Trafalgar High School Year 8 Camp Blog

On the 26th of April, The Summit was lucky enough to be a part of Trafalgar HS year 8 camp! You brought so many highlights for students, teachers, and coaches, but above all your school brought us such an epic bunch of humans – we had the best time getting to know you all and your teachers weren’t lying when they said you were an amazing cohort, it was so lovely to work with you over the three days.

On the Monday you all arrived at Tent Village, Logan and Sarah could not wait to meet you all! Logan introduced you to our Five Keys that helped you push yourselves and have an epic journey during your time at 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

We hope you use these in your day-to-day life out in the real world!

Suddenly it was time to jump into our first activities! We started with initiatives that threw you into the deep end in terms of teamwork and setting goals on what we wanted to work on in our individual groups. After those activities, we had our group names! From here on out you were known as:

1. The Gorgeouliscious Girls

2. Not Deadness

After we finished our initiatives, I shared with you an epic way to break things down into three steps, and how to set really cool goals. The way we did this was with something called ‘Target, Stretch and Super Stretch’. I told you that a target was something we knew we could definitely do, a stretch was something we could do if we pushed ourselves and a super stretch was something we thought was impossible, the thing we were avoiding. With this in our toolbox of strategies, we headed off to our first two activities for camp: Giant Swing and Scavenger Hunt! Giant Swing was an epic way to throw you all straight into the higher, more thrilling activities we have to offer! I hope you had the best time ever on our swing! Scavenger Hunt was focused a lot on how we worked together as a team and how we could improve our skills as a group.

Day two was intense! We started by setting ourselves intentions on how we wanted our days to go and then we played a big game of Farmyard Animals, then we headed straight off to our new activities! As you walked over to the activities, you may not have realized the meaning behind them or the reason why we were doing them other than fun. It wasn’t until we sat down in our debriefs and spoke about our experiences and how we could relate them back to the real world that we see the lessons. We had some really cool conversations happening, especially on Wednesday, when you really started to realize your own growth over the last three days. Your next activities on Tuesday were: Snowy River Challenge, Trust Games, Tash’s Ladder, and Orienteering. Snowy was all about working as a team and problem-solving on the fly, you were under pressure to get the fastest time. Trust Games was focused on… trust! Trusting your team and backing yourself throughout the activity, we had some awesome conversations at the end of Trust Games and I hope you took something from that activity back to school. Orienteering was similar to Scavenger Hunt except you got to experience it in smaller groups that you were able to form yourselves. Lastly, Tash’s Ladder was an awesome way to experience something high all by yourself, when you’re up there it's surreal how it feels and I hope you had some epic debriefs about some awesome things, I always love tying Tash’s back to how helpful setting your Target, Stretches and Super Stretches are and how effectively you’re setting them.

After you got to try those activities it was time for an epic, long-awaited Monster Course! We got absolutely filthy, we had so much fun and you all pushed yourselves as hard as you could! You got an awesome time for your first lap, but then we broke it to you that throughout all of camp, we were pushing you to be incredible humans and doing things you never thought you could’ve done before, so off we went again! We did a second lap and it was so epic, you pushed your boundaries yet again, is probably the biggest way you ever could! You worked incredibly as a team, you worked out how you could be a little faster in places but above all you looked out for and supported each other the best you could and the results were awesome!

On Friday it dawned on us that we would have to say goodbye, so Logan jumped in front of you all and spoke to you about gratitude. Use gratitude and intentions in your own lives and see what happens! You got to play a big group game of Pirates, then it was onto two last epic activities, Leap of Faith and Inflatables! Leap of Faith had some inspiring debriefs around focus, remembering that what you are focusing on usually occurs. Please remember that lesson and start playing around with it – it goes pretty much hand in hand with setting an intention. Inflatables was an awesome way to break up your day for a little bit of fun! Unfortunately, when it came to the last couple of things for camp. Your values winners got the incredible opportunity of riding in our World War 2 army tank after being nominated by their groups for sticking to our Five Keys the most over camp – you should be immensely proud of yourselves Tilly and Baxter! Then it was time for our last goodbyes and you were on the bus.

Logan and I were so grateful that your school chose The Summit for your camp, you brought the most incredible attitudes and you pushed yourselves so much! We are so beyond grateful for how hard you tried, how much growth you experienced, and how much fun we all had during your camp. Continue being incredible humans, don’t forget the lessons you learned, and keep pushing your comfort zone, you’re all going to do some incredible stuff when you get back to school!

And thank you so much for teaching us that Rock Game, we’re still obsessed! Our current records are:

Sarah – 5 in hand, catching my 6th

Logan – 7 in hand, catching his 8th

We will both be beating your school record of 9 in a couple of weeks, just you wait.

From,

Your family in blue – Sarah and Logan!