Olympic hopeful, Natasha Hastings, met with 45 young girls, grades 6-12 at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders this week. This public school is named after former Texas Governor Ann Richards – a strong example of female leadership – and is the first and only public all girl’s school in Austin, Texas.

Natasha spoke with the girls about training, physical fitness, nutrition, stress reduction and what it’s like to start out wanting to be an Olympian and then achieving those dreams. The girls had a lot of great questions about overcoming obstacles, gender equality in sports, eating healthy, training and what were her plans for the upcoming Olympic trials. She spoke at length about overcoming obstacles, training after loss and how hard it was some days to work through pain. She discussed how she trains, what she eats and why it’s so important to always look your best (“Dress for the part”). She took almost 45 minutes to answer EVERY question that came her way and was kind, gracious and funny!

After their chat, she lead the group in some exercises to get warmed up, and then had them do a #5forPE challenge and challenged them all to do 5 burpees. She had an engaged, active group of young women leaders who were all smiles as we took a few group photos!