The National Eagle Scout Association (NESA) awarded 11 Eagle Scouts with the Outstanding Eagle Scout Award to recognize their professional accomplishments, one of whom is a successful rowing Olympian who connected many of his accomplishments back to the skills of being a Scout.
The NOESA was established in 2010 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Scouting America. The award recognizes Eagle Scouts who have demonstrated achievements beyond their Scouting experiences. On April 22, 2025, the NOESA will be presented to the Eagle Scouts at an awards dinner in Arlington, Virginia.
Christian Tabash is a rowing athlete from Vienna, Virginia and an Eagle Scout from Troop 976 in National Capital Area Council. Tabash feels humbled to be recognized for his accomplishments with the NOESA.
“It’s humbling but it’s also a testament to the community that I’ve had that has paved the way for me to do the things that I’ve done,” Tabash said. “My life is just a culmination of others and especially my parents and a lot of the sacrifices that they’ve laid as a foundation for my life.”
In 2017, Tabash won the World Rowing Junior Championship in the men’s eight and in 2021, won bronze in the four with coxswain at the World Rowing Championships. After much dedication and training, he participated in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris as a member of the United States men’s eight boat winning the bronze medal.
In high school, he was hoping to get recruited for college with soccer but changed his mind and decided that rowing would be a better fit for him.
“My sophomore year, I ditched soccer,” Tabash said. “It was hard to let go. I never looked back and got recruited to row in college.”
Tabash rowed in college at Harvard University and then became a graduate student at the University of California where he qualified for the United States Olympic Team. When he finished college, he moved to Sarasota, Florida to start his training in October of 2023.
Tabash described his time on the Olympics as a full-time job due to the commitment of 3 to 4 hours of training every day. As a newcomer, he had to persevere and displace someone who was already on the team since he was entering during the Olympic year.
“I fully immersed myself in what was required for that endeavor and at the time, it wasn’t guaranteed or even likely that I’d make the team,” Tabash said.
In his senior year of high school, Tabash earned his Eagle after completing a project of building larger than average picnic tables at a park area with a baseball field. The priests on the property needed updated benches, so he worked with his neighbor, who was a carpenter, to provide for the community.
Tabash describes himself as a goal-oriented person, which he believes was integrated within Scouting and helped him within his professional career.
“There were always clear-cut goals, whether it was for merit badges or to rise ranks,” Tabash said. “In rowing there’s clear goals, technical goals, physiological goals and that same mentality translated. It’s like wanting to achieve something and then knowing what I had to do.”
He describes his coach from 2023 in Sarasota as methodical and scientific and believed his training process for rowing as “very reminiscent of moving through the Scouting experience.”
Throughout his experience as a Scout, Tabash said he learned so much through exposure and being able to try, make mistakes and learn lessons from it. He remembered the Scout motto about being prepared for life and how the experience continues to affect him today.
“[Eagle Scout] was a byproduct of being committed to a goal and the path to Eagle Scout is laid out for us,” Tabash said.
