Boy Scout has enough badges for whole troop
ACHIEVEMENT
Ty Bingham had to earn 21 merit badges on his way to becoming an Eagle Scout. It’s the highest rank in Boy Scouts, reached by more than 2.4 million boys since the award was first presented in 1912.
But the California teenager recently joined an even more exclusive group when he earned all of Scouting’s available merit badges — currently 137 — a feat achieved by fewer than 350 boys in the history of the organization, according to meritbadgeknot.com, an unofficial but authoritative site that tracks the achievement.
The Boy Scouts of America has introduced or discontinued some badges over the years, changing the total number available for scouts to earn. Some of the newer ones, like animation, game design and programming, reflect updates in technology, while traditional ones, such as archery, bugling and camping, remain.
The organization itself does not keep track of how many scouts have earned all of the available badges, but it said in a statement that the feat was “an extremely rare achievement.” Troy Pugh, the founder of Merit Badge Knot, estimated an average of 18 scouts per year out of the 1 million who are eligible earn all of them.
Reaching that milestone requires, among other things, an obsessive attention to detail and time management and a network of adult counselors to help meet the particular requirements of each badge, scouts and their leaders said.
A drive to go to extraordinary lengths also helps.
For instance, Ty built in his backyard a 15-foot tall, 64-square-foot minihouse and started construction on a 50-foot long roller coaster made of wood. It’s not quite done yet, but he got credit for his 50 hours of work on it. That was all for just one merit badge, composite materials.
“I definitely gained a great respect for engineers who build these for amusement parks,” he said.
In 2015, Ty, who lives El Dorado Hills, California, about 30 miles northeast of Sacramento, had only 20 merit badges and a little more than two years left to earn the rest before he turned 18, the cutoff age.
He routinely worked on three merit badges a week, but even then it was a photo finish: On the day before he turned 18 in May, he worked 15 hours to complete his final four.