From Bryan on Scouting, July 16, 2014

Before his team plays a single game this fall, the head football coach at Navy is already a winner.

Ken Niumatalolo has agreed to serve as the Baltimore Area Council’s honorary recruitment chair.

Each new Cub Scout and the Scout who recruits him in the Baltimore Area Council will meet Coach Ken at Navy’s Football Media Day on Aug. 2 and get pictures with the Coach and the Navy football team.

And, naturally, they’ll also get the patch seen here, which was designed by Coach Ken’s family. Ken and his family are Hawaiian, and you can see the influence his heritage played on the awesome patch design.

This is great news for current and future Cub Scouts in the Baltimore Area Council, but as Field Director Jeffrey Griffin tells me, it represents a big win for Scouting as a whole.

“To do this we needed the Naval Academy’s approval, as well as the approval of the NCAA. This means other football coaches can do the same thing if their schools allow them,” he says. “The NCAA said yes to this idea as long as the Coach (in this case Coach Ken) or the project don’t go after Boy Scout/Venture-age youth. That would be a violation of NCAA rules.”

In other words, chances are Coach Ken won’t be the only NCAA coach serving as recruitment chair in the future.

Coach Ken certainly has been a great friend of Scouting, Griffin says. Ken and his wife, Barbara, are volunteers in the council, and his oldest son is an Eagle Scout. His youngest son is a Life Scout working on his Eagle project.