Maranatha Christian College Year 5 & 6 Camp Blog

When Maranatha Christian College’s buses rolled through the gates of The Summit on an unusually overcast Wednesday morning, we were preparing for what was going to be an amazing week. The energy and enthusiasm of all the students were addictive and we loved it. The other coaches and I gathered in the Lodge with them to introduce ourselves and our Five Keys (Have Fun, Play All In, Make Mistakes, Get Comfortable being Uncomfortable, and Don’t Go Home Wondering What If), 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.

The Inflatables and the Flying Fox were the instant highlights, the High Wire and Rock Wall were challenging, the Bush Challenge and the Abseiling were epic, and our Scavenger Hunt was just fun. There were definitely many personal boundaries pushed and fears overcome, especially with the dizzying heights of the Abseiling Tower, with too many kids to mention pushing beyond what they first thought they were not capable of, especially Sethmi, who dominated the Rock Wall, conquering the difficult wall and inclined to be the only one to make it to the top!

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 the groups were either happy to stick to what they had arranged before coming to camp or came up with new ones themselves, and these were the results:

Grp 1 - Potato Rats

Grp 2 - Da Divers

Grp 3 - The Lorax

Grp 4 - The Climbers

Grp 5 - The Mountain Goats

Grp 6 - Dino Nuggies

Grp 7 - Dream Team

As Coaches, we also had the privilege to be introduced to one of the most amazing little humans we have met in a long time, Poppy. Her attitude and perspective on life were an incredible inspiration to many of us as an example of never letting anything get in the way of what you want. It was so heartwarming to see how the whole school helped in making sure her experiences were just the same as everyone else's and the smiles she gave us when conquering everything she was faced with were smiles we will never forget!

After an evening night walk and Minute-to-win-it competition on Wednesday, Thursday was kicked off with a morning Intentions chat from Kid President before getting straight into the next round of activities. The afternoon turned out to be a bit wet and warm, but everyone was so into the activities we couldn’t tell.

Thursday afternoon we also embarked on our epic Monster Course, a mud run around the grounds of The Summit involving tyres, charades, mud, cargo nets, holey buckets, mud, a ball pit, and more mud! 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 the Potato Rats!

Friday started with another chat from the Kid President about Gratitude before we wrapped up the activities for each of the tribes.

After we wound up the last of our group challenges, we then 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 and points 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 the parents, teachers, and students of Maranatha Christian 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, Spinks, Sophie, Sunny, Aron, Jacob, Odile and Liam