Dromana Secondary College Camp Blog

On the cold, rainy, and very unspring-like lunchtime of Monday the 14th of November, The Summit welcomed 123 year 7s from Dromana Secondary. Students were shown to their Cabin and Tent accommodation, and got a chance to settle in, before being greeted in the Lodge, where they met the epic coaching team who are going to be with them for the next two and a half days!

There, the year 7s learned the Five Keys of camp, which were like a recipe to success to take camp from a great time to an epic time! These keys were:

1. Have fun! - make every moment count!

2. Play all in! - don’t let your dreams be dreams, just do it!

3. Make lots of mistakes! - chances are, you haven’t done a lot of these activities at camp before, so it would be silly to think you do everything perfectly the first time, so at camp, we encourage mistakes, because that’s how we learn!

4. Get comfortable being uncomfortable! - just because activities might seem scary, give them a go because stepping out of your comfort zone is where the magic happens!

5. Don’t go home wondering what if! - make the most of every opportunity, and make sure you leave camp with no regrets!

After the important bits were out of the way, we made our way down into the park, to begin with, a game of 50 Up, then learned how to put on harnesses. We also learned a helpful goal-setting strategy called “Target, Stretch, Super Stretch” which would help us to break down overwhelming tasks into more manageable bite-sized chunks. Coach Adam explained this using fuzzy dice, a spider man mask, and a squeaky pig, which made it super memorable. So memorable in fact, that throughout camp when groups were asked what some of their goals were, they responded with “fuzzy dice, a spider man mask, and a squeaky pig” - nice.

Then without further ado, it was time to begin the action. Groups started with completing an initiative- a teamwork challenge, that helped established some team values. Personally, I started off with group Excellentils and they did the most impressive trick shot ever to get the golf ball into the bucket with the half pipe challenge. After the groups completed their challenges, they came up with some awesome and unique team names.

These were:

Group 1 - Sunbacks

Group 2 - The Exgalentils

Group 3 - Miley Cyrus Fanclub

Group 4 - Banshee Monkeys

Group 5 - Finger Noodles

Group 6- Rickety Rockety Water in My Pockety

Group 7 - Tre’ek

Group 8 - Numbers

Group 9 - Mud Rats

We dived into activities straight after the initiative challenges. These activities had teams climbing towers and leaning backward on the Summit Window, flying through the air on the Giant Swing, trusting one another in Trust Games, navigating their way through the park in Orienteering, walking across a nail board, and hanging out with Mitch the friendly python in Snakes and Nails, crawling through the darkness in the Cave, using teamwork to complete obstacles in the Snowy River Challenge, using creativity to gain points in Scavenger Hunt and climbing trees in High Wire!

Before the day was done, Sarah explained to us a camp tradition that involved writing GMICs. This involved recognizing and writing down something incredible, courageous, or kindness you witnessed someone do, then putting it in a box to be read out and acknowledged all throughout camp.

After two big activities to kick off camp, the day flew right before our eyes! Students were dismissed for some free time, however, teachers hung back for two epic rounds of Laser Skirmish, Coaches v Teachers. Although coaches demolished the first round, teachers brought home the win for round two. Congratulations!

Day two started off with reading some awesome GMICs and with learning what it means to set a daily intention. We all chose a word that we wanted to embody for that day. Some people chose that they wanted to be “brave” or “supportive” or to be the person that makes their team laugh! After some epic intentions were set it was time to get started. We began activities with a warm-up game of “Jockeys”, some campers who had been to The Summit before were horse riding professionals!

After some running around the world, piggyback practice, and epic pose setting, it was time to start activities. Awesome things were seen and done by all, incredible feats were achieved, and super stretches were blown out of the water!

Before we knew it, it was lunchtime. Following a delicious Chicken Tender Tuesday lunch, and one more rotation it was Monster Course time! This monster course is one of the events The Summit is most famous for, this is a massive test of teamwork, resilience, communication, and determination. However, that’s not all! After one spectacular lap, coaches broke the news that the winner of the course isn’t actually the team that completes it the first time.. however, it’s the team that comes together and improves the most on their SECOND LAP! So every single team rose to the challenge and did every single obstacle while carrying four car tires, AGAIN. Every single team had a whopping improvement time, another big well done to everyone.

The improvement times are as follows:

1. 5.25

2. 3.23

3. 5.47

4. 3.35

5. 3.07

6. 5.24

7. 7.54

8. 9.28

9. 6.56

Congratulations to Numbers for improving your first lap by the largest numbers, making them the winners!

The next day started with a session on gratitude. We learned all about the impact it can have on our days, to start by thinking about something we are grateful for. Then we jumped into action, straight into our last three activities. Although most were feeling absolutely knackered after a ginormous couple of days, the year sevens from Dromana Secondary worked hard to keep smashing goals and playing all in!

Camp ended with groups reflecting on highlights, and by voting for someone in their team who they had thought really embodied the five keys of camp. A massive congratulations to Joesph, Olivia, Vari, Milla, Miles, Lexi, Doug, Grace, Cohen, and Molly!

And just like that, camp was all wrapped up! A massive thank you to the entire cohort and teachers for being absolute legends, from all of us Summit staff we had an absolute blast this week, and we hope you did too!

Best of luck with the rest of 2022!

From coaches

Steph, Adam, Lina, Emily, Yves, Sarah, Bruce (ha, actually Marcus), and Sunny!

Scavenger Hunt results:

1.320

2.590

3.480

4.200

5.330

6.480

7.330

8.375

9.460

Snowy River Challenge times:

1. 11.27

2.34.37

3.22.00

4.17.37

5.28.31

6.22.50

7.21.00

8.18.34

9.19.39