Troop 463 Sunnyvale

Each month, the leadership of Troop 463 gathers for the Patrol Leaders’ Council to plan, among other things, the next month’s meetings, and any major outing that are coming up. Troop 463 has regular meetings during the school calendar months. Aug ? June. We meet Tuesday evenings from 7:30 to 9:00, with a pre-meeting and post-meeting for the leadership only. Therefore, we can incorporate a wide variety of activities within the 90 minutes, while still having an organized structure. During the off months, we may be off enjoying summer camp, or either on or prepping for a High Adventure trip.

Each meeting starts with an opening ceremony and uniform inspection, where patrols are checked for attendance and completeness of uniform, and given Honor Patrol points for them (see below). Then, we usually allot the first period for skills instruction, when the leadership scouts (First Class and above) teach the younger scouts important skills to support their advancement, such as first aid, equipment care, knots and lashings, cooking, orienteering, or backpacking. We try to incorporate hands-on activities into our instruction, allowing the scout to ask questions or try the skill himself. This allows us to advance the younger scouts through the ranks, while still making sure they know the required skills thoroughly.

Then, we usually have an inter-patrol competition to test the newly learned skills. For instance, if we had just taught how to build a fire, the competition might require each patrol to build a fire using the skills and safety lesson we just taught. Each patrol then accumulates points based not only on completion, but also on the important areas of leadership and spirit. Competitions serve to reinforce the teaching, inspire patrol unity and cohesion, prepare the patrols for the Camporee, a district-wide competition in which Troop 463 consistently excels, and, most importantly, let the scouts have fun.

Next, we have a patrol meeting, where the individual patrol leaders each communicate with the individual scouts in their patrols, giving them a chance to sign off requirements for ranks, develop a patrol yell or flag, plan exclusive patrol outings or activities, or develop menus for our monthly troop outings.

After that, we have a game (a different one for each week) that is usually unrelated to scouting (such as a sport) and designed to let the scouts have fun. It does not count for points, but the scouts take great pride in vanquishing each other in games such as Nerf Dodgeball, Football, Keep-away, Eric’s Ultimate RED Frisbee, James’ Incredible Glowing Cheez-Ball Basketball, or David’s Ultra-Modified Capture the Flag. Finally, we bring the scouts back into the church and give them announcements about upcoming events, before conducting the closing ceremony.

We hold a Quarterly Court of Honor, where we present rank badges, merit badges, and other miscellaneous awards to scouts, the patrol with the most points is named the Honor Patrol, and each scout in the Honor Patrol receives prizes, usually toys or games. Special prizes are awarded for most advancement and best attendance on troop outings and other troop events.

However, some of our meetings do not follow this structure. For example, each year, we have a Webelos’ meeting just before the Webelos’ outing to welcome the “soon to be bridging” scouts, who come from many different packs in the area, into our troop. At this meeting, all of our scouts arrived early to lash together insanely cool catapults. Patrols and our Webelo II guests rotate through stations such as fire building, spider maze and refreshments but by far the best station is the water balloon bombs that the two teams catapult at each other. Another special meeting we have once in a while is the fitness meeting, where we all go to the field at Stocklmeir to work to help new younger scouts accomplish one of the hardest requirements for the Tenderfoot merit badge: the dreaded fitness requirement. Furthermore, there is the Court of Honor, described above, and last and definitely most, the explosive FuN mEeTiNg!!! After every Court of Honor, the Honor patrol gets to choose any activity, anywhere, for one meeting, for the entire troop. We call this our “Fun Meeting” but of course they are All Fun!!