Boy Scouts of America jamboree camp excludes obese Boy Scouts

Boy Scouts of America's new headquarters for the national jamboree comes with new requirements on participating scouts. Too high of a BMI score and a scout cannot attend.?

By Staff,?Associated Press / July 16, 2013

This photo shows tents that will house staff members at the Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve in Glen Jean, W.Va. Some 40,000 Scouts, leaders and others will descend on southern West Virginia for the first ever National Scout Jamboree at this site.

AP/Charleston Daily Mail, Craig Cunningham

Enlarge

This year's?Boy?Scouts?of America's national Jamboree is being billed as the most physically demanding in its history: There's rock climbing, rappelling, whitewater rafting and biking. And?Scouts?will go about the sprawling, hilly landscape the old-fashioned way ? on foot.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; // google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of
The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

Thousands of?Scouts?gather for 10 days starting Monday at a new location in West Virginia. Officials designed the 1,000-plus acre Summit Bechtel Family National?Scout?Reserve to take advantage of the Mountain State's natural assets, and they also put into place new physical fitness requirements that eliminated morbidly obese?Scouts?from participating.

"Part of the design in building this site was to address the need for physical fitness in our youth, which of course is a longstanding component of?Scouting," said Dan McCarthy, director of the BSA's Summit Group. "We saw this as an opportunity to integrate some new challenges ... so we deliberately spread the site to enable us to encourage?Scouts?and basically require?Scouts?to move about the site by foot."

This year, 30,000?Scouts?ages 12 to 20 and their leaders were required to meet a threshold for body mass index and other health factors before being allowed to participate. Jamboree applicants with a BMI ? a measure of body fat determined through height and weight ? of 40 or higher were deemed ineligible. Those who fell between 32 and 39.9 faced providing additional health information to Jamboree medical staff.

Nationally, about 17 percent of children ages 2 to 19 are considered obese ? triple the rate from a generation earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We required a level of fitness in order to come to the Jamboree that we haven't required before," McCarthy said. "And that has motivated an enormous return in terms of both kids and adults getting serious about improving their health."

Soon, the?Scouts?will know why. Besides offering a whole lot of fun, dozens of venues will test their physical skills and fitness. At some point during the Jamboree, every participating?Scout?will be asked to take a 3-mile trek up a mountain.

Their reward: A barbecue waiting at the top.

"We certainly want to get the?Scouts?outdoors, challenge them and have a healthy lifestyle," said Gary Hartley, the Summit's director of community and governmental relations. "We talk about the three C's as kind of the pillars, and that is cardio, character and citizenship. We have all of those embodied here."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/yK66IgrKqyQ/Boy-Scouts-of-America-jamboree-camp-excludes-obese-Boy-Scouts

chardon high school shooting mark martin cleveland news daytona race the cutting edge fox 8 news angelina jolie leg