Venture Crew members receive outdoors awards

WASILLA — After months of planning, adventuring, goal-setting and teaching, five high school girls have moved up in the world of Venture Crew.

Venture Crew 300 members Taia Fagerstrom, Rebekah Johanson, Madeline Larson and Carmen Soto each received Venturing Bronze Awards Saturday at a ceremony held at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Wasilla for their specialization in the outdoors, as detailed in the Venturing handbook.

The girls were the last to receive Bronze Awards under the original awards system, which recently changed from Bronze, Gold, Silver and Ranger awards to Venturing, Discovery, Pathfinder and Summit awards, respectively.

The requirements for the new awards are roughly equivalent to those of the former, but there’s something about tradition, Soto said, that made receiving “Bronze” instead of “Discovery” extra special.

“It’s got more history, it’s got more significance to me, so I really enjoyed getting the Bronze Award instead of Discovery,” she said.

Courtney DeFillipo, on the other hand, received her Venturing Award under the new system, for completing initial crew requirements and formally stating her intention to join Venture Crew 300, which began about two years ago, in association with local Boy Scout Troop 300.

Sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America, Venture Crew, or Venturing, is a similar youth development program for young men and women age 14 to 21, though Crew 300 was created just for girls, said crew leader Ed Soto. It aims to help young people become responsible and caring adults through community service and high-adventure activities.

“For the Bronze Award, you have to have a combination of core requirements and elective requirements,” Ed Soto said.

Courses range from CPR and other first-aid training to goal setting and time management, as well as personal reflection and outdoor activities such as hiking Kesugi Ridge, campsite cooking, canoeing through local lakes and compass navigation around Eklutna, in these girls’ cases.

It’s also important for crewmembers to use what they’ve learned and pay it forward.

“Each girl has to choose something that they can teach their fellow crew members about,” said Ginny Fagerstrom, Taia’s mother.

Taia, for example, taught her crew about dance in a health and sports report, and Carmen actively taught Taia to ski out on some snowy trails.

While there is some overlap in Venture Crew requirements and activities the girls participate in on a daily basis, they still have a lot to juggle, which Ginny Fagerstrom said explains why they didn’t get their bronze awards sooner.

“With how busy these girls are, that’s all they had time for,” she said.

Taia and Carmen both participate in marching band at Colony High School, in addition to ballet (Taia) and competitive cross-country skiing (Carmen).

Currently, the crew is working toward a trip to Philmont Scout Ranch in Philmont, New Mexico, this summer. Though Taia will be busy with advanced summer math classes through the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, and DeFillipo has another conflict, the other four crew members and a couple of Scouts from Troop 300 plan to spend several days camping and hiking around 34 different camps around the ranch. Activities such as rafting, axe-throwing and even donkey racing are among the possibilities at the facility.

To raise money for this trip, the girls will be selling tickets on weekends through at least the first week of February at Three Bears and Sportsman’s Warehouse for homemade taco dinners. Tickets will also be available at the crew’s weekly meetings at 7:15 p.m., Tuesdays at Good Shepherd Lutheran in Wasilla.

Potential members or interested high school girls are invited to attend any of the weekly meetings. New members are accepted at any time.

“It’s a fun environment, it’s a fun community to be a part of,” Taia said, of Venture Crew.

Carmen agreed, adding that what happens in Venture Crew doesn’t happen every day.

“You don’t always get to go out with a group of friends and learn about each other, learn about your surroundings, you know, get new skills and just have a lot of fun and have that support,” she said.

More than fun and friendships, Venturing also offers opportunity for community service that high school students might not know about otherwise.

“There’s lots of opportunities out there but unless you really seek them out, stuff just passes you by, as far as volunteering,” Ginny Fagerstrom said.

For more information on Venturing, visit bit.ly/1vVzZ1d.

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