Libertyville 10-Year-Old Speaks At Chicago Fundraiser

From feeling out of place in a new town to speaking about gaining self-confidence and acceptance in front of a crowd of 150, Margaux Scally has come a long way.

The ten-year-old was one of two girls selected to speak at an event in May held by Girls on the Run, an organization that teaches self-respect and healthy living through training for a marathon.

“It’s not only about running and becoming more healthy,” Scally said of the program. “They teach you to be more confident about yourself.”

From New York to Illinois

Scally’s family moved to Libertyville from Brooklyn in 2009. At first she was having a hard time making friends and meeting new people, but Girls on the Run changed that. The ten-year-old says running and exercising with the group helped her improve her self-image and get to know herself more.

“Now I know it is just not only about looks and what people see you as, it’s about how you feel about yourself,” she wrote in her speech for the event. “Although I’m not the fastest runner on the team, I enjoy running by my friends’ sides.”

Some of the workouts include warm-ups where girls were asked to write down good and bad qualities about themselves. The bad qualities were ripped up and placed in a jar.

“Our warm up was to the jar, grab one bad quality, run to the lake, throw it in the lake and run back for another one,” Scally said.

Scally is ecstatic that she found the organization and plans to stay in the program for as long as it is offered. But at first, her mom was surprised Scally wanted to sign up for a five-mile marathon.

Finding a Voice Through Running

“She has not been the running type of girl,” said Scally’s mom Lisa Sciascia Scally. “She dealt with breaking through some barriers building up to a 5K. So I’m really impressed with that in and of itself.”

Lisa says she is also humbled the compliments other parents have given her.

“It’s just such a neat thing for me to hear that from somebody else,” Lisa said. “It’s really a completion too, because since our move, it has been a really rough road.”

And it isn’t just other parents showering praises. Organizers at Girls on the Run were also impressed with Scally.

“We were looking for someone who had positive experiences that they could explain in age appropriate language, in their own voice what Girls on the Run did for them,” said Kristen Kainer Turner, with the Chicago branch of GOTR. “These two had a personality and a presence. They wowed the crowd.”

Large Crowd Doesn't Faze Scally

For Scally’s part, she says speaking in front of a large crowd wasn’t very hard.

“Before I got on, I was kind of scared,” she said. “But by the time I got to my third sentence, I was fine.”

The speech is now featured as part of Girls on the Run Chicago’s promotional video.

Girls on the Run programs are offered to girls at GOTR is offered to girls at Adler Park, Butterfield, Copeland Manor, and Rockland Schools. The Chicago branch of the organization has 4,400 girls from 191 sites in Cook, Lake, Dupage, Will, and Kendall counties.