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She said the murder of her former teammate Agnes Tirop was a sign that she needed to do something.
Long-distance runner Mary Ngugi is looking to empower young girls and help them secure their futures through her Nala Track Club.
Ngugi, a second-place finisher at the 2021 Boston Marathon, speaking to Athletics Weekly, said the murder of her former team-mate Agnes Tirop was a sign that she needed to do something.
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That led to the birth of the Nala Track Club, a girls-only running camp she founded and officially launched in Kenya in October last year.
“I’ve grown up in a homestead where you see that the man is always the one who is making the decisions. Also, growing up in a camp where it’s mixed with boys, I saw all those kinds of things. It doesn’t have to be violence or whatever, but you can see that you don’t have a voice.
Maybe you’re doing something and they look at you and they’re like: ‘What are you doing? This is not what we do here.’ It’s like they decide what is right or wrong, it’s not up to us girls.
“I wanted to mentor them, but also to house them, to train them, and to pay for their schooling,” she says. I thought starting a camp was a really good idea,” she said, as quoted by Athletics Weekly.
Nala Track Club is based in Nyahururu and supports girls from all over the country who have potential but are lacking the support they need to progress. It launched with six girls and it now supports 12, ranging from 14 to 22 years old.
At the camp, the girls eat, live, learn, and train together. They do a short jog before breakfast, then they attend school. Many of them usually have track sessions in the evening.
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“It’s like a home for them,” says Ngugi, who explains that they work in partnership with a school that is aligned with their mission.
Ngugi revealed that her main priority is to teach young girls how to balance training and education. She added that developing more female coaches and succession planning for Nala is also a priority.
“We help each other. They’re learning to be coaches as well as me and they’re gaining experience, learning how to deal with athletes, how to deliver a programme,” she said.
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Ngugi is impressed by how the young girls are turning out to be so far. “As much as I want the girls to perform well, for me, it’s more about empowering them and seeing them confident, whether they become athletes or not
I’d like to see these girls make decisions for themselves, they can say: ‘No, I don’t want this.’ They can challenge it because they know what they want.
I’d also like to see them join teams, like making it the Kenyan team for the Olympics. We want to empower them, but we want to see results as well,” she said.
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He added that he feels fulfilled when he sees an athlete improving on their performance despite how slow the progress might be.
She is currently based in the United Kenya but visits the country more often. When she returns to the country, her first priority is to visit the Nala Track Club.
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