Macon Girl Scouts winning Gold Award have been together since age 5

They have stuck together through thick and Thin Mints.

They have survived summer camps, COVID, middle school awkwardness and high school girl drama. 

They have watched as others have dropped out and held the line  from Daisies to Brownies and Cadettes. They stood their ground whenever their friends implied it wasn’t cool to be old enough to drive a car and go to prom and still sell Tagalongs and Do-Si-Dos.

Girl Scout Troop 60043 has remained a special group of focused young ladies.

“Watching them from little girls at age 5 and 6 transform into the leaders they are today has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life,’’ said Julia Wood, the troop’s co-leader with Melanie Marshall. “It has taken a lot of tenacity to stick
together and support each other.”

There are 12 members of Troop 60043, which was formed in 2014. It is one of 584 troops in the Girl Scouts of Historic Georgia, which is essentially the entire state outside of metro Atlanta. (There are slightly fewer than 100 troops in Middle Georgia’s Region 6.)

On Saturday, four members of Troop 60043 will receive the “Gold Award’’ – the highest individual honor in Girl Scouting – in a ceremony at Camp Martha Johnston in Lizella. (Gold Award is the equivalent of an Eagle Scout in Boy Scouts.)

The four girls receiving the honor are Stratford senior Fiona Leary, and Eliza Grace Wood, Ellis Greer and Mia Johnson – all juniors at the Academy of Classical Education (ACE) in Macon.

A fifth girl from the region – Katy Alice Prymula, a senior at West Laurens High School in Dublin –  also will receive a Gold Award.

 Wood said having four members of the same troop bring home the gold in a single year is unusual. Nationally, fewer than 5% reach that rank.

It also brings the number to six golds in the troop. Bella Marshall, who graduated from First Presbyterian Day School last year, and Stratford senior Sophie Leigh, also received the Gold Award. Marshall is now a freshman at the University of Georgia.

Wood said there is a hierarchy of awards in girl scouting. Bronze awards are part of a group project in the fourth and fifth grade. Silver is a group project during middle school.

“The Gold Award projects they take on have to be sustainable,’’ Wood said. “Most of our girls spend their high school career working on the project. They are individual projects, on their own time, outside of everything else they’re doing .’’

For her project, Leary developed a “mental health space’’ at the Brookdale Resource Center, a local homeless shelter. Johnson created raised beds for the community garden at the Rescue Mission of Middle Georgia.

Greer organized a game day for the Halo Group, which works with people with developmental disabilities in Perry. Eliza Grace Wood’s project involved teaching and advocating pickleball as a sanctioned sport in the Georgia High School Association.

“My space serves 40-60 people a week and includes brochures and tools to help the residents,’’ Leary said. “To accomplish this, I did research with a psychiatrist, fundraised at local events and visited Brookdale multiple times to set up the space.” 

Leary said the experience made her more “empathetic.”

“In our community, we can sometimes become desensitized to the struggles of those around us, especially concerning the homeless population,’’ she said. “It’s been really important for me to connect with other community members to ensure that their psychological needs are met. I’ve also learned to have more confidence in myself and how to have meaningful interactions with those around me”. 

Eliza Grace Wood, the daughter of Julia Wood, named her project “Progressing Pickleball.’’

“(It) involved creating a pickleball club at my school, organizing play between multiple schools and advocating for pickleball to become a GHSA sport,’’ she said.

Julia Wood said the girls “learned lots of life lessons from these projects, and it has been fun to watch.’’ She said instead of competing, they have encouraged and supported one another.

She admires their stick-to-itiveness.

“When they were little we thought, ‘Oh, this is so cute,’’’ she said. “When they got to middle school, we asked if they wanted to continue. They all said yes, which kind of surprised me.’’

Stability was especially challenging during COVID.

“I thought, ‘How are they going to stick with this? We can’t even get together and meet,’ ’’ Wood said.

During that time, the girls collaborated on their Silver Award project but had to work on it independently.

“They developed an Instagram page and digital tourism feed for what was fun and safe to do outside for girls their age in Macon,’’ Wood said. “So they were going around and highlighting different things they loved to do, like Tattnall Square Park and the slide at Coleman Hill. It kept them engaged through the pandemic when we couldn’t have meetings.’’

Eliza Grace Wood said remaining in scouting has helped build her self-confidence and foster her willingness to participate in activities outside of her comfort zone.

 “I have been a Girl Scout for 12 years, and I love the friendships I have with the other girls in my troop,’’ she said. “I also love selling Girl Scout cookies because I love to see the joy it brings other people. I saw one of my regular customers recently at a restaurant and they told me I was their super hero for being ‘their Girl Scout.’”

Stratford senior Kaitlyn Epps, who is doing her Senior Project at The Melody, contributed to this story.