Mount Lilydale Mercy College Year 9 Camp 1 Blog

On Monday the 20th of March we welcomed the group of Year 9 legends from Mt Lilydale Mercy College. It was a pleasure to have you all. Thank you for driving all this way to unleash your greatness. So many students pushed themselves outside of their comfort zones on multiple occasions. You should all be very proud of yourselves. Over camp, there were many cool things to be learned. Such as The Summit's Five Keys and setting targets, stretches, and super starches.

5 Keys:

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

Many of the students played all in and used these keys on numerous occasions. So well done to you all, we hope you keep using these Five Keys and keep having all the FUN!

To start camp off the students played a fun game of 50 Up. Once our bodies were warmed up it was time to split off into our groups. In total there were 10 groups. Each team had an initiative to complete in 10 minutes and had the opportunity to create a team name. To those who successfully completed the challenge well done, to those who didn’t, it led to a productive debrief of things to improve on for the next activity. Once the student learned how to put on the harnesses it was time to rock and roll.

The afternoon consisted of swinging on the tallest12-meter Giant Swing in Victoria, working together as a team to complete all the obstacles at the Snowy River Challenge, racing each other through Inflatable City, balancing along the Sky Bridge, leaping for the 12 meter bar at The Leap of Faith, flying over The Summit's lake on the Flying Fox, navigating through the dark narrow Cave, collecting all the points on the Scavenger Hunt, finding the Orientation points and getting an adrenalin rush from climbing the big tower on to the Summit Window (18 meters) climbing up 2 more meters to then lean back and let go with 2 hands and 1 leg. Talk about stretching yourselves out of your comfort zones.

The joy of having a few groups meant that there where a range of activities that required different skill sets. To those who challenged themselves and stepped outside their comfort zones, well done!!! That’s what it’s all about.

Again, for those who hit their super stretches. You should all be very proud of yourselves. We hope that you keep giving everything your very best. After some well-deserved dinner, it was time to attend a mindset belief session run by Liam and our very own Summit Program Coordinator. We are very passionate about helping young students find their true selves, so what better way than considering empowering and limiting beliefs? And then breaking through their boards. Before we knew it, it was time for bed.

After a good night’s sleep and some delicious breakfast, it was time to start the day off by setting ourselves a morning intention. As the saying goes 'win the morning, win the day'. We hope by thinking about who you wanted to be for the day and how you wanted to show up, helped you achieve some incredible super stretches.

We played many games to get our bodies moving- Huckle Buckle was the first-morning game we played. As the day rolled on we continued to challenge ourselves and achieve goals that seemed impossible. “time flies when you’re having fun”. And that it did, after lunch, it was time to get stuck back into our activities again. This day consisted of 6 rotations and The Summit's very own NIGHT MONSTER Course. Not only did the students complete the course ONCE but TWICE. What an incredible job! Each team was timed, the first lap was to see how fast they could go and the second was to see how much faster they could run the lap when they were wet, tired, and dirty. The mud run is all about reliance and seeing what you are truly capable of when you feel like you have nothing left in the tank. From there we got to finish with the water slide. What a way to bring the night to a close. Safe to say all the students were excited to jump in the warm shower and get a good night’s rest.

As the next morning rolled around, we spent time with Ash one of our coaches thinking about all the things, we get to be grateful for in our world. We checked in with our friends to see what they had to be grateful for before sharing a few with the cohort. When you take a second every day to think about all the things you have to be grateful for it's hard to be sad. Thank you to those who shared a few things they were grateful for. Remember to remind ourselves not to take the little things for granted.

It was then time to finish off our last two activities. Even though some of you were feeling a little tired and sore you didn’t let that stand in your way of giving the last two activities your very best. Incredible resilience was shown by all.

To complete our final debrief we asked the students to vote for one person in the group who they believed truly embraced all of The Summit's Five Keys. Congratulation to the following students: (see table)

RESULTS:

VALUES WINNERS:

Incredible efforts Legends!

We want to wish you all the very best for the school year, thank you for writing lots of GMIC’S. keep giving them to one another when you get back to school.

All the best,

From The Summit team in Blue