Sirius College Year 7 Camp Blog

When the buses from Sirius College rolled through the gates of The Summit on an unusually warm Wednesday morning, we were preparing for what was going to be an amazing week and looking forward to all the familiar faces of your amazing staff. The energy and enthusiasm of all the students was almost out of control and we loved it. 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.

High Wire and the Summit Window were the instant highlights, the Snowy River Challenge was a real revelation, with many taking one look at the water they had to traverse and trying to run away, and Laser Skirmish was just fun (well, maybe not for Retaj). There were definitely many personal boundaries pushed and fears overcome, with too many kids to mention pushing beyond what they first thought they were capable of.

It was obvious to see that one of the themes for the camp was going to be confidence in yourself and not always assuming the worst, which was difficult for so many of our campers at first, but once it became evident to them that they were more capable of getting dirty or wet or up high or into dark spaces than they first thought, the self-belief of every one of the students blossomed!

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 the names they came up with:

Grp 1 - GOATs

Grp 2 - The Potato Cakes

Grp 3 - Krankenwagen

Grp 4 - Fanum Taxes

After an evening Night Walk on Wednesday, Thursday was kicked off with a morning intentions chat about how even the smallest of gestures can change your day as well as the day of those around you, before getting straight into the next round of activities. The day turned out fantastically, which was surprising, but very happily received.

Before lunch we had the opportunity to start another round of activities, this time introducing the students to our epic Giant Swing, dark and creepy Cave experience, exciting Inflatable City, and the dizzying but awesome Leap of Faith! It was so awesome to see the bravery of every student that gave it a go!

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 Potato Cakes, who were cooking all the way through it, and didn’t come out as flat as what we expected!!

Friday started with a chat from Spinks about gratitude, with some help from Kid President, before we completed our round of activities. 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 for each of the recordable activities.  We gathered on the stage to say our thank you's 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 Sirius College for an awesome camp. 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, Ant, Aron, Jacob and Liam