When the buses rolled through the gates of The Summit on a warm and sunny Monday morning, we were preparing for what was going to be a challenging but nonetheless amazing week. We weren’t quite ready for how prepared the awesome teaching staff were so about halfway through our teachers meeting, we knew the week was going to be something special. The other coaches and I gathered in the Lodge to introduce ourselves and our Five Keys, before playing a couple of games, showing everyone our harnesses and how to set themselves Targets, Stretches and Super Stretches, and getting into our first couple of rounds of activities.
These keys are:
- Have Fun
- Play All In
- Make Lots of Mistakes
- Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
- Don’t Go Home Wondering “What If”
The Abseiling, Summit Window and Leap of Faith were the instant highlights, making for a fantastic vibe at the bottom of our Big Tower. High Wire was a tough one, Bag Blitz and Tash’s Ladder were challenging just to get up to, the Snowy River Challenge was an epic team bonding experience, our Cave was scary and Inflatable City, Scavenger Hunt and Orienteering were just fun. There were definitely many personal boundaries pushed by both teachers and students and fears overcome, with too many to mention pushing beyond what they first thought they were capable of.
Towards the end of the first day, each group was asked to come up with a name for themselves that was agreed upon by all, and these are the names they came up with:
- Grp 1 – Kentucky Fried Children
- Grp 2 – Da Bomb
- Grp 3 – Timmus
- Grp 4 – Massive
- Grp 5 – One Pound Fish
- Grp 6 – Explosive 6’s
- Grp 7 – The Fearless (Insert Name Here)
- Grp 8 – Team George
- Grp 9 – Bentleigh 99
- Grp 10 – Chocolate
- Grp 11 – Big Ducks
After an amazing dinner of schnitzels on Monday night, Tuesday was kicked off with a morning intentions chat about how your actions can impact those around you before getting straight into the next round of activities. The afternoon turned out to be very warm, but everyone was so into the activities we couldn’t tell.
Tuesday afternoon we also embarked on our epic Monster Course, a run around the grounds of The Summit involving tyres, charades, this thing you had to squeeze through, mud, Bruce, a ball pit and a whole lot of fun! The course was scored using each team’s improvement time from the first lap to the surprise second lap, with everyone doing amazingly, but being dominated by Timmus!
Wednesday started with a chat about how concentrating on what we were grateful for can help how we set ourselves up for the day before we set about completing our final rotations and wrapping up the camp. We asked each of the kids to vote on a Values winner, or the person in their group they felt used our Five Keys the best to make camp a rewarding experience for not only themselves but their whole team. The winners are listed below with all the times for each of the recordable activities. We gathered on the stage to say our thank yous to all the people involved in making this camp epic before reading out the winners of the various activities.
Thank you so much to Kylie, Chelsea, the parents, teachers and students of Bentleigh Secondary College for an awesome week. You were all so incredibly dedicated to ensuring your camp was an amazing experience. We at The Summit can’t wait to have you back again soon.
Adam, Sam, Cam, Ant, Enis, Elena, Milena, Fran, Chris, Lainie, Tim, Kaara, Calarnee, and Maddie
