Setting helps Washington Boys Staters focus

View Photo Gallery

Kenrick Doherty admitted he was a bit overwhelmed when he first arrived at Evergreen Boys State.

“We don’t even have 180 (students) in our school, so it’s a lot to adapt to," Doherty said. "I don’t think we even have 90 kids in my school."

A member of the Makah Tribe, from the small community of Neah Bay, Wash., Doherty was one of 175 high school juniors from across the state of Washington who attended Evergreen Boys State the week of June 19-25.

“When I first got here, I was really overwhelmed," Doherty said. "As I got to meet my city and my county and my roommates, it got easier."

This was the third year that Evergreen Boys State has been held at Warm Beach Conference Center, in the woods near Stanwood, Wash.

“The primary motivator when we made the move (away from Central Washington University) was financial,” said program director Ray Ochs. “Through dynamics of the university system in our state, costs became incredibly prohibitive for us, and so we were looking for an alternative. And one of the nice things about Warm Beach, it’s a nonprofit organization dedicated to just providing space for programs like ours. It really has been a wonderful partnership with them, and the setting couldn’t be more ideal. …

“It is a bit secluded. We don’t have lots of distractions of other things happening on campus, of the campus bookstore or whatever other events might be around us. It really allows the students to focus on what’s happening here, it draws them inward to making friends with each other.”

“I like it a lot more this way versus on a college campus,” said Seth Koivisto, another of the students. “I feel like a college campus is more tailored to a certain college and we’re just there to visit. This feels like it was meant for Boys State.”

Over the course of the week, participants honed their public speaking skills, learned how government works, and listened to and questioned guest speakers.

“I’m always impressed by how deeply knowledgeable a lot of the boys are about specific issues; history, the structure of our constitution, the reason it’s built the way it is," said former state attorney general Rob McKenna, himself an alum of Evergreen Boys State. "These are boys that are often very, very studious when it comes to understanding the government they live under, and that always impresses me.”

Another alum, State Rep. Hans Zeiger, shared his Boys State experience and how it helped him pursue a political career.

“I served as party chairman (here), which is an impossible task; you have to put together a party platform with people on the left and the right and everything in between, and so you’re not very popular coming out of that," he said. "I ran for governor and lost in the primary. Then I was elected by my community to serve in the state house for Evergreen Boys State, ran for speaker of the house in that setting and won on a coin toss. … That was a formative experience for me, really gave me a taste of the governing process that helped to inspire me to be where I am today.”

Zeiger said it’s “absolutely a highlight” for him to be able to come back to Boys State and speak each year. “These are kids that are thinking about their future, many of them are thinking about a career in public service or doing some kind of public service," he said. "In general, I love spending time with young people who are thinking about that kind of thing, but this is a group of people who are here for a week, they’re at a key point in their lives where they’re just eating this stuff up."

McKenna agreed, saying, “Evergreen Boys State is a great program, I look at the number of leaders in our state who have been to Boys State or Girls State and it really shows that it’s a formative experience for a lot of people. The key is to put the word out and make sure that every boy that might be interested in it knows about it and has the opportunity to apply.”

Ochs emphasized the life lessons the week also instills. “How do you come together and work towards a common good?" he said. "How do you overcome differences when sometimes we don’t always agree? We do things like, at our formal banquet later in the week, we teach them about etiquette, because that’s a real life experience that’s important in these young men’s lives, they’re going to go to a formal banquet of some sort, a political dinner, a wedding reception, all these things that adults do all the time, many of these students have never done, so let’s give them that experience, teach them how to do it.

“The other side of this, many of these students … they are used to being the pinnacle of success (in their schools). And they come here and they’re suddenly amongst a group of hundreds of peers just like them, and how do you relate to other people when you’re not the one everyone’s turning to for all the answers? That’s a really important life lesson there. For many of them, as we go through our election process, it may be the first time they’ve ever lost an election. So how do you cope with that experience, how do you pick yourself up and keep moving on and learn to lead and adapt and succeed in other ways besides winning that election?”

Still, Ochs said, it’s also about having fun.

“As adults with perspective, we look at this program and say, it looks great on a college resume, it is going to help you learn these life skills, you can earn college scholarships, there’s Boys Nation," he said. "They’re all incredible reasons to attend Boys State. But what sometimes in our adult perspective that we forget about, is Boys State is just incredibly fun. They’re going to have a really great time all week long, They’re going to make friendships that last a lifetime."