Re: New Scout Patrol SA

Hi all,

Anthony Mako made a number of very reasonable and thoughtful points about
working with a new scout patrol, and I'm downloading this post to give to
the SA in charge of MY new scout patrol.

One point he made at the end of his post was something along the lines of
"a patrol made up of scouts who weren't webelos together may take a
little longer to come together, but they will as long as no one decides
to split them up."

It's this latter clause that I wanted to get the views of the list on.
My troop is up to 26 people now, and we're expecting a bunch of new boys
in the spring (maybe as many as 15 or so, but 8-10 is more likely). Our
troop was rebuilding over the past two years, and two of our three
patrols are age-based, basically because the guys in them all crossed
over together as webelos scouts and stuck together in a patrol.

I note that the doctrine being espoused by national is that patrols
should not be age-based, but rather, collections of scouts of different
ages, which benefits both the older and younger scouts. I agree with
this concept and certainly would like to move away from age-based
patrols, but am not sure how to do it.

I don't want to step in and make them split up if they don't want to;
OTOH, I'm not sure it's a good idea to let them stay together based only
on age. I note that some of the guys hang out mostly with guys in other
patrols, but when I've raised the subject of joining that patrol, I get
this shocked look and something like, "But I like my patrol."

So I guess I'm asking, you SMs and former SMs out there who have dealt
with this situation, how did you handle it? Did you break up the
age-based patrols and reconstitute them, did you just let it be, or
what? I'm inclined to let the patrols stay the way they are, but I've
been known to be wrong. Any thoughts?

If anyone is wondering how age-based patrols appeared in the first place,
we were a dying troop 2 1/2 years ago--five scouts total when we
rechartered almost 3 months late. We're only now at the point where
age-based patrols could become an issue. I would like to begin with this
new group coming in in the spring the concept of a new scout patrol as it
is suposed to be according to national, that is, they stay together for a
year and then join the established patrols.

YiS,

Pete Farnham
SM, Troop 113
GW District, NCAC
Alexandria, VA

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