Athletics Merit Badge

Two three-month clocks, and nobody says they are the same clock

This is the scheduling fact of the Athletics merit badge, and it is not stated anywhere on the requirements.

• Requirement 3(a): establish a personal training program and *"follow this training program for three months."*
• Requirement 5: complete the activities in four of nine options *"and show improvement over a three-month period."* Nothing says these are the same three months. Nothing says they are different ones either. Run concurrently, this is a three-month badge; run one after the other, it is a six-month badge. **Settle it with your counselor before you start 3(a)**, because by the time you have finished the training program the decision has already been made for you. The sensible reading is that they overlap: the activity you pick for requirement 3 can be the thing you are training for in requirement 5, and requirement 4(a) already ties requirement 3's activity into the rest of the badge. But that is a reading, not a rule, and your counselor is the one who decides.

Requirement 5 is the widest choice on this site

Four of nine. That is 126 combinations: more room than any other badge here, and more than twice Sustainability's two-of-six.

Option E is the only one that needs no venue and no equipment beyond a bar. Read the second column before the first: several of these are decided by what you can actually get to twice a week for three months, not by what you are best at.

Note that C and H each offer an internal or (long jump or high jump, football or soccer), so the nine options really cover eleven activities.

An error on the current requirements page

Requirement 5's Option G lists eight basketball shooting positions. The fifth and sixth are printed with identical text:

(5) Where key line and free-throw line meet, left side (6) Where key line and free-throw line meet, left side

Both the 2025 Scouts BSA Requirements book and the Athletics merit badge pamphlet print the sixth as "right side", which is also what the symmetry of the other seven positions requires. The live page has dropped a word.

Shoot both sides. Nobody sensible will argue, and the two published sources agree with each other.

Requirement 2 changed, and an older book will mislead you

If you are working from the 2025 Requirements book, its requirement 2(a) reads "Before completing requirements 3 and 5, have your health care practitioner give you a physical exam": a hard gate in front of the two long requirements.

The current page does not say that. Requirement 2 was rewritten in the December 2025 revision into three discussion parts, and the physical exam and its ordering are gone. The page governs, so this plan draws no gate there, but if your counselor is working from the book, raise it early rather than at the end.

Start the chart on day one

Requirement 3(b) says use a chart or other tracking method to monitor your progress "during this time": during the three months of 3(a), not after them. Requirement 3(d) then reviews "your records from requirement 3(b)" at the end.

There is no way to reconstruct three months of training records afterwards. This is the single easiest thing to lose on this badge.

What this page is

The Athletics merit badge, drawn so the choice in requirement 5 and the two three-month clocks are visible before you start rather than after. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.