SEQUIM — The seven Sequim graduates recognized at an Eagle Scout ceremony Sunday are the cream of the crop, said Kevin Phillips, one of their Scout leaders.
“For every Scout that becomes an Eagle Scout, there are 200 who never made it,” Phillips said. “So for the seven here today, there are 1,400 who didn’t make it.”
He demonstrated just how many that was by pouring seven cups of 200 beads into a larger container.
“That is how many didn’t make it to where these boys are,” he said.
Robbie Blenk, James Clardy-Olson, Nick Grinnell, Rexx Ingalls, C.J. Kapetan, Alexander Lamb and Kenneth Russell were officially honored as Eagle Scouts.
The Eagle Scout Award is the highest recognition offered by the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America, said an informational brochure from the ceremony.
Eagle Scout requirements
The Scouts are required to earn badges from 21 different fields of interest, and specific requirements in various fields and a larger community project must be completed before the applicant turns 18.
For Blenk’s service project, he built a stone fence in front of a daytime parking area at Railroad Bridge Park.
“The park had a lot of problems of trucks and other vehicles trespassing at night and driving through the area and really destroying the park,” he said. “So this will help prevent that.”
Clardy-Olson built a 20-foot-long footbridge at Murdock Beach.
“It had become really impassable,” he said. “So this will make it be a much more pleasant place to go.”
Lamb coordinated with the Department of Natural Resources in mapping the Striped Peak Trail.
“Based on my work, they are working on getting mile markers out there,” Lamb said.
“They asked me to build a kiosk to house the map in, so I did that right at the trail head.”
Russell held a blood drive for his project.
“We had 51 donors and three people sign up to be bone-marrow donors,” he said. “With that, we saved 153 lives.”
Grinnell also did work at the Murdock Beach site.
“It was in pretty bad condition until we took over a few years ago,” he said. “There was trash everywhere, and we have done a few small service projects there, but I really wanted to something more.”
He built two 20-foot bridges over the rainwater runoff ditches.
Kapetan also constructed a bridge at Murdock Beach.
The 13-foot bridge went across a small creek.
“The construction of this bridge means that more campsites were open and available for people to go to,” he said.
Ingalls coordinated the construction of two new bridges at the Striped Peak Trail.
“The bridges were so bad that sometimes horses could step right through them,” he said. “So that isn’t good. But now it is a much safer trail for people to make use of.”
Phillips, toward the end of the ceremony, said that the seven new Eagle Scouts are extraordinary young men.
“There are two types of Eagle Scouts,” he said. “The ones that earn it, and the ones that are it. I can say without a doubt that these men are all it.”
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
