The girls stood in a loose circle outside Malden Elementary School, near the "starting line," as their coach gave them a pre-race pep talk.
"I want to tell you how grateful I am. Anyone grateful for anything today? Josie," Lou Newberger said, pointing to a blonde fourth-grader dressed in pink.
"I'm grateful that we're here and we can do this. This is my first 5K I've ever run," Josie Johnson said.
Next door, a handful of the residents of Good Living Assisted Living sat outside, armed with paper towel rolls filled with beans - homemade noisemakers - and decorated signs, ready to cheer on their young neighbors, who ran a practice 5K through their school's neighborhood this week in preparation for a Girls on the Run 5K race Tuesday at the University of Charleston.
James Thibeault, co-owner of Good Living, said the assisted living home and the elementary school have had a good relationship for decades, and its residents serving as "cheerleaders" for the girls is just another way for the seniors at the center to connect with their community.
"It's about community involvement - it's about inter-generational activities, and about making the younger kids comfortable being around other people, because there are plenty of situations that cause them to be away from older people. We're lucky to be right here in the community; these sorts of places tend to be sitting on a hillside somewhere," Thibeault said.
Girls on the Run, a nationwide 12-week program for girls ages 8 to 13, is designed to teach girls self esteem while training them to run a 5K, a little over three miles. Lyndsey Coleman, the second-grade teacher at Malden Elementary, said she and another teacher applied to bring the program to Malden Elementary because she wanted to give students the opportunity to learn to love exercise while becoming more confident in themselves.
"They play games, run sprints, and do different things to build up to being able to run a 5K," Coleman said. "It teaches a really good lesson in a safe environment, and it allows these girls to talk and bond with other girls in different grades."
More than 30 girls signed up for the program, and nearly all of them have stuck it out, Coleman said. Coleman said she hopes the school will be able to bring the program back next year, and that many of her own students are excited to enter third grade and sign up for the program.
"We thought that for the girls in this area, that it would be wonderful. They don't really have a lot of after-school activities, and we really liked the message of the program," she said.
As Good Living residents Jean Skiles and Gladys Keeney sat on their porch and waited for the girls to finish their first mile, both said they were excited to support the kids having fun and exercising.
"I just think it's good to cheer them on, so they might continue on to the Olympics someday, and then we could say we helped them," Skiles said.
More than 179,000 girls participated in the Girls on the Run program across the U.S. in 2015, and the program hosted more than 350 end-of-season 5K events last year, making it the largest 5K series in the country.
To learn more about Girls on the Run, visit www.girlsontherun.org.