Rigby teen Alexis Sharp became the first female in the Scouts BSA Grand Teton Council to earn her Eagle Scout award on Dec. 14.

The 15 year old had to earn 21 merit badges (she got 77), serve in a leadership role for six months, complete a significant community service project (she built a mountain bike trail for the Rigby High School mountain bike team), and pass a board of review in order to achieve the rank only 6 percent of Scouts obtain.

And she’s proud that no one can ever again claim girls aren’t tough enough to become Eagle Scouts.

“It’s a big thing. Because now I’m going to be a part of history,” Alexis said. “And history cannot be rewritten. There’s always going to be a record of it somewhere.”

While Alexis is the first female in the area to become an Eagle Scout, she won’t be the last.

There are roughly a dozen all-girl Scout troops in the Grand Teton Council, which covers 14 counties in Eastern Idaho, two counties in western Wyoming and the city of West Yellowstone in Montana. And at least a portion of those girls are working to become Eagle Scouts.

Barry and Marjanna Hulet, who had been involved in the Scouting program for many years, started Troop 363 in Pocatello in August of 2019 after they were approached by some girls who wanted to earn their Eagle.

“Pretty much all of them got involved in Scouting because their brothers were in Scouts,” Marjanna said, adding that they wanted to do the types of things their brothers got to do. “They wanted to earn their Eagles like their brothers did.”

That’s one of the reasons why 16-year-old Elise Whitworth, the troop’s senior patrol leader, got involved in Scouts BSA, formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America.

“When I was younger, I used to always see all the things my brother was doing in Scouting and I always wanted to do them,” she said.

Now, she gets to.

Although the troop is meeting virtually right now due the pandemic, they’ve been able to perform service projects, retire flags, hold campouts in a cave and near a waterfall, go canoeing, and study knot tying, cooking, photography and astronomy among other activities in the past.

Whitworth says Scouting has been everything she hoped it would be.

“It’s beyond as cool. I get to do so many different things that without Scouting I probably would not have done,” she said.

Alexis has a similar story.

She learned a lot of Scouting skills alongside her younger brother, who became an Eagle Scout at the age of 12. But the “outdoor junkie” who loves to swim, mountain bike, ski and camp wasn’t able to earn any badges of her own back then.

“I’ve always thought that it was kind of dumb that the boys get to do all the fun, outdoorsy things,” Alexis said. “When nationals announced girls can do it too now, I jumped at the chance.”

While she’s enjoyed being part of the program, it hasn’t always been easy to be one of the area’s first female Scouts. Alexis and her mother and scoutmaster, Jenny Sharp, have both heard negative comments about girls getting involved.

Alexis has even been told “it wasn’t right” for a girl to be an Eagle Scout. But most of the negative feedback has come from adults and girls her age. Her fellow Boy Scouts think it’s “freaking awesome” that she has earned her Eagle.

The Hulets believe there is a place for girls in Scouts BSA. They say their own daughter would have loved to earn her Eagle, but was passed the age to do so before she got the chance.

That’s one of the reasons why they agreed to start the troop for other girls who wanted to get involved in the program.

The Hulets say Scouting is appealing to girls who enjoy outdoor activities, and they believe they can learn a lot from the program.

“The purpose of Scouting is raising confident, character-driven adults. We strongly believe in that,” Marjanna said. “It’s about teaching them to make good morale decisions and be leaders among their peers and be safe doing outdoor things.”

And those are skills that girls, as well as boys, can benefit from.

Whitworth has already gained a lot from the program.

“I’ve liked learning how to be a leader and learning how to take charge when nobody else knows what to do,” Whitworth said, adding that she can also teach people skills with more confidence. “I’ve liked being able to make friends that I can enjoy Scouting with.”