Saw dust swirls through the air of the cramped garage; the drilling of wood drowns out the small conversations between friends. When the door opens to grab more nails from the truck in the driveway, cold air fills the room from the blizzard outside. Senior Madi Ruchie and her troop spend their evening building duck houses for their local Oakdale Discovery Center. Ruchie brings her community together through her work in Boy Scouts in order to earn her Eagle Scout, she helps teach important life skills like building leadership skills and self confidence within the troop.
Ruchie started her Boy Scout journey in spring of 2023. Ruchie has worked her way up six ranks in Boy Scouts to reach the highest level, the Eagle Scout. To earn Eagle Scout rank she had to go through Tenderfoot, Second class, First class, Star, Life then Eagle. So there’s “a lot to get through,” Ruchie explained.
Ruchie has shown a tremendous amount of dedication throughout her journey of reaching Eagle. Ruchie is also a high school senior. She manages to juggle both jobs with the long school day and even longer nights working on community projects.
“I finished my whole day at school. I would then have four hours of homework to do, and on top of that, I still had to do a two hour mirror badge,” Ruchie explained.
Ruchie’s Scoutmaster Gabe Morcomb explained that she stepped back a bit and let Ruchie take more an active role in the troop even when she knew Madi was tired from her day at school.
“She really shows grit and determination,” Morcomb said.
As a Senior Troop leader, Ruchie takes on the important role of being the person to organize campouts, food and packing lists and overall the troop communicator. Ruchie explained that in this role she has been able to help her peers step out of their comfort zones and find their place in the troop, making them feel like they are all a part of one team.
“I distributed that power a lot more evenly amongst our youth to make us feel more capable, to help our troop grow, and even though these people might be seventh graders to the untrained eye, these are my leaders. These are my colleagues. These are the people that I want in charge and that I know are capable and that just deserve that chance to shine,” Ruchie said.
Ruchie has also helped start new policies that help her troop grow and improve overall, making the communication stronger and clearer is a main goal of hers.
“I started one of our reflection policies. It’s called a start, stop, continue. What do you want to start doing? What do you want to stop doing, and what do you want to continue doing during each of our meetings, and I distributed our power amongst our scouts a lot better, because we really had the leaders doing a lot of the work, ” Ruchie emphasized.
Ruchie’s hard work has paid off over her time in Boy Scouts “most people have eight years to make it, and I had two, and I did it in 22 months, not even two years. So it’s a huge thing. Just to show how spirited I am, or how willing I am to make it, and it’s definitely helped a lot with leadership. So it’s a badge that I am very proud to wear.”
