Mt Eliza SC Year 7 Camp Blog

When the buses rolled through the gates of The Summit on a warm and extremely exciting Monday morning, we were preparing for what was going to be an amazing week. We weren’t quite ready for how prepared the awesome teaching staff were so about halfway through our teachers' meeting, we knew the week was going to be something special. The other coaches and I gathered in the Lodge with them to introduce ourselves and our Five Keys of 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 Flying Fox, Leap of Faith, and the Giant Swing were the instant highlights, Rock Wall and High Wire were tough ones, the Summit Window was challenging just to get up to, the Snowy River Challenge, Bush Challenge, and the Laser Skirmish were epic, Cave was a bonding experience and Inflatable City, and the Scavenger Hunt were just fun. There were many personal boundaries pushed and fears overcome, with too many kids to mention pushing beyond what they first thought they were capable of.

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 these are their new tribe names:

Grp 1 - Grizzly Rizzlers

Grp 2 - Betters Seagulls

Grp 3 - Tax Evaders

Grp 4 - Fire 4 in The Microwave

Grp 5 - Jim Bobs

Grp 6 - Vegemites

Grp 7 - Kung Fu Panda

Grp 8 - The Goaties

Grp 9 - Racing Cains

Grp 10 - Zesty Zingers

Grp 11 - Drake

Grp 12 - Dirty Water

Evening activities were a collection of adventures including a bush walk, Trivia Night, Talent Show, and the epic Minute-To-Win-It, and Tuesday was kicked off with a morning Intentions chat about how your actions can impact those around you before getting straight into the next round of activities.

Tuesday afternoon we also embarked on our epic Monster Course, a run around the grounds of The Summit involving tyres, charades, mud, Bruce, a ball pit, mud, barbed wire, and a whole lot of dirt that got everywhere! 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 Jim Bobs.

Wednesday started with another chat about gratitude before completing our final rotations and wrapping up the camp.  We 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 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 from Mt Eliza Secondary 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, Logan, Sam, Mim, Zoe, Cal, Cheyanne, Sophie, Odile, Luke, Jacob, and Liam