With commencement roughly two weeks away, three La Jolla Excessive Faculty seniors have achieved one other purpose they’ve been working towards: the Woman Scout Gold Award.

Ashlyn Brunette, Sophie Hochberg and Samantha Ponticello have accomplished tasks for the Gold Award, the very best honor in Woman Scouts, which requires every woman who makes an attempt it to determine an issue, strategize a plan to deal with it and conduct 80 hours of neighborhood service to execute the plan.

The three women — every of whom has been in Woman Scouts since kindergarten — additionally needed to work with a mentor, put collectively and lead a group and write a last report on their tasks.

“There’s numerous management and teamwork concerned,” Hochberg mentioned.

The awards ceremony is in June.

Ashlyn Brunette

To earn her Gold Award, Brunette introduced a lacrosse camp for about 50 elementary- and center school-age women in her neighborhood after discovering that through the COVID-19 pandemic, youngsters she babysat felt remoted from associates.

“[Their] mother and father have been noticing these damaging psychological well being results,” Brunette mentioned.

She focused the lacrosse camp for ladies close to “the age the place I used to be becoming a member of sports activities groups and assembly new folks,” she mentioned. The ladies have been “lacking a key time [for] becoming a member of sports activities.”

The camp taught lacrosse fundamentals and supplied “sit-down conversations with the women about primary features of psychological well being, like assist teams, stress, managing time” and extra, Brunette mentioned.

Brunette, who performed lacrosse for La Jolla Excessive, mentioned she acquired optimistic suggestions from mother and father and plans to repeat the camp this summer season earlier than she leaves to attend UCLA.

Sophie Hochberg

Hochberg, who will attend Vanderbilt College, is considering majoring in psychology and wished to plan her Gold Award mission in that subject, tying in her love of ice skating.

The end result was a “psychological well being boot camp” for student-athletes.

“I spotted that psychological sickness for sports activities gamers … isn’t one thing that’s actually addressed as a society,” she mentioned.

Hochberg gathered a sports activities psychologist, a meditation teacher and a nutritionist to speak to a gaggle of about 25 of her friends about psychological sickness particularly for student-athletes — together with methods to deal with and overcome it.

“Everybody talked about their very own experiences in the event that they wished,” she mentioned.

Hochberg shared the knowledge for 4 weeks at a sales space on the La Jolla Open Aire Market, giving out pamphlets with a abstract of the recommendation gleaned on the camp.

Samantha Ponticello

Ponticello created an internet site to information folks after a cherished one suffers a stroke.

The positioning, afulllifeafterstroke.com, incorporates suggestions for figuring out the indicators of a stroke and recommendation for serving to somebody by the therapeutic course of.

Ponticello was moved to begin the mission after her grandmother had a stroke.

The web site contains every thing Ponticello and her household discovered after the stroke, together with info from a stroke assist particular person.

She additionally hosted a sales space on the Open Aire Market to assist educate folks concerning the indicators of a stroke and made posters illustrating the acronym FAST for face drooping, arm weak spot, speech issue and time to name 911.

“I put these round La Jolla for folks to see,” she mentioned.

Ponticello mentioned stroke victims and their relations would method her on the market to jot down down the web site handle.

Ponticello, who will attend Syracuse College, mentioned she’s going to replace the web site as she learns extra. ◆