Mattituck Girl Scout Payton McLean earns Silver Award with Jean Cochran Park project

There’s a new, useful splash of color in the gray, concrete dugouts at Jean Cochran Park thanks to a member of Girl Scout Troop 261.

To earn her Girl Scouts Silver Award, Payton McLean, 13, of Mattituck, constructed bat and batting helmet boxes for the two dugouts where the North Fork Ospreys play their home games. During games, local and away teams can now store their bats and helmets when they’re not in use to keep their dugouts well organized.

The Silver Award is the second-highest honor a Girl Scout can work towards. To attain it, cadettes in grades six through eight must explore their community to find a way to make a lasting change, fundraise to cover any project costs and execute their vision.

In a family friend’s in-home woodshop, Payton, with some help from her dad, Derek McLean, worked on the boxes for more than 70 hours.

“We first had to cut the wood, which was very time-consuming,” she said. “And we had to piece the boards together piece-by-piece, which was very difficult. After that I painted all of them, which was actually really fun.”

In honor of the North Fork Ospreys’ team colors, Payton painted the boxes blue and yellow.

Her work follows that of her older sister, Callie, 15, who earned her Silver Award in 2021 after she cleaned the gardens and sanded and repainted the picnic benches at the Cutchogue East Elementary School. The two sisters are among the fraction of Girl Scouts who earn the Silver Award. They will soon work towards their Gold Awards, the organization’s highest honor which fewer than 6% of scouts earn annually according to the Girl Scouts of the United States of America, by the end of their respective senior years.

The Ospreys will be sure to use Payton’s boxes to keep their gear in order once their season kicks off with a home game Friday.

“[I feel] very accomplished because I know they’re going to be used for many years,” Payton said.