Author Spotlight
Connor Vogel
Waddling across the pool, sophomore Kara Parrett came up to an eleven-year-old boy who was off to the side among the dozens of kids. The boy, Alec, wasn’t talking to the others like she would normally expect — he had a hearing impairment and was nervous to talk to the other kids at summer camp.
Kara was working as an Associate Counselor in Training at H. Roe Bartle Scout Reservation — a Boy Scouts of America camp. Teaching Alec individually during the class, she immediately saw him start to open up as she spent time just talking with him. He was a great swimmer who just needed a little help, according to Kara.
“He just wasn’t sure who to be comfortable with yet and getting him comfortable with me, he was able to do the entire swim test in a day,” Kara said. “Just doing a little bit of one-on-one, you can see such an impact.”
Spending the summer as a scout counselor, an unpaid position, Kara served as a role model for all the boys and girls at the pool and was happy to do it.
As one of the first female Boy Scouts, Kara has gone to Bartle since the fifth grade — working her way up to the highest rank of Eagle Scout — and now acts as a mentor for younger girls. Showing that girls don’t just “exist” in scouts but they have the potential to thrive.
“We had [scouts] all the time that don’t come from places where they’re used to going swimming,” Kara said. “My favorite part of camp was instructional swim. I feel like I need to be a really good example for all of them. But I love seWeing the impact that can make on their lives, and that’s one of my favorite things.”
During her years in scouts, Kara’s always had leaders to help her through the program, and she feels a responsibility to pay it forward.
“I love seeing kids be able to go through scouting,” Kara said. “I think it’s such a good program to get people to come and learn how to be a leader.”
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Since she was three years old, Kara has spent most Monday nights tagging along with her dad Kurt Parrett. He’s been a treasurer volunteering for Boy Scout Troop 91 for more than 15 years, so Kara grew up running around church basements watching kids learn to identify poisonous plants and discuss their upcoming campouts.
“After Kara was born I kind of said, ‘Okay, I need to get out of this,’ Kurt said. “But it took a couple of years for that to actually happen.”
While her dad had been in the troop for over 40 years, Kara was never a Cub Scout, Girl Scout or even a Brownie in elementary school, despite her efforts to start a troop.
“I went to Cub Scout meetings and I tried to [start a troop] in my elementary school,” Kara said. “But we never had enough girls to start one.”
Nevertheless, when the Boy Scouts of America officially allowed girls to join in 2019, her dad encouraged her to join. Kara refused to let all the time she spent at those meetings go to waste, joining the new Troop 6091, an anex girls troop for the affiliated Troop 91, who her father and grandfather had been part of before.
Coordinating with the boys in Troop 91 as the girls were just getting started, 6091 eventually started planning their own campouts and service projects separately, becoming more independent as time went on.
“When I joined both of them, we were mixed,” Kara said. “So we started off calling ourselves 91G, and then eventually we split apart more and more and now we still have meetings at the same time, but we just do separate things now.”
The youngest out of the 15 other girls who joined the troop, Kara didn’t always see herself as a leader. She looked up to the older scouts as leaders, despite the fact they were all starting at the same time.
“I was pretty scared,” Kara said. “I’m not gonna lie, at the time I was extremely shy. I was the youngest of all of us that were starting [the troop] because most girls about my age started in cubs, but I was still a fifth grader. I just went straight into [Scouts] because I could only be in cubs for three months [before aging out], it wasn’t worth it. It was like, ‘Just join Scouts.’”
Not knowing many members of the troop before joining, Kara remembers bonding with other scouts like Shawnee Mission South junior Emma Bowen during the troops’ first meeting together that winter when they were learning a scout song she forgot the name of years ago.
“We’re just like, ‘What is going on?’” Kara said. “It was so weird, but all our parents knew it. It’s just all the dads that grew up in scouting all sang it and we’re going along but both of us were very shy. But we became friends very quickly.”
Despite some obstacles dealing with campouts in -18 degree weather, six inches of snow and spending hours checking off endless requirements to advance, Kara never had second thoughts about joining Scouts, an experience that taught her about knots, starting fires and how to use a pocket knife.
Camping with her family since before she could walk, roughing it in the outdoors and learning these basic survival skills was something she had gotten used to.
“[My family] has always loved camping and [we’ve] gone my entire life,” Kara said. “We go to Branson three or four times a year since I was little. I remember we have photos of me as a 1-year-old camping.”
While adjusting to the practical aspects of scouting was easy, Kara had to learn a lot more about being a leader.
Her scoutmaster, Dr. Krista Cox, has seen many young scouts join the troop and grow not just as leaders but as people, especially girls like Kara who accept the responsibility of a leadership position, leading meetings and planning the troop’s activities.
“Their growth is huge,” Cox said. “It’s a six-month term and they flounder at the beginning. But by the end, they are more confident, leading meetings, not afraid to talk to adults and use those skills they gained.”
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Kara decided to join a new troop in the summer of 2022, switching to Troop 6010 in order to participate in more High Adventure activities they offered — scuba diving in the Bahamas, canoeing down white rapids and trekking over 80 miles through the wilderness in New Mexico. By eighth grade, she was a Troop Guide, Senior Patrol Leader and had earned the rank of Eagle with the troop.
Over the last few years, most of the girls who joined with her have already left the troop, or are only staying to complete their Eagle Projects.
“There are a couple of girls that are seventh graders that want to get [their project] early,” Kara said. “I’m like, ‘Not yet.’ Wait, love scouts for a while and then get it because it’s kind of just like rushing in. It doesn’t help. It’s just a good way to get it on your resume and leave. And I don’t think that’s the right way to do it.”
Of course, that didn’t stop her from taking on her Eagle Scout project while she was still in middle school.
For her project, Kara planned and led some scouts in a donation drive through Mission Adelante, a local ministry that serves immigrants and refugees. Spending six months filling out countless forms and waiting for all her plans to get approved by Scouts, she finally executed the drive back in 2021, bringing in over 1,000 items from donations.
“We filled up an entire box truck,” Kara said.”We pretty much collected everything from kitchenware to baby clothes to adult clothes. We even got a mattress in there somehow.”
That May, Kara had her board of honor, a ceremony for new Eagle scouts every six months. Out of the 12 scouts who got Eagle in the area, Kara was one of only two girls. Standing in front of eight troop leaders, six of whom she had never even met, surrounded by complete strangers outside of her current and former Scoutmasters.
“My Scoutmaster was supposed to be my friend in the room,” Kara said. “They’re the ones that if you can’t come up with an answer, help you out because they know a lot about you.”
Kara was surprised when she walked in and saw so many women standing in front of her, occupying the majority of the board.
“I was like, scared to speak,” Kara said. “It’s just you and [the board] in the room. You do a couple of trials and then they ask ‘How many Eagle Scouts are in the room?’ And I was the only Eagle. But it was ultimately because it was mostly adult women.”
***
Today, BSA still separates the boy and girl troops, but now with experienced leaders and normalcy for girls to join Cub Scouts in grade school, the 35-person troop created their own space within scouts. They saw almost 15 Cub Scouts crossover to the troop this February.
Kara is no longer the youngest but is actually one of the oldest members leading the weekly meetings. She’s the only Eagle still attending meetings out of the 13 the troop has produced.
Still spending her Monday nights still running around church basements, Kara guides the girls in her troop as they attempt complicated bowline knots, teaching the 11-year-olds what she learned through her experiences as a Troop guide.
“I could’ve just given up like a lot of people just leave and it’s fine, but for me I love scouts and I did not want to do that,” Kara said. “I wanted to go to camp and work on staff. I love staffing. I love teaching kids, it’s like one of my favorite things.”
Seeing these girls grow up before her eyes starts to make her feel old, watching girls who joined the troop as a first year, taking positions she used to hold. “You pretty much just go and you teach them all their requirements and you help [first years] go on hikes and get all their early requirements done,” Kara said. “Now I’m seeing most of those girls are getting SPL and getting Eagle.”
Taking on these demanding positions since middle school showed Kara the necessity to have experienced older scouts encouraged to stay in the troop and set an example for the other girls. It’s part of why she hasn’t bailed out of the program after reaching the highest level of achievement as an Eagle Scout two years ago.
“We have all those positions and they didn’t know what half of those mean,” Kara said. “Teaching them like what this person does and other things like that. Just seeing them say ‘Oh, I want to do that when I’m older.’ It’s great to see, I love them looking up [to me] and seeing what they could do when they’re older.”
Cox emphasizes the importance of making sure her scouts run the entire troop on their own. Cox and the other adult leaders are only there for supervision and occasional guidance for ill-conceived ideas — like pool parties in December — that may need to get rescheduled. She believes Kara is the perfect example of what a leader should be.
“[Kara’s] willing to do anything you ask, but most of the time you don’t even have to ask,” Cox said.
But holding all the leadership roles is impossible, despite how hard Kara tries. Currently serving as a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster Kara gets to work more with the adults in her weekly meetings, organizing activities that everyone can enjoy, like taking the troop ice skating or having movie nights.
Whether there is a first-year trying to learn to navigate with a compass or a merit badge class that needs an extra pair of hands for help, Kara always wants to fill the role.
“I feel like I can make a difference in people and seeing them look up to me and care, it’s great,” Kara said. “I think they should have a lot of role models because there’s a lot of them in the troop. You don’t have to be an Eagle Scout to be a role model.”
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