Gold Award for two Wantagh Girl Scouts

By KEPHERD DANIEL kdaniel@liherald.com

Wantagh High School students are setting a gold standard for helping others, and two seniors were recently rewarded with the Girl Scouts’ highest honor. Nicole Tobia and Angelina Bendetti, both 17, were presented with Gold Awards for their school-inspired projects.

The Gold Award is bestowed on high school scouts who develop and implement lasting solutions to issues in their neighborhoods.

“I’ve always been pretty involved in the community,” Tobia said. “I like to do bigger projects and feel like I have an impact. I felt like the Girl Scouts Gold Award was the best way for me to have my voice put out there and advocate for something that I thought was important.”

Both Tobia and Bendetti have been members of Girl Scout Troop 3440 for 13 years.

Tobia’s project focused on helping children in the foster care system get the supplies they need to prepare for college. Tobia’s aunt is a lawyer and works for the Legal Aid Society, a non-profit legal aid provider in New York City.

“She explained to me how the kids that she represents have a really hard time getting ready for the SAT,” Tobia said.

As a result, Tobia quickly decided to assist children who do not have access to study materials for SAT, ACT, Regents and AP exams.

“I realized I have a hard time practicing for it, so I couldn’t imagine what they’re going through on top of having to prepare for that,” Tobia said.

“I’m sure a lot of kids have potential, but a lot of the time that potential can be wasted if they don’t have the proper materials to help prepare for these really big exams that could change their future.”

Tobia collected review books throughout Wantagh High School and created podcasts on a tablet that she developed. Each episode features a different topic guiding foster children through the college application process and everything leading up to it.

Tobia held seminars with students in Wantagh and neighboring towns and broke down how to get an SAT or ACT waiver, and how to begin the common application.

“I had a collection throughout the school and through the library where I collected all types of review books that people had,” Tobia said.

“I made episodes of different ways to apply for scholarships, and how to start the Common Application. I went through every single step because if I didn’t have someone to help me with this, like I would have been stuck.”

Bendetti, the captain of the Wantagh varsity softball and volleyball teams, said she learned that the varsity had once gone to another state to participate in a tournament and wanted to replicate that experience.

“I wanted to advocate for something I thought was important,” Bendetti said.

“My award was about helping kids with sports in college and getting kids thinking about wanting to go to college.”

The trip allowed the students to learn about other states, get college exposure and see the world outside their community.

Bendetti said she wants to make it a biannual event where the team captains arrange and execute the plan for the varsity teams to attend a tournament in another state.

Bendetti prepared a step-by-step guidebook to allow team captains to carry out a trip once every two years. The guidebook has been given to surrounding schools to implement as well and is available to schools in other states. Bendetti’s goal was to encourage students to pursue a sport in college and give them exposure to what life is like for a collegiate athlete.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions, Bendetti was not able to travel out of state with her team but was able to visit Adelphi University with her softball team, which she said was very rewarding.

Tobia and Bendetti started their projects during their sophomore year and completed them as seniors. The projects required much planning and both had to go through obstacles presented by the Covid pandemic, which altered normal school procedures.

“We each had to do our own study on what we wanted to do like and do a lot of research on really discovering our passions in terms of the project and why we wanted to do what we wanted to do,” Tobia said.

“To go through all of that while also having school and navigating through Covid, took a lot of our time”

Tobia, who is the vice president of the student government club, received the full support of Wantagh High School.

“I was not surprised to see both Nicole and Angelina accomplishing the Gold award,” Paul Guzzone, Wantagh High principal, said. “They are just fantastic individuals. Academically, they both are top-notch — AP classes, college classes, but more importantly, just great people.”

Next year, Bendetti will attend the University of Minnesota and plans to continue in athletics, while Tobia hopes to be accepted to New York University. While the projects proved to be difficult, Tobia and Bendetti were able to lean on each other for support.

“We grew up together,” Tobia said. “We went to the same elementary school, our brothers are in the same grade. Our moms have been friends, and we’ve just been together through it all. Being able to complete it together was amazing.”

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