All-girl ‘Venture’ crew expands Scouting opportunities

WASILLA — Exploration and enjoyment of the great outdoors is not just for boys and young men, even through the Boy Scouts of America.

Venture Crew 300 is the only all-female group of adventurers in Alaska connected with the Boy Scouts’ nationwide Venturing program, which officially began in 1998. Venture crews are often co-ed, but troop co-founder Ed Soto said there are benefits to having an environment just for young women.

“We wanted to create a venue for them that was safe, emotionally and physically,” Soto said, citing “relationship issues” among co-ed troops as potential and actual problems.

Teenage hormones aside, Venturing gives young women a chance to take outdoor activities to the next level in a way related programs have not.

With his son as an Eagle Scout, Soto noticed a gap in opportunities for girls like his daughter, Carmen. When the family went to a Venturing event at Philmont Scout Ranch, New Mexico, the Boy Scouts of America’s premier High Adventure base about a year and a half ago, they ran into an all-girls venture crew and realized they could start one of their own. Now that the Wasilla crew has amassed a handful of members and embarked on numerous excursions over land, water and snow, Soto is happy to let the young women take the reins.

“Venturing is much more youth-led (than Boy Scouts),” he said. “We are advisers. They are the ones that run things and decide what activities we’re going to do.”

There are various awards to specifically recognize achievements in Venturing, but after the Bronze, Gold and Silver Awards — in that order — the Ranger Award is the ultimate goal. For the award, members must show proficiency in eight core requirements listed on the scouting website: first aid, emergency preparedness, “leave no trace”, land navigation, wilderness survival, communications, cooking and conservation. Beyond that, the youth must choose four of 18 electives in which to demonstrate their skills.

“Venturing’s purpose is to provide positive experiences to help young people mature and to prepare them to become responsible and caring adults,” it reads on the Venturing homepage of the Boy Scouts of America website.

The young women of Crew 300 say Venturing simultaneously provides opportunities that help prepare them for adulthood and to enables them to participate in what they call the “high adventure” activities of Boy Scouts.

Tori Parsons, 17, is the oldest member of Venture Crew 300 and the daughter of co-founder Marty Parsons. Tori has earned the Bronze Award and is on her way to completing the Ranger Award.

“I was always jealous of Boy Scouts,” she said. “They were always out adventuring and I was sitting there knitting and I said ‘this is dumb.’ Then I found venturing and I thought, ‘why not do this?’”

Parsons was a member of the Girl Scouts until she started sixth grade and became “too busy with sports.” Currently, she skis and does biathlon for Chugiak High School.

“A lot of girls, at a young age, don’t see that as a goal,” Parsons said of her identity as an athlete and general outdoor enthusiast.

Madeline Larson, soon to be a sophomore at Mat-Su Career and Technical High School, is cut from the same cloth. The Crew 300 member, who plays soccer and swims for Wasilla High, said she quit Girl Scouts in third grade.

“I could never sell Girl Scout cookies, I was so bad at it,” Larson said.

Crewmember Taia Fagerstrom said there are big differences between the two scouting programs.

“They’re just two really different things,” she said. “Girl Scouts is good for community service but I couldn’t do what I actually like to do. I prefer this (Venturing) because I get to do both community service and high adventuring.”

Sharon Diefenderfer, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and Air Guard, also advises the Crew, and says she is proud of what they are accomplishing.

She said when she was a teen, girls were told there were a lot of things they couldn’t do.

“I think this is a great program because it shows (the young women) that they are way more capable than they initially think,” Diefenderfer said.

To join Venture Crew 300, contact Soto at 231-5431 or Diefenderfer at 841-5900. Interested young women can also come to the weekly meetings at 7:15 p.m., Tuesdays at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Wasilla. For more information, visit scouting.org/scoutsource/Venturing.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.