Antonine College Year 11 Camp Blog

On the stunning Wednesday afternoon, 20th November 2024, The Summit welcomed the year eleven students and teachers at Antonine College

Students were promptly shown their accommodation, where they would stay for the next couple of days! After they got settled, they were welcomed into the Lodge where coach SPINKs introduced camp and the coaches! Taylor discussed with students the Summit’s very own recipe for the best camp ever, and the ingredients that were the Five Keys to camp. These keys are:

1. Have Fun

2. Play All In

3. Make Lots of Mistakes

4. Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

5. Don’t Go Home Wondering “What If”

Without further ado, we all headed down to the Stage and started with a game of 50 Up. Then Zoe taught everyone how to put on a helmet and harness, followed by Mim teaching everyone an epic goal-setting strategy called Target, Stretch, and Super Stretch that would help us grow our comfort zones and conquer challenging activities.

Campers started their first activity with an Initiative Challenge that involved working together to solve a puzzle. This tested teamwork and leadership, but teams rose to the challenge! Then we moved into our activity rotation. The activities that campers got to do at camp were Laser Skirmish, Snowy River Challenge, Trust & Nails, Jump Free, Summit Window, Giant Swing, Inflatables, and Sky Bridge. This range of activities challenged people’s bravery, team spirit, support, trust creativity and problem-solving skills (to name a few!).

Day one ended with introducing the students to a camp tradition called GMICs, which stands for “Great Moments in Camp” - this is all about writing down and acknowledging some of the awesome moments we have seen.

Day two started with an epic talk about setting a morning intention with Spinks, learning about how important it is to choose to focus on the things we cannot control, weather and people and the activities they are doing on camp.  Asking the students to think about who they wanted to be and how the wanted to show up for themselves, others and of course the activities. We then played a quick game of Jockeys, before getting into the park and beginning the three activity rotations.

After lunch students had one more activity to complete, to warm up before the Monster Course. Finally, it was time to do the famous Monster Course, this was a feat of teamwork, strength, and resilience. As students completed the course, the groups were unaware they were running two laps of the course, so they got themselves together and then completed the second lap! The winner of the run was the team that had the biggest improvement time from their first lap. All teams improved by 7 minutes or more.

After the students had washed off and had their dinner, they took part in an evening activity called Belief and Mindset, run by Spinks. There they had to identify their own limiting and empowering beliefs, write them on a wooden board and after the strategy was displayed, they broke through them and gave themselves a piece of physical evidence to show that they can do other hard things as well.

As the last day rolled around, heaps of GMICs were read out, and then Mim took the kids through a gratitude session, where the students were asked to think about who and what they are grateful for, to not go home wondering ‘what if’ and to ‘check back in’ for the last two rotations of activities to go. Heading down to the stage for a game of Huckle Buckle, to warm the students up and as the final rotation ended the students voted for someone in their tribe who represented/embodied the Five Keys the most, throughout camp. They bestowed Summit medals and got their photo taken. (Listed below along with the results)