Troop 45 member revamped pavilion at Mantua Little League fields, where he grew up playing ball
By ANTHONY J. MAZZIOTTI III
The Sun
Only four percent of Boy Scouts will earn the rank of Eagle Scout. Despite having the odds stacked against him, Avery Bobbitt never wavered.
Bobbitt, a proud Scout of Mantua Troop 45, earned the rank of Eagle Scout in July. He joined Scouts when he was 9 years old because he wanted to get involved with something other than sports.
In order to earn Eagle Scout, one must obtain 21 merit badges. The mandatory badges are: First Aid, Citizenship in the Community, Citizenship in the Nation, Citizenship in the World, Communication, Cooking, Personal Fitness, Emergency Preparedness or Lifesaving, Environmental Science or Sustainability, Personal Management, Swimming or Hiking or Cycling, Camping and Family Life.
Scouts acquire a litany of merit badges over their tenure. Bobbitt said that his favorite merit badge is the Water Skiing badge. The first step in earning the Water Skiing badge is to know the most likely hazards one may encounter when participating in water sports activities and how to prevent, mitigate and respond to them. The Scout must also know the following signals for safety: skier safe, faster, slower, turns, back to dock, cut motor and skier in water. They must also show reasonable control while using two skis, one ski, or a wakeboard and do each of the following: show how to enter the water from a boat and make a deep water start without help, show you can cross both wakes four times and return to the center of the wake each time without falling and show you can fall properly to avoid an obstacle.
Bobbitt’s Eagle Scout project was to restore the pavilion at the Mantua Baseball field behind the police station.
“I did some landscaping and mulch,” Bobbit said. “Re-did the beams and railings, hung up a sign in the back commemorating the ballpark which is named after my grandfather who started the little league.”
He was aided by his mom, dad, grandmother, his troop and the Mantua Lions club.
Bobbitt picked this location and this project because he grew up there playing baseball; he said it’s like home to him.
Another requirement to become an Eagle Scout is that you need to have a leadership role in the troop. Bobbitt added, “It’s a hard, lengthy process. Not many people have the patience for it.”
A lesson that he will take away from his time in Scouts is that everybody is different.
“When you’re managing people, everybody is different. You have to manage them a certain way.”
When he looks back at his time in Scouts, one memory comes to mind — a trip to Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania.
“I was around 11 at the time but I was with the older guys. We went for a hike,” Bobbitt said. “We were supposed to go five miles, something easy, 10 miles total. We ended up going 20 to 25 miles down a trail and had to find our way back before dark.”
He recalled that they found the road they came in on and had to hike back up the steep mountain. Bobbitt said this is something he can look back on and laugh about.
Bobbitt, who will be a senior at the Gloucester County Institute of Technology this fall, wants to be a police officer. As a member of the explorer program in Mantua, a program that gives youth insight into what it’s like to have a job in law enforcement, he is invested in the field and wants to pursue a future in it. The lessons, dedication and determination it takes to become an Eagle Scout will guide him on his future endeavors.
