Water Sports Day
Watersports Day is the flip side of the team competition coin. Challenge day is held in the early part of the summer and Watersports day is held in the later part. Due to it’s timing (during this more “mellow” time of the summer) the feel of the event is considerably different… but the fun is the same. Team competitions will occur all over camp and will have a water theme. Sometimes the activity takes place in the lake or pool, sometimes on the blob or giant slide, and sometimes on the front lawn with squirt guns or musical water buckets.
We stroll around from activity to activity, cheering and chatting. It is a wonderful day spent in the sun, rest hour feels glorious after such a morning. This evening, weather permitting, we will enjoy the Syncronized Ballet Water Show. There is a high probability of rain… just a matter of timing. We think that we will “thread the needle” and enjoy a glorious show.
One of the charming aspects of a 99 year old camp is that some activities are plucked right out of a bygone era.
Syncronized Swimming is one of those activities. It is not taught at other camps (as far as I know) because it is very difficult to teach, difficult to learn, and difficult to provide a suitable venue. The moves require significant core body strength and a high level of swimming ability; finding instructors is very difficult and the movements requires a very deep and large pool. Program directors would say that there is no burning interest to learn such a sport and the cost, even if a lot of campers wanted to learn, would be prohibitive. Well… Syncronized Swimming was a big camp activity 99 years ago and it remains so today.
About two hundred campers took syncronized swimming this summer (a record). The girls who take it RAVE about how great it is. They enjoy the exercise, enjoy the “dance moves” in the water, enjoy the music (our sound system is amazing), and enjoy their friends. The net effect is one of the best EP’s of the summer!
We will file into the Pool Complex (we built in bleachers big enough for the whole camp just for this EP) after shoppe, enjoying the golden light of the early evening. The setting is wonderful. Golden sunlight filtering through the large sycamore trees by the lake as the sun slowly sets behind the mountains, as much a part of the show as the campers. The sky will turn a dozen shades of red and purple as the production ends. We will go back to our cabins in the dark; the first stars of the evening coming out as the fireflies rise from the lawn.
Moments like this will shine in our memories fifty years from now. We are in a great place with great people; the very definition of “the good old days”. Thank you for making this possible. The Watershow will be posted on our Livestream this evening around 7:30.
- Breakfast: Pancakes and link sausage
- Lunch: Chicken Picatta and mushroom rosoto
- Dinner: Second Annual Wiener Dog Social Picnic
We hope you are enjoying your last weekend “of freedom”. I, for one, wish that we had another month. Camp is so much fun, so good… it is a shame it has to end.
Blessings to you all.