One of the reasons that our fourth session is exceptionally special is because we hold our color wars! All of camp is split up into four teams and compete for the glory of being the winning team. This year our theme was the Empire Strikes Back! The team captains each chose an empire for their teams. Captains George and Jack chose to be the Aborigines, Captains Becca and Jordan chose to be the Aztecs, Captains Maddy and Paul chose to be the Vikings and Captains Ellie and Maddie chose to be Team Greece The teams spent Friday afternoon, all of Saturday and Sunday morning prepping and planning team costumes, practicing team songs and cheers, creating team banners and practicing their events. During this time team pride was evident in the dining hall. Throughout meals teams would stand up in the dining hall and chant catchy cheers. Some were catchy like team Greece’s “G-R-E-E-C-E. Greece will have a victory!” And others were creative like Team Aborigine’s “You know how we do, do, blowing our didgeridoo dos!”
Come Sunday teams were motivated and prepared for the afternoon’s events. It all began at 11 am in the council ring. All of the teams gathered to present all that they had prepared. Team Aborigine went first. Their presentation was based off of a rainbow serpent’s dream world since that was how the Aborigine’s believed the world was created. Their costumes were colorful and lively and included the rainbow serpent, kangaroos, Steve Irwin, tribal princesses and fire bearers. All of their artwork included Aboriginal dot work and came out nicely! Their song was to the tune of the happy song “Ikko Ikko”. Next was Team Aztec! They re-enacted a human sacrifice and told the story of the last Emperor, Montezuma. Their costumes included a human temple, tribal people and a two headed snake! Their lengthy song to one of Camp’s favorite folk songs “Where have all the Flowers Gone?” was very informative and was accompanied by guitar players! Following the Aztecs was team Greece. They did a lovely job going over the story of Greek Gods and Goddesses and even included a bit of information on Greece’s current events. Some notable costumes included Medusa and a person she turned to stone, Helen of Troy, Hercules, Pegasus and Athena. On top of everything they constructed an impressively large Trojan horse. Last but not least was team Vikings. Their performance was true to character seeing as it was a tad frightening! They arrived in a beautiful and massive ship with seven rowers in it. Each of which had a paddle that had a letter of the word “Vikings” on it. Their presentation included Viking Gods and Goddesses, giants and Valkyries. Overall the judges were astounded with the creativity and execution of these presentations.
After lunch the games commenced! The afternoon is split into four rounds. The first three are composed of games and competitions that every camper participates in while the fourth round is a giant relay race. The events of the first three rounds are varied but all are so wonderful. Some are creative like one event where campers need to create a vision of their empire on the beach out of sand and limited supplies. Some can be competitive like water basketball, tug of war, log sawing and nukem while others focus on camp crafts like ladder lashing and tent pitching. There is an event for everyone and campers have a lot of fun with these events. At the end of these rounds, the teams were all very close in points. Team Aborigine was in the lead by only a half dozen points which put a ton of pressure on the relay.
The relay race covers almost every area of camp. It begins with a camper making a bed and folding pajamas in the parking lot. They run matches to someone who eats a huge slice of watermelon and then a third person run the matches to archery. Two campers have to hit the target twice. Then a water bucket is walked through a windy path without spilling. The matches are passed to campers in inner tubes in the big pool then to campers making loops around the small pool. Two campers have to make two hoops at basketball, one camper pushes another in a wheel barrow, then other campers have to ring two horseshoes. The matches move over to hockey at the tennis courts, then to toilet paper - where two campers take turns wrapping a stationary camper in toilet paper. Then the matches go down to the waterfront to get canoed out to Santa Claus and kayaked back to the beach. A few campers fill a five gallon bucket with sand and then some more dribble a soccer ball across the ballfield and back and then the matches get run up to the team fire builders in Boys Homestead where they must build a fire and burn through their rope first. The teams were neck and neck throughout the entirety of the relay. Every team had a moment where they were ahead of everyone else. They all arrived to the fire pit within a minute of each other and ultimately team Aborigine’s rope burned all the way through first!
After everyone celebrated and washed off, all of camp headed to the beach where hotdogs and hamburgers were barbequed. After all the excitement everyone was exhausted so they headed to bed. All of camp earned an extra hour of sleep this morning! Now that the weekend has passed camp is back to our regular schedule except for both Adventure Pathfinder groups who left camp to go on a two night camping trip at Trap Pond.
Peace!
Melissa
RSS Feed