‘It’s kind of a really big deal’
GIRLS JOIN REVAMPED BOY SCOUTS
Who can show me how to tie a square knot?” yelled Shannon Held, 13, her voice rising above the din of more than a dozen teens and preteens filling the Morningside VFW hall.
Beatrice Alba, 12, rushed over to help, sitting down and coaching Shannon through one of the three knots she needed to learn to achieve the official rank of “Scout.”
It was a weekly meeting last month of Scouts BSA Troop #9945, and many of the eight girls in the troop were literally tying up loose ends — demonstrating knots, meeting with Scoutmasters, answering questions and watching a video on cyber safety — to complete requirements before getting their rank at their first Court of Honor.
Troop #9945, or the Bearded Ladies as they have named themselves, is one of five in the Laurel Highlands Council that has formed since Feb. 1, when Scouts BSA, formerly known as the Boy Scouts, started allowing girls to form troops. Cub Scout dens for younger girls were allowed to start forming a year ago, and 65 dens are now in the Laurel Highlands Council, which serves about 17,000 youth members in Western Pennsylvania and parts of western Maryland and West Virginia.
“It’s kind of a really big deal — it’s really special,” said Shannon, of Sharpsburg, an eighth-grader at Dorseyville Middle School. “The girls are able to do what the boys do.”
The Bearded Ladies share meeting space and meeting times with an existing Morningside boys troop and several have brothers in that troop.
The Boy Scouts of America announced in October 2017 that they would be opening
their Cub Scout ranks to girls ages 5 to 10, and said in May 2018 that they would drop the “Boy” from their name and open the Scout ranks for older girls as well — not without controversy.
One week after the May announcement, the Mormon Church announced it would be ending its centuryold partnership with the Boy Scouts — a move that the church said it had been mulling for a decade.
In various statements, the Girl Scouts decried the Boy Scouts’ decision to admit girls, with the president of the Girl Scouts’ national board at one point writing a letter that said, “We are confused as to why, rather than working to appeal to the 90 percent of boys who are not involved in BSA programs, you would choose to target girls.”
In November, the Girl Scouts sued Scouts BSA, claiming trademark infringement.
The local Girl Scouts of Western Pennsylvania said last week: “Girl Scouts hasn’t wavered in its mission to build girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place. No other organization is bringing together timetested, research-backed methods with exciting, modern programming that speaks to today’s girls and is designed to cater to the strengths of girls’ leadership development.”
Several members of the Bearded Ladies have tried Girl Scouts in the past, and two of them are still Girl Scouts, and enjoy it. But they say that what they want out of Scouts BSA is different — particularly, a more intense outdoors experience.
The girls started their meeting last month by running a mile in subfreezing temperatures as part of their physical fitness requirements. Earlier in February, they entered — and won — the Lackawanna Klondike Derby in New Florence, Westmoreland County, building a sled, shooting slingshots and demonstrating first-aid techniques to beat 17 all-boy patrols.
This spring, the girls will take a pontoon boat to Sycamore Island near Blawnox, camping for two nights on the undeveloped island and working with the Allegheny Land Trust on a conservation project.
“You learn outdoor survival things,” Rosie Mull, 12, of Greenfield said.
Her fellow Scouts are
Several members of the Bearded Ladies have tried Girl Scouts in the past ... But they say that what they want out of Scouts BSA is different — particularly, a more intense outdoors experience.
quick to chirp in with the most useful things they already have learned. Lucia King, a 14-year-old Pittsburgh CAPA eighth-grader, vaguely knew how to build a fire before joining the Scouts but now has built one on her own, using one of the specific techniques that she was taught.
And while Lucy Caroff, an 11-year-old sixth-grader at Pittsburgh Obama, had previously been car camping with her family, she now knows how to pack lightly to carry her own camping gear and learned the first-aid skills to treat a broken bone sticking out of the skin.
For the Bearded Ladies, there is some urgency to how fast they must learn and advance. For the 13- and 14year-olds in the troop to be eligible to become Eagle Scouts before they turn 18, they have to hurry.
“If you are 14, you have to go through these first four ranks in six months,” said Scoutmaster Emily Viehland of Highland Park, whose son Joshua, 16, is in the boys troop and whose daughter Fiona, 14, is in the girls troop. “Even if one of them decides they don’t want to get it, we want them to have the opportunity.”
In Moon, Karen Smith is now the parent of not one but two Scouts — her 11year-old son, Jacob, and her 7-year-old daughter, Erin, who joined a Cub Scout den last year in kindergarten.
Ms. Smith grew up in a Boy Scout family, going to meetings with her younger brother but not being able to participate herself until as a teenager she joined the Explorers program, a Boy Scout affiliate that opened to girls in the 1970s.
“I was the older sister, chasing around a lot of kids wishing I was doing what they were doing,” she said. “I always wanted to do the Pinewood Derby. I would sit there for hours on end watching everybody else race.”
In a phone interview, Erin gets excited describing her Pinewood Derby car this year, decorated with a “sparkly penguin” that she found while wandering through Hobby Lobby. Though her father, Ken, jokes that the sparkly penguin’s wings wrapped around the car were “hanging on for dear life,” Erin’s design won Best in Show — and a trophy — at the district level competition.
“It means a lot for her to have the opportunity to do what she wants and participate as she wants to do,” Ms. Smith said.
Back in Morningside, it was Shannon’s first time opening the meeting in her role as senior patrol leader — the boys and girls troops take turns each week leading the meetings.
Shannon called both troops to “fall in,” told the color guard to advance with the flags, led the Scout Oath and ordered “all scouts in uniform salute, all others place your hand over your heart” for the Pledge of Allegiance. She then led a boisterous initial planning discussion with both troops as they assessed what they already knew about caving in preparation for an upcoming camping and spelunking trip to Hocking Hills, Ohio.
For the members of the boys troop, having the girls around has added some excitement, some bickering — and also some opportunities to enhance their scouting experience by teaching the new scouts.
“The whole point of scouting is to pass on knowledge,” said Jacob Rauso, 14, a ninth-grader at Pittsburgh Allderdice. “It’s fun.”