Camp Champions Blog

For all you children of the 80's here is another, never before published online, yearbook. Straight from the Camp Champions Vault!

It is May.

Camp starts in May.

This is cool.

In less than 2 weeks, our Leadership Team and all of our counselors will be arriving to bond, train and ready camp for our campers.  We have a fantastic group coming in.  I know the Leadership Team will be as good as any we have ever had.  We are also excited about the counselors that will join us.  It is a wonderful mix of returning favorites, senior camper graduates and new-to-CC folks.  We are putting the finishing touches on Orientation.  This is going to be fun.

We have had to do a little extra hiring.  We have been elated by the excitement and interest in camp this spring.  The phones are ringing all the time and we are signing up new families in the few slots that we have left.

We mostly cannot wait to see the campers!  We are all passionate about the powerful benefits of camp on children, but we only get to work with the campers for 3 months.  The rest of the year, we are planning improvements, recruiting counselors and learning how to be even more effective.  We are particularly excited about some of the improvements this summer:

• The Screamer!
• The huge (24 foot!) fan in the Parthenon
• The modifications to the schedule that has more morning classes than afternoon classes
• The new Fire Truck (we are constantly thinking of new ways to use this thing)
• Hampster Balls, booger wars and lazer tag (during All Camp Fun Day)
• A few other surprises

So, if you are a camper or counselor, start planning your Dance outfits and practicing your favorite camp songs, because CAMP IS COMING SOON!!

For all you children of the eighties, not to worry, we did not forget about you! Hot off the retro-press, back to a time when:

Thinking back to your summers on Lake LBJ, it is also interesting to think about what else was going on in the world

When you bring your child(ren) to camp or come to pick them up this summer, you should think about spending some time in the city of Marble Falls. There are places you can shop, wander and eat. There is also a wonderful art gallery called the Riverbend Art Gallery. The Gallery Director, Marta Stafford, has agreed to donate 10% of any purchases our camp families make to our Camp Scholarship Fund! This is a wonderful gesture, and we would love it if our camp families would  support the local area by stopping in at the Gallery and checking it out! We are excited to increase the available funding for our scholarship program!

It is time for the SECOND digital yearbook uploading. Much like the first one, this is a great opportunity to peruse the pages and relive all of your favorite camp memories. Please keep checking back as we will be uploading a new digital yearbook each week! Tell your friends! We want to get as many people as possible connected back with camp!

Flashback to the year:

• Micronesia gains independence from the US. Life just seems different without Micronesia
• Space Shuttle Challenger explodes soon after take-off. The world unites to mourn the loss of true heroes, including Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space
• IBM unveils the first laptop computer. It is big, and ugly, but you felt cool if you have one!
• Nicotine patch is invented. 32% of Americans smoked in the 1980s versus 24% now. Maybe the patch helped!
• The Crocodile Dundee is released , leading to an explosion of bad Aussie accents talking about putting "shrimp on the barbie"
• Cheers, Fame, Family Ties and The Cosby Shows are popular on TV. Remember when we all watched Network Television?
• The Houston Astros play an epic 6-game series against the New York Mets for the National League pennant, culminating in a 16 inning classic that STILL makes Steve Sir sad. The Mets would then beat the Boston Red Sox after a routine ground ball rolls between Bill Buckner's legs.

Just to set the stage for the first digital yearbook upload, let's take it back, to the year when

Welcome back to Camp!  Over the past 43 summers Champions has been making memories and changing lives one kid at a time. Camp has diligently archived those memories in the form of yearbooks from the very beginning so they will never be forgotten.

Camp Champions is about to embark on its 44th summer and has decided to take the idea of the yearbook one step farther. We will be uploading a past yearbook each week until all of our memoirs are one easy click away.