When the buses rolled through the gates of The Summit on a hot and dry Wednesday morning, we were preparing for what was going to be an amazing week. The energy and enthusiasm from all the students were addictive and we loved it. The other coaches and I gathered in the Stadium with them to introduce ourselves and the Five Keys of camp, 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.
These keys are:
- Have Fun
- Play All In
- Make Lots of Mistakes
- Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
- Don’t Go Home Wondering “What If”
The Inflatables and the Rock Wall were the instant highlights, the High Wire was challenging, the Bush Challenge and Orienteering were epic, and our Scavenger Hunt was just fun. 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.
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 – Crispy Nugs
- Grp 2 – Win-ions
- Grp 3 – Wicked Wings
- Grp 4 – The Rizzlers
- Grp 5 – The brave screaming goats
- Grp 6 – The Summit Sixes
We gathered in the stadium after our first rotation to create a Tribe Identity by making a flag and creating a tribe chant. Each of the teams was incredibly creative and took so much pride in what they accomplished.
After games night and walk on Wednesday night, Thursday was kicked off with a morning Intentions chat from Kid President before getting straight into the next round of activities. The afternoon turned out to be very warm and muggy, but everyone was so into the activities we couldn’t tell.
After lunch we got a “call” from Gumbuya World and helped them track down some of their Magical Creatures. Everyone had an absolute blast, with Crispy Nugs leading the way!
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 The Brave Screaming Goats!
Friday started with another chat from Kid President about gratitude before a game of Pirates and our last two rotations.
After we wound up the last of our group challenges, 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 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 of St Thomas Primary School 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, Ant, Ennis, Simon, Laurie, Christopher, Taylor, Sam and Maddie.
