Behind the Scenes: Planning for a COVID Summer

Zooming, Zooming…and more Zooming:

Not only did many of our weekly staff meetings move online, we also spent countless hours in Zoom conferences leading up to the summer. Our professional camping association hosted webinars, the nursing division of the camping association hosted medically-focused events, our local NC group of camps met regularly, and so on. Each week, multiple members of our Head Staff team were watching or participating in some sort of learning session to get us up to speed on what was going on in the camping-specific COVID world.

Following the news:

Never have we watched the news more (guessing many of you can agree?!). We watched for vaccine updates that might affect our camp counselors and campers and followed closely the restrictions set in place by the state of North Carolina, CDC, and DHEC. With rapt attention, we traced pediatric illnesses and followed along with updates from the American Association of Pediatrics. Every morning felt like it began with a “did you see this article last night?” or “did you catch this on the news?”

Throwing everything out the window:

Camp as we knew it was over (maybe a tad dramatic, but it sure felt that way at the time!). Everything had to change. During a typical off-season, we spend so much time talking through the smallest details to try to make them better, but never have we started from scratch on so much. We began by asking the most basic of questions: so, if we can’t eat in the Dining Hall, where are we going to eat? If cabins have to stay in cohorts, can counselors even teach classes? If North Carolina doesn’t allow campers to come from out-of-state, will we have any campers? We asked so many questions like these, having no idea where to begin.

Dividing up the research:

One thing we always say at camp: we have a great team! And we really do. We started by dividing up the brainstorming: Jimboy took the facility, Dr. Margaret the health stuff, Laura looked at the daily schedule, Sarah focused on events and spaces, Ellen-Anne delved into program, Catherine into the staff experience, Alli researched eating and food options…and we were off to the races.

We each started with a blank sheet of paper and mapped out all kinds of crazy scenarios. Looking back, some of our ideas really were wild: eating in shifts where campers sat in the Dining Hall and the Fine Arts center, moving the Greystone Store off property, shutting down all of the ice huts in camp. But some of those original, wild ideas became reality during the summer: drive-thru drop-off on Opening Day, building an entirely new building for meals, allowing girls to try every class in camp with their cabin group.

Pivoting again and again:

Just when we thought we were close to figuring out how something would work, the guidelines would change…again. It felt like an impossible task – planning for a summer when your target was constantly moving. To combat this, we ended up accounting for all scenarios. If A happens, then we will follow this plan. However, if it shifts to B, then here is our new plan. If B & C happen at the same time, then we’re going to go down this route. It was crazy – coming up with so many different options – but it helped us immensely to have already pre-planned for many scenarios.

Collaborating with other camps:

The camps in our general area are all friends; we have known the camp directors for years and are very friendly with their year-round staffs. However, in a typical year, we all do our own thing, each having perfected our individual camp experience for our camp families. With COVID, all of that changed. None of us knew what we were doing, so it was wonderful to reconnect closely with so many different camps in our area, and camps farther away that are similar to us. “What are you doing about staff days off?” “How are you planning to test campers?” “How are you obtaining PPE supplies for your nurses?” It felt like we were all in it together.

Communicating with our families:

We have always been a camp of many words (we love sending things in the mail and posting on our Blog!), but we knew that if families were going to send their girls to camp in 2021, our parents needed to feel confident in us and our plan. Same with our staff – if they were going to come work, our staff had to know the expectations. We created a massive communication calendar (that was often changing) to make sure we had mapped out how we were going to communicate (via email, text, phone, mailing, newsletter, etc.) and when we were going to send out those communications. Sometimes we wanted to pull our hair out (especially when we had 6 different types of communication going out in a 3-day period), but it also helped us stay the course and meet deadlines for ourselves.

Racing to the finish line:

It wasn’t until early May that certain aspects of the puzzle fell into place, and it felt like a non-stop race to get everything ready. We all moved to camp earlier than ever (at the end of April) and even brought in some Group Leaders to help. We woke with the sun and began work immediately, and we could often be found staying up well into the night trying to keep up with the crazy (don’t worry, we often had an adult beverage in hand…at least until the summer began). It was all systems go, and we pushed hard to get there.

Looking back at what it took to plan for a COVID summer feels surreal. Did we really just do this? Did that really happen last spring? Were we really talking about that only 8 months ago? It’s all a little blurry around the edges for all of us…and that’s probably a good thing. Mostly, the great success of the summer – due mainly to the overwhelming blessing and protection from the Lord – makes us all look back and say, “it was worth it!”