Aquinas College Year 8 Camp 1 Blog

Wednesday afternoon, busses full of Aquinas College students and staff rolled through our gates. Eager to get started they all made their way up to their accommodations.

The Summit coaches were welcomed by their team leader Steph/Spinks, the Five Keys (Have Fun, Play All In, Make Lots of Mistakes, Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable, and Don’t Go Home Wondering What If) were shared by Sarah, as they are the ingredients for a great camp. As the students were shown to the stage, they played a quick game of 50 Up, then were placed straight into their groups. They were taught about The Summit's goal-setting strategy called ‘Targets, Stretches, and Super stretches’ to help them break down activities that might feel overwhelming. Two activity rotations were run and then the students had some free time before dinner!

Day two and we started the day off with an intention session with Steph/ Spinks, where the students were asked to think about who they wanted to be for that day and what that looked like. Talked about how we can choose to let the things we can’t control determine what we do. 1. weather 2. other people and 3. the activities they’re doing. Groups were led down to the stage to play a game of Pirates, jumping in and out, having all the fun!

With three massive rotations with morning tea in between, students then made their way up to the Lodge for lunch. After lunch, students changed into their Monster attire. We had a tribe challenge to complete before the Monster Course could commence, first to warm up, we played a game called Jockeys and then had a head-to-head tug-of-war tournament to determine the winners that would choose the tribe they wanted to run against, group 7 was victorious, choosing to run in the first against group 6. It was time to begin the Monster Course and the students were briefed and ready, the first heat went off, followed by two, three, and for, where two teams got to run side. All groups smashed their first lap, but little did they realize that the true test of resilience and grit was doing the Monster twice, the winner of the course was the tribe with the best improvement time, comparing their first lap to their second! Every team gave their best and got through the course together, improving by at least 8 minutes or more! Well done!

Last day and there were a lot of tired faces in the room, we read out a bunch of GMICs, followed by a gratitude session by Sam, where they were asked what, and whom they were grateful for. We also set a quick intention as they only had two more rotations to go, and they didn’t want to go home wondering ‘what if’.

After smashing their two final rotations, the tribes get to reflect on the camp experience with each other and then proceeded to choose a values winner for their tribe, someone who embodied the Five Keys consistently throughout camp (names stated in the table below)

All activities run were as follows; Flying Fox, Inflatables, Bush Challenge, Abseil, Sky Bridge, Scavenger Hunt, and Snake and Nails.

On behalf of team and myself, we would like to say thanks for playing all in and having all the fun!! We hope you had as much fun as we did, all the best for the rest of the year.

Steph/Spinks, Sam/Big Fish, Marcus, Mim, Calarnee, Sophie, Zoe, Liam☺️