Illinois College will host its first ever event celebrating National Girls and Women in Sports Day 
on February 17th. The community event will welcome in kindergarten through eighth grade girls into the Bruner Center. Illinois College Head Softball Coach Meghan Roman helped organized the event and says this is a great way to encourage students to play sports.
“It’s just something pretty important to me and other female coaches that we continue to be role models for young girls and making sure that girls feel confident and being able to participate in sports. National girls and women in sports day is a great way to piggy back on the national event and bring a little of that to Jacksonville.It’s also nice to get our student athletes involved, all of our female student athletes will be helping out next weekend so they will be able to serve as mentors to the community and I think that’s a cool experience as well.” said Roman.
IC opened registration on Tuesday and it has already had more than 20 people signed up. In the past, Illinois College only hosted small events for its own female athletes. Coach Roman says she’s excited to bring the event to the community.
“First thing will be lunch with the Lady Blues, all the little girls will eat lunch with our women’s basketball team. After eating lunch, some of our physical education and health majors who are student athletes give a little presentation about nutrition and feeling your body right for competing. After that, we will go and do many sports, we will have everything from golf, track & field, to the more traditional basketball, softball, volleyball, all the sports that we offer here.” Roman said.
Coach Roman talks about the importance of young women getting involved in athletics
“I think that there’s actually, a lot of research would show that more and more girls are getting involved in sports, but we lack quite far behind boys and men playing sports, so we want to make sure we grow sports and continuing to show young women that sports has a positive impact on their life.” said Roman.
The fun begins at 1 o’clock and will end around 3. Day of registration begins at noon. If you would like to register in advance, you may call Illinois College Head Volleyball Coach Kristy Duncan at 217-245-3403. You may also onto www.illinoiscollegeathletics.com. If you register by the end of February. 8th, you will receive a free camp t-shirt.