We have a spring in our step after an incredible BAWSI spring season! Check out these updates:  

The energy on the playgrounds this spring was infectious! This season, we reached over 415 BAWSI Girls and over 130 BAWSI Rollers at 16 in-person sites in the South Bay. 

From basketball to soccer to tennis, we played just about every sport in the book while learning about leadership and teamwork. Our average attendance numbers remained high - 83% at BAWSI Girls and 85% at BAWSI Rollers. We are already counting down the days until our fall season begins.

These are all great opportunities for meaningful work in a uniquely rewarding environment – perfect for Gap Year paid experiences, or transition times. Please take a look and share with your network of friends, family, and colleagues:

• Athlete Leadership Team: 10 month, paid, part time coaching and leadership position. View the job description.

• Up2Us Specialist - Fund Development & Operations: 12 month, paid, full-time role through Up2Us Sports under the AmeriCorps VISTA national service program. View the job description. 

• Up2Us Coach - BAWSI Leadership Accelerator: 10 month, paid, full-time service opportunity under the AmeriCorps national service program. View the job description. 

In April, over 200 BAWSI Girls attended exciting Game Days at San Jose State University and Santa Clara University.

Girls participated in a pre-game sports clinic with BAWSI coaches and athlete volunteers before cheering on San Jose State Women’s Soccer and Santa Clara University Softball respectively.

"If I can see her, I can be her," is the saying that inspires our Game Days, both athletically and academically, sowing seeds for futures that include physical literacy and higher education.  

Middle School girls deserve a College Game Day too, and so as part of our pilot, we took the girls from Renaissance Academy at Fisher to Evergreen Valley College to give them more in depth exposure to what college can look and feel like. The administrators and Women’s Soccer Team rolled out the red carpet and created an afternoon that our girls won’t soon forget. The on-campus tour included lengthy stops in the Tesla hands-on lab for E-auto technician training, and the experiential learning labs for the nursing program. 

The girls were excited, attentive and engaged as they began to imagine what’s possible. EVC women’s soccer players gave the girls a warm welcome to campus and stayed with them as big sisters to share their own experiences on campus. There were too many highlights to report, but most remarkable was the picture of our BAWSI girls receiving encouragement from so many successful women leaders that included EVC’s President, Dean of Students, Dean of Business & Workforce Development and Head Soccer Coach. It was exactly what we envisioned in our strategic plan – “a community of motivated, highly accomplished women reaching back to pull young girls forward, unleashing hidden potential…”

As BAWSI expands to middle and high school, we are committed to listening to, and learning from, the community to guide our program design. This year, we conducted a Youth Participatory Evaluation (YPE) study led by paid, student researchers from Overfelt High School on the barriers girls face to sport participation in east San Jose.

This incredible girl-driven and girl-led team conducted their original research through surveys and interviews of other girls grades 6-12, parents, and athletic administrators. The team analyzed the resulting data to aggregate key findings and then recommended active solutions. Team members then presented their study results in a hybrid format at Overfelt High School in early spring. Training future changemakers and leaders is nothing new to BAWSI, but adding in a true research experience for girls is a novel way to build leadership skills while building new programming. Special thanks to the HealthTrust, the Morgan Family Foundation, and Principal Vito Chiala of Overfelt High School for making this project possible.

A huge THANK YOU to each one of you who joined us or supported us for the BAWSI Gala! We hope you had as much fun as we did and left inspired to keep the impact of Title IX sports equity alive in our community. 

In case you missed it (or want to watch it again!), here is the feature video from the Gala highlighting our impact on girls.  

The event was a smashing success - we simply cannot thank you enough!

Megan Berner is a Managing Director at Accenture, wife and mom of two, and lifelong Bay Area native. She played D1 softball at Santa Clara University, and volunteered at BAWSI while she was a student-athlete.

Megan is excited and eager to help amplify the incredible impact BAWSI has on girls in the Bay Area and give more girls the opportunities she was fortunate to have. 

Leslye Corsiglia has spent her professional career in the affordable housing field, working for the State of California, the City of San Jose, and as a leader in the nonprofit community.

Leslye's passion for sports goes back to her childhood days, and she is committed to giving other Bay Area children opportunity through sport.