A good friend of mine, who is also a new Scoutmaster, asked me the other day:
Do you find it tough scheduling around the boy’s sports?
My answer was:
No, we don’t schedule scouts around sports. If you think you can accommodate everyone you will cause more chaos than necessary and the headache then becomes yours.
What we do is set the expectation that scout outings are always on the 3rd weekend of every month – unless there’s something the whole troop needs to work around, like a Merit Badge Pow-Wow. With this approach, boys can plan ahead to attend a camp-out if their game schedules allow for it. If not, then they have a choice to make…and that’s ok. At this age, they should be trying different things and exploring other interests including sports. Besides, the boys get other chances to attend at other times of the year if you’re a troop that does an outing every month.
