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EDUCATION
Brookhaven all-girls scout troop breaks barriers
BY SAMMIE PURCELL
When his son Jack achieved Eagle
Scout rank - the highest rank a scout
can earn in Scouts BSA - John Emble-
ton thought he was done with scouts
for good.
But that changed in 2017 when the
Boy Scouts - now known as Scouts BSA
- announced they would begin allowing
girls to pursue the rank of Eagle Scout.
John said when he told his daughter
about the change,
she jumped at the
chance to join.
“I got about
half a sentence out
and my daughter
pipes in and says, ‘I
want to be an Eagle
Scout,’” John said. “I
was like, ‘I thought
I was retiring from
all of this, but we’ll
see what we can
do.’”
Zoe Emble-
ton, now a 15-year-
old sophomore
at Mount Ver
non School, had
watched her broth
er go through
scouts for years and
said what drew her
in was the opportu
nity to be in nature,
build relationships,
and work toward a
goal outside of the realm of school.
“I was always pretty much interest
ed,” she said. “I never really thought
about me being in scouts. I did Girl
Scouts for a few years, but it wasn’t re-
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ally my thing.”
Turns out, a number of other girls
were also interested in joining up with
Scouts BSA. On Feb. 1, 2019 - the date
girls were officially allowed to join up
- Zoe became one of the original mem
bers of Troop 160 out of Broolchaven’s
St. Martin’s Episcopal Church. The
troop, which now has about 12 mem
bers, was given the number 160 after
female pilot Amelia Earhart’s airplane
number, which was 16020.
“We figured she was a woman pi
oneer, and these girls would be pio
neers,” said John, who is the troop’s
scoutmaster. “The first to pursue Eagle
Scout.”
Through the Scouts BSA program,
the girls of Troop 160 are given the op
portunity to do everything an all-boys
troop would do - and in many cas
es, they do it much better, John said.
Troop 160 has taken some amazing
trips since its inception, including a
trip to Charleston, S.C. where the girls
were able to spend the night in an air
craft carrier. Over the next year or so,
the troop will visit the Philmont Scout
Ranch in New Mexico - a hiking prop
erty that Scouts BSA owns - and will
charter a 65-foot sailboat for a trip
around The Bahamas.
John said the troop took its first trip
together the February when everything
started. The troop went skiing in Mag
gie Valley, N.C., where the girls began
work on earning their first merit badge.
“It’s been amazing to watch these
young ladies perform these tasks that
are required for rank advancement and
everything else,” John said.
Katherine Davis, a 15-year-old scout
who is a sophomore at Pace Academy,
said her favorite trip so far has been the
trip to Charleston and the stay in the
aircraft carrier. Katherine - who is a
Life Scout, just one rank away from Ea
gle - said she would encourage any girl
on the fence to give scouts a shot.
“Go for it,” she said. “At least try. If
you don’t think it will be your thing,
you might be surprised.”
Zoe agreed with Katherine. She said
that while she knows being one of the
first girls to be a scout is a big accom
plishment, she sometimes forgets about
it until someone else points it out.
“When other people bring it up in
conversation, they’re like, ‘You’re like
a boy scout - you’re a girl that’s a boy
scout,”’ Zoe said. “It’s just something
kind of cool to talk about.”
For John, the fact that these girls
will be able to say they’re the first is the
most exciting part.
“I just can’t wait to see some of
these young ladies tell stories about
going into an interview, and they look
at the resume and say, ‘This must be a
mistake. It says here you’re an Eagle
Scout,”’ John said. “No, that’s not a mis
take, I’m one of the very first women
Eagle Scouts in the world.”
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