Girl Scouts seeking to achieve ‘recordbreaking year’

Cookie season is flourishing among Northern Nevada’s markets while Girl Scout troops make their sales on National Girl Scout Cookie Weekend, taking place from Feb. 28 to March 1.

Girl Scouts of the Sierra Nevada’s marketing and communications manager Jessie Schirrick says the organization is experiencing one of its most successful seasons so far in terms of cookie sales.

“We are actually on track for a recordbreaking year,” Shirrick said Thursday.

Schirrick said 436,000 boxes were sold by the end of the first weekend. That included online orders. The original goal was 500,000 boxes, and Schirrick said it was very likely the troops would be able to reach that. Presales began Jan. 5 and sales will continue the next two weekends through March 15.

Ellie Loos, 12, and Pearl King, 11, both Carson Middle School students, of local Troop 164 were helping the cause Wednesday after school at the Market Street Walmart and kept busy selling to shoppers outside the store’s doors.

The GSSN has a membership of more than 4,900 and approximately 2,000 volunteers assisting.

Schirrick, though still relatively new to GSSN in her role, said she’s enjoyed getting to know the girls and how they’re developing their leadership skills at their young age.

“It’s their responsibility to initiate the sales, all the while managing their money and inventory and handling rejection is not something other programs prepare you well for,” she said. “It just makes me wish I’d been a Girl Scout when I was young.”

Asked if she’s developed a favorite cookie this season, Schirrick admitted she especially enjoys the Toffee-tastics, which is a gluten-free option that hardly anybody wants to try.

“But they’re all so great, it’s hard to choose just one,” she said. “I’ve had an obscene amount.”