Trail Life Families,
Our End of Season Awards Ceremony is this week— Tuesday, May 20th @ 6:15pm. This is an all family event, and we encourage siblings, parents, and extended family to join as we honor and award our Trailmen for their accomplishments during this troop season. We’ve had a full troop calendar, with lots of fun events making 2024-25 one of our most productive and fun seasons to date! We hope you and your Trailmen have enjoyed the events and meetings this season as much as I have.
After our awards ceremony, as is tradition, we will have an outdoor Dessert Potluck. The troop will have some dessert items, but please feel free to bring a dessert to share (especially if you have dietary restrictions), and plan on sticking around a bit after our ceremony for pictures, and social time.
What Awards did my Trailmen Earn, and how can I purchase them?
As many of you experienced Trail Life Families know, while our ceremony is an opportunity to encourage and celebrate our Trailmen for their achievements and awards and badges earned, the *physical* awards are not mandatory. To keep our Troop fees down, we decided many seasons ago to allow parents to decide if physical awards were something they desired for their trailman, and while most do purchase awards, it is not required.
In a separate email sent just to each patrol, we are including a list of all trailmen and what awards they are being recognized for during our ceremony, along with an award order form. Note: Joining awards patches are not something that needs to be purcashed, as the troop does provide that base level patch— but any branch pins, Forest awards, sylvan stars, etc can be optionally purcashed direct from Trail Life USA shop, or from our “awards shop/table” at our ceremony.
Purchasing awards….Trail Life Dad and Advancement Chair, James Avis will be running our “awards shop” table at our ceremony, and while we should have most of the physical awards on hand, we may be taking orders for any awards not on hand if you’d like to purchase them directly at the ceremony. See the attached order form and feel free to print it in advance to speed up purchase of awards during our ceremony. If you have questions about which awards you’re son(s) have earned, or if you think there is an error, please reach out to Mr Troy Smith (for the Woodlands Trail boys, Foxes, Hawks, Mountain Lions), Pastor Brian Fox for Navigators, or Mr. Paul Bryson for the Adventurers.
A few details about next season.
As you know, our Troop calendar follows the School season, and as a result we will begin our next season just after the school year starts. Simi schools are starting next year on August 14th, so our first troop meeting of the 2025-26 season will be on August 19th. Save the date, and plan on joining us for that important date. The focus of Trail Life Simi Valley is to instill Character, Adventure and Leadership into our young men, and the way we do that is not just through our regular meetings, but also through participation in “Adventure” in the form of outdoor exploration and activity— as a result, we need our Trailmen and dads to commit to making Hit the Trails and Camping trips a priority on their schedule. Because this is so vital, we will be having mandatory dad’s meeting before our troop season begins to ensure we pick dates and locations for our Hit the Trails and Campouts that will ensure buy in from our Trail Life Families. Please also save the date for this Dad’s meeting for Sunday, August 17th @ 6pm. More details to follow. Additionally the date for our Navigators and Adventurer’s Leadership Academy has been set for Saturday, August 23rd for all incoming and existing Navigators and Adventurers where we will teach and practice leadership skills vital to the successful operation as a troop.
Looking forward to seeing you all as we say goodbye to an amazing Troop Season!
Walk Worthy
Pastor Brian Fox
Institutional Head