Trailblazers Rebooted

Last year, I shared news that we were about to launch a new Trailblazer troop.  Well, we’ve got one year under our belts, and it was a success!  After I started writing this, I realized I’m going to have to split this up into two separate posts.  This one will be more about the format and structure of our troop, and the second one will be our personal experiences throughout the year.  I can’t wait to write that one because there were some amazing moments that I want to share.

To give you a little bit of history, my Senior co-leader and I were attempting to figure out what to do in the Fall of 2019 because we were flailing around with our Senior girls and were struggling with a variety of issues.  During that previous summer (2019), GSUSA announced that it was reviving the Trailblazer and Mariner programs.  I read up on it and ran the idea of creating a council-wide Trailblazer troop by Cheryl because the two of us tended to run a more outdoor based program.  She said it sounded good.  We talked to our girls and told them that we were considering starting a second troop, and we wanted to get their take.  We explained that this would fill a niche in the council that was sorely needed and give other girls experiences that they wouldn’t necessarily get if their troop didn’t do outdoor activities.  They were fine with it.

I feel very strongly about the Girl Scout program offering outdoor experiences for a variety of reasons.  First of all, it’s fun.  I also believe it’s something that we as a Movement should capitalize on because it’s something not many youth organizations and activities offer.  It’s a way we can set ourselves apart.  And most importantly, multiple studies have shown that spending time outdoors offers health benefits both mentally and physically.  I don’t have to tell you that everybody spends way too much time on electronics, so unplugging and getting outside is more important than ever.  The mental health of girls depends on it. 

So I contacted our council’s staff and said we were planning on setting up this troop to launch in the Fall of 2020, and we needed their support in a couple of different areas.  I recruited more co-leaders from various parts of the council, and we hosted an informational meeting in the Spring of 2020 and started sign-ups.  The response was very positive!

The Trailblazer program is laid out in this GSUSA publication and is for third year Cadettes, Seniors, and Ambassadors, but its format and requirements are different from council to council.  Some councils require leaders meet certain criteria before they can start a Trailblazer troop, and then others are wide open (like ours).  So I told our leaders that we should make this what we want it to be and keep it a work in progress to see what the girls are looking for, and we’ll see how it goes from there.

We serve as a secondary troop for most of the girls who have a primary troop.  We have a couple of Juliettes too.  We don’t do any product sales.  People always ask what we do for fundraising, and we say we haven’t crossed that bridge yet, but we’ve had some preliminary talks about it.  We purposely keep activity costs low so that money isn’t a barrier.  If a situation arises where we need to take action, it’ll be a priority.  When it comes to gear, we’ve had some donated to us, and if there’s something we don’t have, we all have various resources we can look to if need be.

By the time September started, we had about 30 girls signed up.  Wow!  We initially planned on running both a Zoom meeting and an in-person activity once a month.  We had our leader planning meeting in August, and we put together a tentative calendar because we were still in the midst of COVID and had no idea what would and wouldn’t be allowed by our council when it came to in-person events.  If there is one good thing that came out of all of this, it was the flexibility of Zoom meetings.  Before COVID hit, we thought we’d have in-person meetings, but we didn’t know what sort of attendance we’d have because some girls would have to drive an hour and a half to a meeting, and we didn’t know if that was really going to happen if they had to do it twice a month.  But Zoom meetings made it possible to host more educational and training topics, and then travel would only happen once a month for the in-person activity.  We attempted to spread in-person activities at various places around the council since girls are located in different areas.  We have a goal to offer hikes here and there for girls to earn mileage toward their log (more about that later).

We don’t have an attendance policy, so girls can choose what meetings and activities they want to come to depending on their interests.  We feel like this gives them the flexibility to allow them to supplement their Girl Scouting experience.  However, there are some meetings/trainings that are mandatory before they’re allow to participate in certain activities.  Backpacking is an example of one of them.

We ask each girl to fill out an interest survey so that we can get an idea of what sorts of things she wants to do.  We also have her fill out a survey that asks for her previous outdoor experience.  We feel that this is very important because we need to know where each girl is when it comes to outdoor progression – specifically when it comes to hiking, camping, and backpacking.  GSUSA publishes an outdoor progression chart that we use as a reference.  We don’t want to throw a girl into a situation where she’s unfamiliar and inexperienced and is turned off by a bad experience.  Also, you face safety issues when a girl is not prepared for what’s involved and not properly trained.

We found that we had a wide range of outdoor progression and skills in our troop ranging from girls who had never tent camped all the way to some who had gone on multi-night backpacking trips.  We realized this was a challenge with the way we had originally envisioned things, so for our last two months, we hosted separate activities for beginner and intermediate levels for camping and backpacking.

Here was our schedule for this past year:

September:

• Welcome & Hiking Basics (Zoom)
• Jones Gap Hike & WaBak Day (Archery & Orienteering sessions)

October:

• Survival Skills (Zoom)
• Canoeing

November:

• Leave No Trace (Zoom)
• Indoor rock climbing

December:

• WaBak Weekend (sessions in First Aid, Big Boy hike, Tree ID)

January:

• Camping Basics and Outdoor Progression (Zoom)
• Family Snow Trip

February:

• River sweep service project (canceled due to weather)
• Hike

At this point, we realized that Zoom meetings weren’t really necessary for the time being, so we cut those out (with some exceptions).

March (both the same weekend):

• Backpacking Trek for experienced girls
• Primitive Camping Trip – specifically for girls who had never primitive camped before (included outdoor cooking, knife safety, hiking, and fire building)

April:

• Ropes Course at Clemson University

May:

• Backpacking training for first-timers (in-person)
• Gear check for intermediate backpackers (Zoom)
• Same weekend but separate trips in different locations:  Beginner and intermediate backpacking treks

Can girl earn badges and patches in our troop?  Yes, that was the initial goal, and they are optional.  We have an Outdoor Skills patch and charm set along with a Hiking patch program.  Girls can rack up miles from hikes, and they earn rockers once they hit certain mileage milestones.  Only troop hikes count.  Additionally, girls can earn the OFFICIAL Trailblazer membership pin.

What’s the deal with the Hiking log?  Girls can receive a laminated hiking log to keep up with their mileage.  I put one together using Publisher along with a generic version.  You can download a PDF file of it here.  WordPress doesn’t allow me to upload Publisher files, so if you would like it, just drop me a line and I’ll send it to you.  You’ll need to cut on the straight edge at the bottom in order to size it as a brochure.

I ran into an issue when it comes to badges, though.  With the way GSUSA has its program structured and the fact that we have three different levels in our troop, badge earning doesn’t work very well in my opinion.  I’ve become a little frustrated because sometimes Cadettes will earn a badge for what we did (like the Primitive Camper), but Seniors and Ambassadors don’t.   The former IPA program for older girls (where they could earn the same badges 7th through 12th) would have been a better fit for us.  Not to mention there was a wider variety of topics.  I could go on about this and what I’ve got planned, but that’s for another time.

How did I keep up with troop business?  I put together my own master Google Sheets roster for our troop.  I based it off of Girl Scout Trax.  It’s a little more complicated than I would like, and I plan on modifying it for the coming year, but each girl has her own separate linked sheet so that she can see where she stands with things.  Here’s a Cadette template:

There are other sheets in the master file that interact with each girls’ sheet to compile summaries (much like Trax), but I won’t get into the technical side of things.  See, I do nerdy things other than collecting Blue Books and giving GSUSA the business!

So what’s on tap for this upcoming year?  We haven’t had our leader planning meeting yet, but some of the activities we want to fit in that girls have requested includes something equestrian related and fishing.  Hikes, camping, and backpacking will always be part of the year, of course!

Let me know if you have any other questions.  Check back soon for a post about our experiences!  It was a great year!