Camp Champions Blog

Yesterday and today, we had a visitor. Sam Goodgame is the son of a dear family friend, Dan Goodgame. Dan was a Rhodes Scholar with my older brother and was one of the senior writers at Time before moving to San Antonio. His son Sam went to West Point, trained as a Ranger and served in Afghanistan. He is now finishing up a Masters degree in data science.

Sometimes, the best camp memories entirely emerge from the minds of the campers.

Each evening, every cabin comes together for a “nighty ritual”. These nightly gatherings help cabins grow together, but they do more than that. They give campers a chance to practice communicating important ideas and their listening skills. Also, we design these gatherings to train the campers to focus on finding the positive in each day.

On a typical day, I will try to give you a snapshot of what camp looks like from my point of view, that of a parent and an “adult”.

When you read this, you will likely be about 24 hours from arriving at camp, so I am not sure what to share with you.

Normally, I would be telling you about the Holiday Dance, division afternoon (activities for groups of 4-5 cabins) or Trojan-Spartan games. Let me assure you that all went very well. Campers competed, danced and played heartily.

“Today is my favorite day at camp!”

I can tell that it is the last week of camp.

In my blog, I mostly strive to focus on the activities of camp as well as the benefits of camp. But occasionally I like to share a little bit about what it is like to be a “grown up” who makes his living as a camp professional. This is such a blog.

Yesterday, Susie Ma’am and I met with the Senior Campers for the 4^th time. Actually, we had 3 separate meetings, one each with those who just finished 9^th, 10^th and 11^th grade.