Mordialloc College Year 7 Blog

It has been absolutely fantastic having the students from Mordialloc College this week. Mordialloc College year after year is one of the largest programs The Summit camps host, so excitement was shared all around as we welcomed 230 Year 7 students on Wednesday! Wow!

The Summit coaches were absolutely thrilled to see some familiar faces, some campers had returned from when they first visited 9 months ago with Chelsea Heights 2021. These legends knew the ropes of camp and proved themselves to be fantastic leaders to all newcomers.

Soon after arriving we had a brief introduction to the camp and learnt what our Five Key values are here at The Summit. Here are our 5 ingredients for a recipe for an epic camp:

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

We sprung into action shortly afterwards as we jumped into our activity groups. The first activity of camp was an opportunity to get to know our teammates, then put our heads together to create some unique and inspiring team names!

The groups came up with the following names:

1. Golden Nuggets

2. Pink Pingu

3. Elmo’s World

4. Greg

5. Bull Ants

6. Material People

7. Blueberries

8. Patrick

9. MoleRats

10. Ben 10

11. Crocodiles

12. Just Better

13. Summit Superheroes

14. Tree Top Monkeys

Over the next two and a half days the campers all got to participate in 7 awesome activities AND our epic Monster Course.

In those activities we found ourselves zipping over the lake on the Flying Fox, feeling our way through the darkness in the pitch-black Cave, leaping towards a bar 15m in the air for the Leap of Faith, climbing trees in High Wire, navigating our way around camp in Orienteering, having lots of fun in Scavenger Hunt, using advanced tactics in Laser Skirmish, jumping through the Inflatables, walking across an actual bed of nails and holding a snake for Snakes and Nails, balancing across the Skybridge, swinging through the air on one of Victoria’s largest Giant Swings, using our problem solving for the Bush Challenge and working together to compete for the fastest time in the Relay and Snowy River Challenge.

Even though some of these activities seemed quite overwhelming and scary, the campers learnt a strategy we can always use to break down any challenges we might have. This goal-setting strategy is called Target, Stretch and Super Stretch and we used it in almost every activity in order to break it down and achieve our best.

Even though day one of camp the weather was a sweltering 35 degrees, we saw team Bullants dived into the teamwork relay challenge where they learnt the helpful skills of communication and working together as a team. We also saw Team Greg start camp off with the adrenaline rush of the Giant Swing! Talk about being thrown into the deep end of camp!

Day two we started off with learning how to set an intention with Ash as she suggested setting intentions for the day is like how the bus driver used a map to get us to camp.

From there on the pace at camp really started to pick up as all 14 teams conquered three whole activity rotations and our famous Monster Course.

Some awesome snippets from day two were when I saw Team Summit Superheroes take some heroic leaps on the Leap of Faith when we heard lots of laughter from group Golden Nuggets in the Inflatables and witnessed Patrick use their problem-solving skills to fly through the Bush Challenge.

After lunch, the teams completed two awe-inspiring laps of our famous Monster Course. The teams played all in to complete the entire course two times! Some were surprised to learn that here at the Summit we actually do the course twice in order to see what we are capable of when we are totally exhausted and think there’s nothing left we could do. The winning team of the Monster challenge isn’t about the team who completes it the fastest in the first lap but the team who worked together to improve their time the most on the second lap.

Every single team showed their incredible resilience, strength, and determination when they all beat their first time by a long shot! Well done to everybody!

On day three, coach Ella started our day off with an insightful speech on gratitude, teaching us the importance of looking at all the wonderful opportunities we have in our lives. After that, we all felt inspired to finish those last activities to the best of our abilities even though we were all feeling exhausted! On the last day of camp, the coaches said some of their highlights were seeing both teams on the Snowy River Challenge support each other so phenomenally as well as Team Just Better absolutely conquer the nail board in Snakes and Nails.

At the end of camp, each team voted for one person in their team that showed all of the Summit Five Key values. The person from each team got an incredible lap in our WW2 army tank, and we all got to watch as it crash a car!

Bush Challenge:

Group 8. 24.16

Group 9.25.14

Group 10.33.03

Group 11.31.57

Group 12.24.24

Group 13.31.31

Group 14.32.43

Snowy River Challenge:

Group 1. 17.58

Group 2. 32.46

Group 3. 53.42

Group 4.45.45

Group 5.27.54

Group 6. 41.00

Group 7. 29.15

Thanks so much to all the amazing students and teachers of Mordialloc College. It’s been an absolute pleasure. We wish you all the best for 2022 and the future!

From: Ash, Liam, Steph, Rohan, Shan, Zoe, Mim, Mesh, Mason, Shane, Ella, Sophie, Sarah, Adam, Centauri and Sunny.