Skating Merit Badge

One requirement is shared. The rest is a choice of four

1 Do the following: (hazards; first aid)

2 Working under the supervision of an experienced adult, do ONE of the following options: Option A, Ice Skating. Option B, Roller Skating. Option C, In-Line Skating. Option D, Skateboarding.

That is the whole badge. Requirement 1 is two explanations and takes an evening. Requirement 2 is everything else, and four fifths of what is printed under it belongs to somebody else's answer.

Read the third column before the second. Three of the four options need a venue that opens at certain hours and charges to come in. One does not.

The longest option is the free one

In-Line Skating is sixteen steps, more than any other option here, and it is the only one that never asks for a facility. Flat pavement, a slope gentle enough to slalom down, and a curb to step on and off. All three exist within a short walk of most homes.

Ice Skating is fourteen steps and every practical one of them happens at a rink. Roller Skating is thirteen, the shortest, and all of them happen at a rink too. Skateboarding is fourteen plus a trick choice, and one of its steps needs coping, which means a built skatepark rather than a car park.

So the shortest list is not the least work, once getting there is counted. Roller Skating has three fewer steps than In-Line Skating and needs somebody to drive to a rink and pay for a session, repeatedly, until thirteen skills are signed off.

The sentence above the options applies to all of them

2 Working under the supervision of an experienced adult, do ONE of the following options:

Stated once, at the top, and never repeated inside any option. It is not advice attached to the first item on the list. It governs all fifty seven steps underneath, on every option, including the ones that are explanations rather than skating.

The practical effect is that no part of requirement 2 is homework. A Scout cannot work through an option at the rink alone on a Saturday and bring the results to a counselor, the way requirement 1 can be prepared alone. Somebody experienced has to be there.

Requirement 1 tells you what this badge really covers

1(b) Show that you know first aid for injuries or illnesses that could occur while skating, including hypothermia, frostbite, lacerations, abrasions, fractures, sprains and strains, concussions, blisters, heat-related reactions, and shock.

Ten items, two of them cold injuries and another a heat injury. No one of these four sports produces that list on its own. It is the union of an outdoor ice rink in January and a pavement in August, and it is the clearest signal on the page that requirement 1 was written to cover all four options at once.

Answer it as a table rather than as a paragraph. Ten conditions, and the requirement wants first aid for each, which is ten answers and not one.

Option A: Ice Skating

Fourteen steps. Five are explanations and nine are on the ice.

The one that is not about skating at all is 2(A)(2): preparations for skating outdoors on natural ice, and how to make an ice rescue. That is somebody else falling through, and what you do about it from the edge. It is the only item in any of the four options that is about rescuing a person, and it will not be picked up at an indoor rink where it can never happen.

2(A)(3) and 2(A)(8) are the same fact twice. 2(A)(3) asks for the parts and functions of the different types of ice skates. 2(A)(8) asks you to stroke forward from a T position "avoiding the use of toe picks if wearing figure skates". The toe pick is exactly the part that tells a figure skate from a hockey skate, so doing 2(A)(3) properly is what makes 2(A)(8) make sense.

2(A)(13) asks about racing without asking you to race. It is the safety considerations for taking part in an ice-skating race, explained to your counselor. Nothing in this option asks for a race.

Option B: Roller Skating

Thirteen steps, the shortest option, and three of them are explanations.

2(B)(11) and 2(B)(13) each contain an "or" that is not a fork. Two consecutive spins or a hop, skip and jump for ten feet. A basketball dribbled forty feet and back or a hockey ball pushed with a stick the same distance. Both alternatives live inside one step, so choosing between them removes nothing from the page and there is nothing here for this plan to ask.

This option is the one the 2025 requirements book and the current page disagree about most sharply, and the disagreement runs one way. The book's version had two more requirements: racing on a speed track demonstrating starting, cornering, passing and pacing, and the limbo under a chest-high pole or shoot-the-duck under a waist-high pole. Neither is on the page now. The book's ball-handling item also asked for the length of the floor and a circuit of the entire rink in both directions, where the page asks for forty feet and back.

Option C: In-Line Skating

Sixteen steps, the longest option, and no facility at any point.

Four are explanations, and 2(C)(3) is worth reading before buying anything: the required and recommended safety equipment. Required and recommended are two lists rather than one, and this step comes before any of the skating.

Three steps need particular geography rather than a building. 2(C)(13) is four one-footed slaloms downhill on a gentle slope, which needs a slope that is genuinely gentle and genuinely smooth. 2(C)(16) is getting on and off a curb. 2(C)(7) is stopping on command on flat pavement using the heel brake, which rules out grass, gravel and a noticeable camber.

2(C)(16) is described twice and done once. Two ways to get on and off a curb described, and at least one of them demonstrated.

Option D: Skateboarding

Fourteen steps and then a choice of three trick families out of five, which makes this the only option with a decision inside it.

2(D)(7) is the only step in the whole badge that asks you to build something. Assemble a board from deck, wheels, trucks, hardware and grip tape, in the proper order. A complete board bought ready to ride has had this done to it already, so this step decides what gets bought before it decides anything else.

2(D)(13) is the step that needs a real skatepark. Dropping in from coping means the steel lip along the top of a ramp or a bowl. There is no version of it on flat ground, in a driveway or in a car park.

2(D)(12) pays for two of the five trick families. A basic ollie and at least one variation. Flip and shove-it tricks are built on the ollie, and so is a good deal of what counts as a flat ground trick, so the order the list is printed in is also the order to learn it in.

What the badge never says it needs