk.