A Rochelle Township High School student and member of Rochelle Boy Scout Troop 553, chartered by the masonic lodge, has recently achieved the highest possible rank of Eagle Scout.
CJ Sedlock, a senior at Rochelle Township High School, has been involved in Scouts ever since he was a little kid. He joined the Byron Cub Scout pack as a Tiger Scout, which is one of the first ranks in the organization.
CJ’s parents were responsible for first introducing him to scouts.
“My wife and I are the ones who started him on his scouting path,” said Christopher Sedlock, CJ’s father and current troop scout master. “I was involved in scouts when I was younger and when he first started out as a Tiger, I was his den leader.”
Christopher was also involved in scouts when he was younger, but did not make it all the way to Eagle Scout.
CJ was involved in the Byron Boy Scout Troop until he was 14, when him and his father discovered the Rochelle Boy Scout Troop 553 and made the switch. CJ continued up the ranks of scouts in Rochelle on his journey to achieving Eagle Scout.
To do this, CJ had to first complete each of the Cub Scout levels of Tiger, Wolf, Bear and Webelos, all of which included completing many different skills and merit badges that aim to build certain skills such as leadership.
While completing all of the ranks was a lot of hard work, CJ said that it was also very fun, especially going on different camping trips.
“It has been a journey, definitely a lot of work as you go up the ranks, but it is a lot of fun too,” explained CJ. “We do a lot of fun stuff like camping in the Mississippi Palisades, learning knots and survival skills and many leadership building activities.”
One of CJ’s favorite things that the scouts do is going on all of the camping trips at different locations throughout the country.

Once completing each of the Cub Scout levels, CJ then moved on to the next step in his journey, Boy Scouts. During his time in Boy Scouts, CJ once again had multiple levels each with different requirements to complete. Boy Scouts is broken into seven different levels: Scout, Tenderfoot, Second-class, First-class, Star, Life and Eagle.
On top of the seven levels, scouts working toward achieving Eagle Scout must also hold a certain position for six months as well as complete an Eagle Scout project that aims to better their community.
“The big requirement for Eagle Scout is your Eagle Project, there is a lot of paperwork and a lot of approval it needs to go through, but it basically just needs to benefit the community,” said CJ.
Examples of positions a scout could hold are senior patrol leader and assistant senior patrol leader.
For many scouts, they decide fairly early on whether or not they want to go all the way to Eagle Scout, but that was not the case for CJ. For the last few years he thought that it would be pretty nice to accomplish it but never took it seriously. Approximately six months ago, he decided last minute that this was something that he really wanted to do.
“I had always thought that, oh yea, that would be nice, but it was about six months ago that I realized I really had to get this done if this was something that I wanted to do,” explained CJ.
After making the decision to go forward with becoming an Eagle Scout, he started looking for ideas for his project.
As he was searching for ideas, one presented itself to him. A Shar Pei dog rescue that is located in Plano, near Yorkville, previously needed new dog beds for its kennel, so the company reached out to CJ and presented the idea to him. He thought it was a great project and started getting to work making new dog beds for the rescue.  
With help from his local church and many of the members, he was able to make and present 32 new dog beds to the rescue.
“Faith Lutheran Church had a lot of people who wanted to help as well as some stuffing and fabric they were willing to donate,” added CJ. “So, we put them all together and then had a volunteer help sew them together for us.”
All of the old beds were very worn out and in need of replacement.
After finishing his eagle project, CJ had completed everything necessary to earn the rank of Eagle Scout. His official recognition in front of a board of reviews was held on Tuesday, Jan. 7, but the official celebration is being planned for the near future.
Being an Eagle Scout means to go above and beyond to take the extra step.
“It definitely relieving, I was under a lot of pressure to get that done,” said CJ. “I would absolutely do it all again, but I would probably not procrastinate so much.”
CJ’s father is also very proud to see his son follow in his footsteps and surpass his accomplishment.
“I am very proud, I only made it to Life so he made it the extra step that I couldn’t,” expressed Christopher.
There are only a few other scouts from Rochelle Troop 553 that have achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.
CJ is already looking ahead to sign on as an Assistant Scout Master so he can remain active with scouts for a while yet.