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Twenty years ago, a handful of girls crossed a finish line together under a single pop-up tent at the Rose Bowl. Today, hundreds of girls from every corner of Los Angeles do the same thing every season. This is the story of the coaches who made it real, the girls who carried it forward, and the community that never stopped asking: how do we do this for more girls?

As Girls on the Run LA grew from a handful of sites to a countywide organization, it faced a persistent challenge: how do you scale something while staying true to its mission and values? The answer came from the staff, board members, and volunteers who carried those values forward — and refused to compromise on them.

In early 2007, Girls on the Run of Los Angeles County gathered its community to ask a hard question: was this worth continuing? At the end of the conversation, someone placed a flip chart at the front of the room. One by one, people walked up and wrote their names down. Twenty years later, we're still building what that room started.

In 2016, Denise Zaragora was a third-grade participant in Girls on the Run LA. At the end of her season, she attended the GOTRLA 5K not knowing exactly what to expect.