Camp Champions vs Camp Huawni: Two Tech-Free Camps Compared

Camp Champions and Camp Huawni turn up on the same shortlists because they answer the same first question the same way: both are coed, both are traditional overnight camps, and both are tech-free. If you have narrowed to these two, you have already made the big decision.

What is left is setting, size, and philosophy — and on the last one the two camps are genuinely different in a way that is worth understanding rather than splitting the difference on.

This is a comparison written by one of the two camps in it, which you should factor in. What we have tried to do is keep every claim about Camp Champions to something published on campchampions.com — checked on 24 August 2026 — and be specific about the families we are not the right answer for. Where they publish nothing, we say so instead of filling the gap.

Who Camp Champions is

From their own site, as of August 2026: Camp Champions is at 775 Camp Road, Marble Falls, Texas, in the Hill Country. It is coed, described as "Boys & Girls Overnight Summer Camps", and tech free. Their stated mission is "to help every camper grow into the champion they are intended to be," with an emphasis on character, resilience and "durable skills" organised around a values framework they call the 4 R's. They state they are one of four overnight summer camps in the country certified as a Partnership for 21st Century Skills Exemplar Program. Ages, session lengths and tuition are not published on the page we read.

Who we are

Camp Huawni is a traditional, coed overnight camp in Timpson, in the East Texas Piney Woods, running since 1965. Campers are 7 to 17. Sessions are one week or two, on 600-plus acres.

The scale is deliberately small: a maximum of 100 girls and 70 boys in a session, about 50 college-aged staff, a 3.2 to 1 camper-to-staff ratio last summer, and cabins holding at most 14 campers with 2 counselors. Cabins are screened wooden buildings with bathhouses just outside — traditional rather than modern.

We are unplugged. No phones, tablets or laptops, for anyone, the whole session.

We are licensed by the Texas Department of State Health Services under the Texas Youth Camp Health and Safety Act. We are not ACA accredited.

Side by side

Camp Champions figures read from campchampions.com on 24 August 2026.

Where Camp Champions is the better choice

If you want the outcome named and structured. Champions is explicit about what it is trying to build in a camper and has a framework and an external certification attached to it. For parents who want camp to be developmental on purpose, and to be told exactly how, that is a genuine feature and we do not offer an equivalent.

If you are in Austin or San Antonio. Marble Falls is comfortably closer than East Texas from most of central Texas.

If your child responds to explicit goals. Some kids do much better when the point is stated. Ours is a camp where the growth is mostly a by-product of being left alone to sort things out, which is not the same thing.

Where we are the better choice

If you would rather camp were not a curriculum. This is the honest philosophical split. We are a throwback camp: campers spend six activity periods a day doing things that are fun on their own terms, and the confidence arrives sideways. We think it works — sixty years of alumni suggests it does — but we do not package it as skills training, and if you want that packaging, Champions offers it and we do not.

If you want a small camp. 170 campers a session, cabins of at most 14 with 2 counselors, a 3.2 to 1 camper-to-staff ratio last summer.

If you want to see the price without enquiring. Ours is on the dates and rates page with every registration window shown.

If you are on the eastern side of Texas. Timpson is a much shorter drive from Houston, Dallas or Shreveport than Marble Falls.

What we could not verify

Camp Champions does not publish ages, session lengths, cabin sizes, camper-to-counselor ratio or tuition on the pages we read. We also could not confirm whether they hold American Camp Association accreditation — the certification they name is a separate programme — so we have left that out rather than assert it either way. We are not ACA accredited ourselves.

None of that is a criticism — camps publish different things, and plenty of it is answered on a phone call. But do not take our table as a substitute for asking them directly, and be sceptical of any comparison page, including this one, that appears to know a competitor's numbers precisely.

How to decide

If both camps feel right, the tiebreaker is usually your child rather than the camp. A camper who likes knowing the point of things will get more out of an explicit framework. A camper who bristles at being improved will do better somewhere the improving is not announced.

Then ask both the practical questions: cabin ratio, phone policy in writing, what happens on a hard night in the middle of a session, and total cost including everything outside tuition. Our parent's guide has the full list, and what a day actually looks like here is the fastest way to tell whether our version appeals.