Last Updated on March 9, 2023
On Feb. 8, online financial education platform VicTreeFi held a virtual workshop with the Girl Scouts of Northeast Kansas and Northwest Missouri. Brianna Oats of Tusculum College Women’s Soccer, Jalon Sheffield of Grambling State University Football and Jemal Williams of Lincoln University football took Girl Scouts ages 10 to 13 through a series of warm-ups and cool-downs while hosting a Q&A about sportsmanship and the life of a student-athlete.
Those in attendance tuned in from across the nation, with scouts logging in from California to South Carolina to earn their Good Sportsmanship and Staying Fit badges.
“The webinar was pretty amazing, the Girl Scouts had some very good questions,” Williams said. “Us athletes answered the questions to the best of our abilities and gave them some wisdom, positivity and motivation.”
NIL and Girl Scouts Join Forces
The trio are all sponsored athletes of Nillie, a sub-division of VicTreeFi that partners with athletes to design and sell their own custom merchandise. When COVID-19 took the world by storm in 2020, Nillie was born. Now, the NIL platform is now trusted by over 100 student-athletes.
Despite Nillie’s infancy, VicTreeFi’s relationship with the Girl Scouts is anything but.
Since 2019, Girl Scouts have been able to take part in on-demand and live financial literacy and entrepreneurship training with VicTreeFi.
“As we were working with them, we were just like, ‘oh my gosh, why have we not gotten our athletes involved?!'” said VicTreeFi CEO and former Girl Scout Chrissy Flemming.
Merging the two, Hannah Whitehead, head of merchandise design and student-athlete social media engagement for Nillie, combed through each athletes’ request to participate. Oats, Sheffield and Williams were the three selected out of the Nillie athletes who applied.
“They were just so sweet and really wonderful,” said Flemming.
Oats said she had a great time throughout the hour-long zoom call. Beginning with a Q&A session that lasted about 40 minutes, the zoom ended with each athlete walking the Girl Scouts through their favorite stretches.
The Wellington, Fla. native showcased her flexibility and walked each scout through what she called, “the world’s greatest stretch.” Reaching down into a lunge with one palm on the ground and the other up in the air, her team used this stretch before they hit the weight room.
Lessons Learned
For the Q&A session, each Girl Scout was asked to prepare questions for the trio to answer.
“I definitely had a great time,” said Oats. “The Girl Scouts had really interesting questions to ask all of us, they made us think really deep.”
A question that resonated the most with Williams and Oats was about the sacrifices made in order to succeed in their respective sports. Being a soccer and track & field athlete, Oats shared her experience missing prom in high school to attend the state championships for track.
Williams told the attendees that success comes with sacrifice.
“Jamal was telling this intense story. It was really lovely and really resonated with a lot of those Girl Scouts,” Flemming said.
With such a positive reaction from scouts and athletes alike, VicTreeFi is hosting another virtual workshop in March with another set of its Nillie athletes.
“We’re excited to do another one,” Flemming said. “We love working with Girl Scouts everywhere.”
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