Star of the Sea - A Letter Blog

To the incredible Star of the Sea students and staff, because you had a little bit of a different camp I thought it would be epic to write you a little bit of a different blog. All of the blogs you can read are a formal-ish rendition of your days at The Summit, but I wanted to write you all a letter.

First things first – I would love to express my gratitude for you all being so flexible when I hurt my thumb, it was so cool to know that you got a taste of so many different coaching styles, I hope you learned something different with every person you met!

You all absolutely crushed camp, yes I, unfortunately, was not with you for the entire time but I heard about how incredibly you all pushed yourselves and were so open to trying new things, you should all be super proud! I love how you get to do the activity and then tie it all back together in the debrief, I hope you got to take something out of each activity even if it was something small. Usually, the common takeaways are ‘the first step is the hardest’ or there’s a big emphasis on trust during Abseil and Highwire. For Cave, I think it’s really epic how you can have such awesome takeaways from an activity that doesn’t seem too intense. For those of us who were nervous in the Cave, the lesson sometimes is that there’s always an ending, sometimes it’s hard to see but eventually, every uncomfortable situation will come to an end, and for those of us who weren’t nervous the main lesson there is to be nice and quiet so everyone gets the same experience. Bush Challenge, I heard was a little challenging for us as a team, and please know that that’s normal! Bush heavily emphasized teamwork, and how we can become aware of the things we’d like to work on to take our teamwork from good to unforgettable! Tash’s Ladder was super impactful for a couple of you, it’s a different type of uncomfortable because you can’t see the person holding your rope, so again there’s a bit of trust needed there as well. But a lot of the time Tash’s is a really helpful tool when it comes to setting ‘Target, Stretches, and Super Stretches’. We hope Laser Skirmish was a cool way to break up your intense day with a little bit of healthy competition and fun. And then the Leap of Faith was all about making that jump, jumping towards that one thing you want. I love Leap, it’s one of my favorites because it is super cool to look back at what we were focusing on and what happened afterward, for example: if you were focused on nothing but the bar, chances are you’d grab it. if you were focused on reasons why you ‘couldn’t’ catch the bar chances are you weren’t going to catch it. and for those of you that didn’t have a clear focus, it could’ve gone either way. But please know that regardless of what happened when you were up there, the fact you gave it a go is incredible! And then, lastly, our killer Monster Course! You guys absolutely demolished the course, you left everything out on those activities and it was a pleasure to run it with you. Our improvement time was just over 17 minutes! How unbelievable is that! We hope you all understand why we did the second lap, and I hope you learned something from it, you aced it.

The way you all looked after each other and were nudging everyone to be their best selves was so inspiring, I do not envy the person who has to choose which of you legends would get the trophy! Hopefully, you’ll continue using the ‘Target, Stretch, and Super Stretch’ strategy to help you in your personal lives, and keep using our Five Keys! If you have fun, play all in, make mistakes, become comfortable with those uncomfortable feelings and you won’t have any regrets at the end of the day, I think you’ll have a pretty incredible time!

Thank you so much for bringing such amazing attitudes to your two-day camp, best of luck for the rest of the year!

Sarah and your family in blue.