“There are 1,000 girl Eagle scouts in the United States, according to Google. Now there’s 1,001.”
Nineteen-year-old Rochester scout Audrey Blanchard says it with a laugh rather than as a boast. She’s proud yet humble about recently earning her Eagle scout badge. Her dad Michael Blanchard notes that Audrey is Rochester’s only Girl Scouts Eagle Badge recipient ever and the only to do so in the scouting area of Rochester and its surrounding towns.
The achievement started with a passion for scouting at an early age. Audrey’s father was already a scoutmaster when she was born, and she was taken to scout meetings at a young age. Her brother Corbin, four years her senior, became a Cub scout and eventually an Eagle scout himself. When her mom Donna started Rochester Girl Scouts Troop 1801, Audrey, of course, joined.
But as a Girl Scout, Audrey didn’t like what she was missing by not being a Boy Scout. “I saw what the boys were doing and wanted to do more of that,” she said. “Girl scouting is more about homebody stuff, sewing, cooking, not the outdoorsy things the Boy Scouts get to practice.”
Her mother integrated some of the Boy Scouts lessons into the Girl Scouts lessons, and Blanchard admitted that out of her Girl Scouts’ experience, she would have felt prepared for her Eagle badge challenges as either a Boy or a Girl Scout. But for her, the Girl Scouts’ experience wasn’t enough. Luckily for Audrey, Scouts of America had decided to allow girls in their troops in 2019. Audrey Blanchard immediately said she wanted to achieve the rank of Eagle.
Her father wasn’t encouraging.
“He said it was highly improbable that I could do it even if I start right now, stay up at night to get it done in two years. “You may not be able to do it,'” she recalled him saying.
That’s because becoming an Eagle requires earning 21 merit badges that involve a lot of work and research and documenting your work and team building and you must earn all your Eagle service project qualifications by age 18. Audrey was 16 at the time.
“I’ve seen some at age 10 struggle to get to Eagle by age 18,” her father explained. But his words only challenged her to prove him wrong, and Audrey met all her deadlines. “We set together a path for her,” her father said, “a calendar with deadlines.”
The plan worked out well. Some skills that Audrey learned as a Girl Scout did transfer over to her Eagle Scout quest, but it was still difficult. Fourteen of 21 badges are standard requirements; the other 13 are the scout’s choice. Audrey had to research her topics and document everything she did and everything she learned in a thickly bound workbook. In the cases of badges for “Citizenship of the World…Nation…and Community,” she had to contact a state representative and other municipal authorities. Other badges required gathering a team together to help her with her tasks.
“You’re learning to be the best leader you can be,” her father said.
“You learn it’s not just about doing it,” she added. “It’s how to ask people to help you and how to direct them.”
“It’s about showing you have the knowledge, have learned the information,” her father added.
Audrey earned a badge called “Totem-Chip,” which emphasizes safety in handling a pocketknife, an ax and a saw. Her physical challenges came when she earned her Physical Fitness badge, wherein she had to practice and document an intense, 30-day exercise routine that included running, stretching, push-ups and pull-ups. There were both intellectual and physical challenges to some of the other badges, such as Water Safety, Life Saving, Swimming and Drafting.
Her service project to cap it all off was to replace two picnic tables at the YMCA camp in Rochester off Snows Pond, clear the nearby waterspout of brush so that it is usable again and clear out the tomahawk-throwing area.
Audrey was lucky, her father said. The Lowes store in Taunton donated the table assembly kits, the paint, trim and brushes. She didn’t have to raise the $1,500 it would have taken to acquire these materials otherwise.
It still required three days’ worth of labor for her and her four helpers. The work was completed under the hot sun of the summer of 2021. Following this, however, she had to submit her workbook, then her after-the-work-is-done documentation to an Eagle Scout Board of Review before the panel would award her the Eagle rank prize.
Audrey’s motivation for going through all this work to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout? “A little bit of spite to prove my dad wrong,” she said. “And to prove that I could do it. And I learned a lot about myself. I can show it on my resume, and people will see I know what I am doing.”
By Michael J. DeCicco