All Summer Long

Wiffleball World Series Game 2

We had a lot of cheering last night, with the two Wiffleball games to finish out our World Series. On field 1, the score kept creeping up: 2-1 Caddo, 3-2, Caddo, then it led to a 5-3 Caddo Win! Immediately after, both teams ran to field 2 where we had a tie at 0. Due to the crazy cheering and encouraging that came from the Tejas team, they pulled out a win of 2-0 over the Red Caddo!

It was a crazy evening. We got to see both teams pull out a victory, creating a lot of excitement leading into our All Day Tribal Competition happening today!

All Summer at Camp

Today, I wanted to highlight one of our older campers, Caitlyn B. (5 summers at Camp). Caitlyn is known well by everyone at camp because she comes the entire summer – every session! She’s here just like staff, from the first day of Session 1 to the last of Session 4. I wanted to learn from her about what made her decide to spend the summer with us and what that’s like.

She first heard about camp from her Aunt and joining her at Family Camp! Then from there, she was hooked. She began coming in 2013 from Session 2 to 4, but then the next summer she was in it for the long haul! Now for 4 summers, she’s been here all 7 weeks of Camp.

Caitlyn started talking about missing her friends from home when I asked her what’s hard about camp and then added:

It’s bittersweet because I miss my friends from home, but get to meet people here, learn about their backgrounds and create new friendships.

I asked what her favorite part about coming the entire summer is, expecting it to be something about the activities or feeling like she’s a part of staff, but her answer was concerning the people she get’s to know. Caitlyn told me the people from each Session are different and she loves every bit of it: Session 1 is very chill, as counselors new to staff figure out their dynamic at camp and campers are relaxed. Session 2 “loves you for who you are” and are all very encouraging. The third session is “very competitive and it’s amazing” (she loves the Tribal Competitions). Fourth session didn’t fill all the way up this summer, so Caitlyn enjoys the ability to get to know people even more in depth and have “that one on one time”.

For the families who send kids to Session 1, our 1-week session, Caitlyn offered the advice to

Put yourself out there, it’s worth it to try two-week sessions because it builds a lot of character – being away from home – and helps to learn independence.

Hearing about Camp from Caitlyn’s perspective gave me more insight to how campers view camp. Caitlyn gets it – she understands that we (as counselors) are here to love her, fight for her, and help her to learn more about who she really is.