Victorian College For The Deaf

It was an honour to welcome and meet the Victorian College For The Deaf. There was a mixture between excitement and nerves coming from not only the students, but teachers and even the coach! It was time for them to get introduced to the Five Keys to unlock an epic Camp: Have Fun, Play All In, Make Lots of Mistakes, Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable and Don’t Go Home Wondering What If!

We hit the park into our first initiative called Half Pipe, where it took the team a little bit to get going but once a few ideas came out, the team started to communicate and demonstrated team work while taking into consideration each other’s ideas. It helped the team to gain an understanding on how they can improve. The rest of the day started to play out with heading up to Inflatables, where we realized, we could let go and have some fun playing Human Foosball and Adrenalin Rush. Afternoon tea was ready for us down at the BBQ Rotunda followed by our next activity Tash’s Ladder. Tash’s Ladder was our first challenge of the camp and it was incredible too see students think about Target-Stretch-Super Stretch, that’s when they realized that if you break down the goal you aiming for, you have a clearer focus and you are more capable at achieving it. It was a great taster of what was to come! At dinner we brain stormed some awesome Team Names, the real winner was Ghost Butterflies.

Victorian College For The Deaf is now united as Ghost Butterflies!

Tuesday was welcomed with a morning intention, with Beyonce! Choosing our intention for the day off “who we wanted to be” and “what we wanted out of our day”. How we respond to the challenges determines who we are, and what we do today matters! We also had our second and third keys to focus on throughout the day!

The day started with 3 epic activities High Wire, Abseil and Flying Fox. Hire Wire showed us, we needed to trust in our team, and really support each other! Abseil was a challenge for many of us, but we just needed that one moment of bravery and courage to overcome the task at hand! Well done to everyone on The Abseil, it was incredible seeing everyone really push themselves and see that there was joy on the other side! Just ask Martin, he couldn’t stop Smiling! We flew through The Flying Fox as a team! And before we knew it, it was time for lunch.

After lunch we had some team challenges ahead starting off with The Bush Challenge, with some epic team work and support getting everyone up the wall, even those who didn’t think they were capable of doing it, rocked it! Then the team headed to the foam pit. They took some time to get going but with Precious and Alec leading the team, we knew we were in safe hands! We finished of The Bush Challenge and had a chat about what we did well and what we can do to better ourselves as a team, which was a great lead up for The Monster Course.

Bush Challenge: 45 Minutes

Monster Course time!

Hands in for 3, 2, 1, GHOST BUTTERFLIES! The team was off!

The team was incredibly patient waiting to see the instructions before they could get into the element. The team started off hesitant but the more the course went on the more everyone got into it and started pushing themselves more and more. Ben, Joey and Jacob showed a lot of courage! It was amazing to see the team push themselves outside their comfort zones, really dig deep and give it everything they had, even when they thought they couldn’t dig any further! Each team member pushed mighty hard and gave it 100% and I am beyond proud of everyone! Special shout out to Yvonne, her encouragement did not go unnoticed. Well done GHOST BUTTERFLIES!

Monster Improvement time: 15 Minutes – AMAZING EFFORTS, LEGENDS!

Wednesday started with talking about gratitude and the things we are grateful for in life. We shared whit each other about the thing everyone is grateful for and moved into our activities with a new perspective at the day ahead of us.

First up we had Scavenger Hunt, it became Adults Vs Students as the students then became more competitive and kept up with Adults for quite some time, although Adults took the winning spot at the end.

Students 200!

Adults 440!

Last activity at camp was Rock Wall where we applied the last Key ’Don’t Go Home Wondering What If’. It was a last opportunity to really push ourselves! Rob, Matt and Katharine showed the students how it was done! All the students gave it their best one last time while having loads of fun, what more could we ask for!

After three days of unleashing greatness, the camp was finished by each tribe voting for a values winner who demonstrated the five values to the best of their abilities.

Very Well done to Alec!

And a special shout out to Dilpreet, your leadership skills did not go unnoticed either!

I hope everyone continues to grow and believe in themselves, very well done at camp, Ghost Butterflies. Remember, you are all more than capable of doing much more then you know.

All the best for the future, I look forward to seeing you at The Summit soon! Trinette