Preston HS Year 9 Camp Blog

On the stunning morning of Monday the 5th of February 2024, The Summit welcomed back the year nine students and teachers of Preston High School. 

Students were promptly shown to their accommodation, where they would be staying for the next couple of days! After they got settled, they were welcomed into the Lodge by coach Spinks, who gave an introduction to camp and the coaches! Tim introduced; Adam, Logan, Sam, Mim, Cal, Like, Sam P, Jakob, Aron, Odile, Sara, and leader Spinks!  Then handed it over to Adam to give out the Summit’s very own recipe to the best camp ever, and the ingredients to that were the Five Keys of camp. These keys are: 

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 

Without further ado, we all headed down to the activities hub and started with a game of 50 Up.

Campers started their first activity with an Initiative Challenge that involved working together to solve a puzzle. This tested teamwork and leadership, but teams rose to the challenge! Then we moved on to our first activity rotation. The activities that campers got to do at camp were: Giant Swing, Snowy River Challenge, Abseiling, Cave, Sky Bridge, Laser Skirmish, Flying Fox, Bush Challenge, Rock Wall, Inflatables, Leap of Faith, and Snake and Nails.  This range of activities challenged people’s bravery, team spirit, support, trust creativity, and problem-solving skills (to name a few!) 

Coaches Odile and Spinks taught everyone how to put on a helmet and harness, followed by Logan explaining to everyone an epic goal-setting strategy (target, stretch, and super stretch) that would help us to grow our comfort zones and conquer challenging activities. 

At the end of the day, the campers were informed about the timings for dinner and brekkie, as well as free time areas, they also were introduced to a camp tradition called GMICs, which stands for “Great Moments in Camp” - this is all about writing down and acknowledging some of the awesome moments we’ve seen. 

Day two started with an epic talk about setting a morning intention and learning about how important it is to choose to focus on the things we can control, and get the most out of every day (but especially at camp).

When we got down into the park, we got all warmed up with a group game called Crane, Tiger, Egg, and then leaped into three legendary activity rotations. Even though the weather was rainy, this didn’t stop students because they powered through, smashing goals and having all the fun. 

After lunch, we smashed out one more rotation, and then it was time to do the famous Monster Course. This was a feat of teamwork, strength, and resilience as students completed a huge first lap but were shocked to find out that the winning team wasn’t the fastest, but the team that improved the most on their SECOND LAP. 

As the last day rolled around Coach Logan took the kids through a gratitude session, where the students were asked to think about who and or what makes them feel. I am grateful to ‘check back in’ for the last two rotations of activities to go. The group game played was Jockeys to warm the students up and as the final two rotations.

 As they came to a close, the students were asked to vote for someone in their tribe who represented/Embodied the five keys the most throughout camp. (These are listed below along with the results) 

On behalf of the Summit and crew, we would like to once again say thank you for coming a playing all in, all the best for the rest of the year.