Local Eagle Scout elected section leader

SUBMITTED BY O-NI-FLO LODGE
Dalylah Rybolt, second from left, is shown during her swearing-in as G5 section vice chief of the Order of the Arrow on Sunday. Being sworn in alongside her are G5 Section Chief Garrett Thompson and G5 Section Secretary Kat White at the Dane G. Hansen Scout Reservation in Kirwin, Kansas.

MARYVILLE, Mo. — Marking a first for the local Order of the Arrow’s O-Ni-Flo Lodge, and also the Pony Express Council of Boy Scouts of America, Maryville High School senior Dalylah Rybolt has been appointed section vice chief of the G5 territory. She is the first member of the lodge and council to hold a position at this level.

“I’m very excited for this opportunity,” Rybolt said. “It’s very exciting not only for me, but my lodge and my council.”

Founded in 1915 by E. Urner Goodman and Carroll A Edson, the Order of the Arrow became very popular within the Scouting organization, according to the order’s website. While its popularity grew, it wasn’t until 1948 that the Order of the Arrow was officially recognized as a national Boy Scout program. About 70 years later, in 2017, Rybolt’s lodge was formed and chartered in the Pony Express Council. Rybolt herself would join the lodge just a few years later and currently leads it as lodge chief.

“This important role gives Dalylah important responsibilities in one of the roughly 48 sections across the Order of the Arrow nationally,” District Director Erik McGuire, with the Pony Express Council, said in an email. “Dalylah is an Eagle Scout, and has been instrumental in growing her troop and serving as a role model for girls to get involved in Scouting.”

According to the order’s organization and structure, a section consists of lodges within a geographic vicinity. The G5 Section, which includes six lodges other than Rybolt’s, is a part of the Gateway Region which serves lodges and sections on the western half of the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. “Basically my job is to be the go-between from council or lodge level to national level,” Rybolt said. “We’re the communication link between the two.”

As Section G5 vice chief, Rybolt will assist with putting on the annual Section Conclave, McGuire told The Forum. This is a gathering of the leaders from six Order of the Arrow lodges from Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri. She will also assist with leading trainings for the other lodges’ officers.

Right now, she’s unsure exactly what her specific schedule or duties will be during the year, because she hasn’t yet attended training. At the end of October, she will fly to California for training. But she intends to be a resource for local lodge chiefs and lodge representatives to contact and ask questions.

Rybolt explained that her lodge — O-Ni-Flo, which means “the last arrow,” the last Order of the Arrow lodge chartered — has “had some struggles,” to overcome, and working with the Mic-O-Say honor program leadership and the council to get through those has prepared her to help other lodges with issues as they arise.

One of those struggles, she explained, involved the ability of the lodge to use the council camp, Camp Geiger, for events, which she attributed to a difficulty in communication. Once she and others on the council were able to meet, the lodge got approved to use the camp and to utilize recognition lanyards, similar to the necklaces used by MicO-Say members.

“We now have implemented that as a way for people to show their accomplishments in the lodge,” Rybolt said.

She said that with the encouragement and assistance of her lodge advisers and some previous section leaders, she decided to run for a larger position, “and to be more involved and be more of a leader.”

Rybolt said she enjoys being involved at the national level.

“It’s very fun,” she said. “It can be challenging sometimes, but it’s lots of fun.”

Learning problem-solving skills and how to be a better communicator has been Rybolt’s largest takeaway from climbing the Order of the Arrow ladder.

“Before, if you were to ask me to come and speak to a bunch of people, I would have told you, no,” she said. “Now, I feel comfortable standing up in front of a crowd and talking.”

Rybolt’s mother, Cathy, told The Forum that while she agrees with that take, she’s seen her daughter grow leaps and bounds as part of the order.

“When it gets hard, then she just digs deeper and puts forth more to get the job done,” Cathy said.

And get the job done she did at this year’s national leadership meeting. Rybolt filled out the application, acquired the requisite signatures and asked a fellow Troop 74 and Order of the Arrow lodge member, Joslin Ungles, to nominate her from the floor Saturday night at the Dane G. Hansen Scout Reservation in Kirwin, Kansas.

During her two-minute speech, Rybolt said, she spoke about her influence on the O-Ni-Flo Lodge as vice chief of programs for two years and as lodge chief this year. This allowed her to participate in a few new leadership events, like the National Leadership Seminar and two National Order of the Arrow Conferences, including one this summer alongside 6,500 other Order of the Arrow Scouts in Boulder, Colorado.

She also discussed how she would like to open new doors for communication between the lodges and section as well as between the section and national.

“Communication is something that a lot of people bring up,” she said. “It’s a struggle, but nobody really knows how to fix it. It’s a lot of back-and-forth, but I explained that I would try my best to open new doors for communication between everybody and that I would want to implement more lodge visitation from the section.”

The election was tied, but after one more minute of speaking from each of the candidates, Rybolt was announced as the winner.

While she’s a bit nervous, Rybolt said it’s more the fact that she doesn’t yet have a schedule of when she should be doing things.

“I would also say I’m kind of nervous to see what that will look like for my lodge,” she said, noting the time it may take away from her duties within the local lodge. “They are very excited (for me). When they announced that I was the person for the vice chief position, my lodge adviser started bawling her eyes out.”

Rybolt said that her lodge members and prior section leaders have played “a huge role in helping me get to where I am.”

She’s called one prior Gateway Region Communications Coordinator, Brandon Hollister, numerous times for advice and received helpful guidance during different difficulties that have arisen in her lodge.

“I feel like it’s important to know that there’s always someone you can contact,” Rybolt said. “That you can always count on to be able to answer those questions or be able to give you resources to help answer those questions.”

One thing she is excited about is that the NOAC events are entirely youth organized. From scheduling to the event budget, everything is youth run, and depending on where life takes her after high school, she may be open to considering furthering her leadership within the Order of the Arrow.

“Being in the section position opens a lot of doors, not only for national things, but just a lot of opportunities within that,” Rybolt said. “… I see myself being a big resource for my lodge, especially. I feel like it’ll also open new opportunities for my lodge because I’ll be able to go to these national training sessions and be able to bring some of those things back to my lodge and help implement them.”

SKYE POURNAZARI/THE FORUM
Dalylah Rybolt, 17, is a new section vice chief for the Order of the Arrow, a first not only for her lodge, O-Ni-Flo, but also a first for the Boy Scouts of America Pony Express Council.