Will you poach our crew's women?

[mashmaster]

My son is involved with a Troop, Crew, and Ship. 

The Troop seems to have a focus on camping and honestly the scouts lose interest around 14 and don't want to be around all the younger scouts.  They try to lead but the younger boys don't listen.  The linked girl troop is super young and they are so focused on advancement (actually the parents are) that they still are trying to figure out what scouting is really about.  That will just take time IMHO, and become similar to boy troops.

The Crew basically hangs around and plays ping pong.  They do some things but it is clearly chill time for them.  They aren't interested in advancement and want to do a couple of bigger things a year, they are too busy will school to devote a ton of time to camp every month for example.

The Ship is small but very active.  They aren't super concerned about advancement but always attend meetings, activities, and even boat maintenance.   IMHO, this focus of water activities helps provide a distrinct focus for them and they have fun doing it.   Crews don't seem to have a similar focus even with being the same age group.   Many of our kids are in all three units.

That all aside, National basically told everyone to get their Venture or Sea Scouts registered in a girl troop, which is annoying.  They are purposely cutting the legs out from venturing by doing that.

[fred8033]

1 hour ago, mashmaster said:

The Crew basically hangs around and plays ping pong.  They do some things but it is clearly chill time for them.  They aren't interested in advancement and want to do a couple of bigger things a year, they are too busy will school to devote a ton of time to camp every month for example.

That sounds consistent with our troop of mostly 16 and 17 year old scouts.  They've done the advancement thing.  It helped drive them when they were 11 to 13, maybe 14.  Now, they just want to hang and do some cool stuff and do it together as friends.  Ski.  Camp.  Game.  Explore.  IMHO, their adventures have kept them together.  

[ParkMan]

1 hour ago, mashmaster said:

That all aside, National basically told everyone to get their Venture or Sea Scouts registered in a girl troop, which is annoying.  They are purposely cutting the legs out from venturing by doing that.

I hadn't heard that.  That makes no sense.

The BSA would be so much better off just focusing on building quality unit programs.