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Scouting News for the DC Metro Area

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38th Annual Boy Scout Golf Classic Tees Off Another Successful Fundraiser

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On June 11, National Capital Area Council hosted the 38th Annual Boy Scout Golf Classic at Manor Country Club. Scouting’s benefactors, donors, and supporters in the DMV region look forward to the annual event for its spirited comradery, a round of competitive play with their colleagues, and of course the surprise swag that’s to be found at many of the holes.

Rain or shine, this event is never short of players, sponsors, and smiles. It’s an opportunity to have a lot of fun while supporting an institution that you love. That’s Scouting.

Though more rain than shine, this year’s tournament brought out a who’s who of DC-area industry in support of NCAC and the festivities, including ValueMomentum, Safelite AutoGlass, Dynatrace, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, CCC Information Services, Inc., Horizon Media, Insurance Auto Auctions, Lockheed Martin, BMC Software, Cisco, KPMG, Praxis Consulting, Splunk, Black Diamond Media, ISG, MYTA, Recovery Point, Rivkin Radler, Service King, GEICO, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and RedPeg Marketing.

We did not see a hole-in-one during either the morning or afternoon rounds, but the scores that came back showed that a few rain showers would not dampen the fun or competition amongst our players.

All participants received gifts throughout the course. Golf bags, gloves, Amazon Echo Dots, and other goodies filled carts, while on other holes players had added bonus opportunity to win if they could hit a hole-in-one.Hole 5 featured a shot at winning a BMW and a Harley Davidson motorcycle while holes 8, 11, and 17 offered chances at a Corvette, Jeep Grand Cherokee, and Range Rover, respectively. Other contests including closest to the pin and best score brought accolades, awards, and additional prizes at both the noon luncheon and evening banquet. 

For more information or to learn about sponsorships for the 2019 39th Annual Boy Scout Golf Classic, please contact Geoffrey.Thomas@Scouting.org.

Commissioner Service and Family Scouting

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Fellow commissioners, we have a unique opportunity to serve Scouting at a historic time of change!

I personally am thrilled that through Scouting we will be serving the whole family. Through visiting two of our council’s Vietnamese long-standing Family Scouting groups, I have seen a vision of the future, and it looks fantastic! At the Vietnamese Scouting groups, I saw boys, girls, and entire families (including grandparents) at a Scouting meeting where they shared fellowship, prepared young people to live by the Scout Oath and Law, and had separate but linked programs by age and gender where appropriate. I do not view family Scouting as accepting girls into Scouting – rather, I view it as serving the whole family.

The most recent issue of The Commissioner, the national newsletter for commissioners and professionals (http://bit.ly/2tUJ1VC), contains several excellent articles on commissioner service and Family Scouting.

While commissioners will continue to serve units and Scouters as we always have, we need to be ready to support growth in our movement. Specifically, this means:

Working closely with district membership teams to form sustainable new units based on the processes described in the Unit Performance Guide (http://bit.ly/2Nt5Zvm)

Working closely with district training teams and our roundtable commissioner staff to get our Scouters the training they need to succeed

Continuing our traditional role as “agents of change” by keeping up with the latest information available at www.Scouting.org/FamilyScouting and communicating that to our districts and units

Commissioners, as friends and mentors, will play a crucial role in family Scouting’s success. As the national newsletter notes, “If the trend holds true from what we have seen in the early adopter program, many of these new families will not have a background in Scouting, making the presence of the unit commissioners who will follow these units through their first two charter renewal cycles more important than ever.”

This is a time of change. We have the opportunity to make a real difference in Scouting by serving the whole family. We need to be ready and set to go!

Patuxent 2018 Good Scout Breakfast

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The Patuxent District held its Good Scout Breakfast on June 5, 2018. The Patuxent District honored Isiah “Gene” Pugh who was killed in a crash in Upper Marlboro during a Key Three Meeting. Isiah held nearly every adult leadership role from Scoutmaster to District Commissioner. He was a role model and shaped the lives of many young men who have excelled in society. His legacy will continue to live on as Scouting breathes.

Isiah’s family was there to honor their father and speak further on his love of Scouting. This fundraiser was to support the mission of Scouting. It was an incredibly successful event and we could have not done so without our sponsors. Revere Bank, Robert Oxygen Company, Inc, Perry Ives, The Michael Companies, Art Witmann/Witmann Financials, St.Johns Properties Sharon Akers, Friends of Lyles, Tim Abell, Dr. Tommie Thompson, CPA, Bernhard Treidl. W.F. Chesley Real Estate, B Bowie LLC, O’Malley, Miles, Nylen & Gilmore, P.A., and Berman Enterprises. Special thanks to Jo Posluzny and Joe Brown for creating a special encasing for the award. Great job to Troop 1657 who presented the colors for the ceremony, and to our Scout speakers Quincy Bryant and Jaden Cooper

Operation Epic Collaboration

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by Kelly Phipps

Think of a group project you’ve been part of. (For some of you this will be a very fresh memory.) Let’s say your group of four members was assigned a problem or a topic, and each member was responsible for some aspect of the project. On some date, your group’s final product was presented to the rest of the class. The chances are good that one or more of your group members didn’t help in data collection, waited until the last minute to write the report, or was sick on presentation day. Final group project grade: C+.

Now imagine your group had twelve members, they lived in five different counties, and they only communicated by email or radio. They were also part of another team that was doing a similar but separate project, and all your separate projects tied into one bigger project. With those kinds of conditions, how much planning and coordination do you think needs to be done? (Hint: a lot.) And what do you think the odds of success are? With enough preparation and communication, those odds are very high.

Members of EMS Explorer Post 60, in cooperation with the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), took part in Operation Epic Collaboration, a kind of massive group project. This exercise tested the ability of 12 regional hospitals to respond to multiple simultaneous mass-casualty incidents. At each hospital, actors played “victims” of those incidents and Emergency Departments set up overflow triage rooms, prioritizing and treating patients by severity of injury. Each hospital’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) tracked patients, their locations, and hospital resources. Radio operators provided communications when other channels failed. Periodically, pre-recorded news “updates” were played on TV.

For months before the exercise, at meetings and via email, exercise planners set up scenarios and “injects,” events that required some kind of reaction by exercise participants. Hospital team members were assigned roles, trained, and collected the resources they would need to perform their part of the group project. Calendars were coordinated, supply carts were assembled, and cables were installed. Finally, the exercise commenced, and the group demonstrated their project.

After all the “patients” had been taken care of and the exercise was officially ended, an evaluator sat down with the whole hospital team to grade the group project. Team members identified flaws in the plan and variables that might improve future projects. In the end, Charles Regional Medical Center was commended for their overall performance, teamwork, and organization, and specifically for including amateur radio in their emergency action plan. Final group project grade: A+.

For more information on Explorer Post 60, send an email to Kelly Phipps, Post Committee Chair, at micu60explorers@gmail.com.

For more information on Amateur Radio, send email to Bob Davidson at kb3kow@arrl.net.

2018 District Court of Honor Dinner

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emcee, Jeff Baker started us out with a special Wood Badge beading ceremony (his own) and kept the evening lively and moving well. It was a great opportunity to introduce Wood Badge to many novices in the audience. (Congratulations, Jeff!)

With the best turnout ever, 114 people signed up for the Awards Dinner. Kudos go to the hard work of Seneca’s Advancement and Adult Recognition Chair Thomas Kennedy who was able to acquire 68 nominations from the district units for the SOUSA awards (Seneca Outstanding Unit Scouter Award). This award is a unit level award that gives recognition to registered adult Scouters for their significant contributions to their respective units during the 2017 calendar year. It is a district award presented on behalf of units in the same way that the District Award of Merit is a council award presented by the district, and the Silver Beaver Award is a national award presented by the council.

This year’s Awards Dinner was held at the Washington-Rockville Elks Lodge #15 in Rockville. Their venue worked very well with our growing size and did an exceptional job with their buffet menu.

The Key 3 (District Chair, Matt Beyers; District Commissioner Gordon Henley; and District Executive, Carlos Salazar) each got their ‘minute’ and then announced their Key 3 Awardee, Philip Dennis for his outstanding work with Friends of Scouting and various other tasks within the district.

Also honored was a special guest, 2018 Silver Beaver recipient Catherine Phan. (Congratulations, Cathy!)

Along with the 68 SOUSA awards representing 19 Packs, 15 Troops, 1 Crew, and 1 Explorer Post, the district also awarded 4 District Award of Merits. Congratulations to All!!