Finished Camp on the 23rd and left on the morning of the 24th August heading to Mineapolis, after working there for about 3 months. When 1st arrived on the 29th of May it was 1o'clock in the morning and so everyone was in bed, but when woke up the next morning bright and early at 7:30 I instantly had 5/6 people introduce themselves and at breakfast had a load more introduce themselves, which didn't really help me as I instantly forgot most of their names, but that was the start of a great summer
The 1st day I had archery training and that started straight after breakfast and then carried on after dinner so the 1st day I barely saw anything of Camp apart from between the cabin and the dining hall and the dining hall and the archery range. The next day however I got a tour of the Camp and found out were everything was and helped with work crews for a couple of hours and then in the afternoon we had AD/AS training and this lasted for 5 days and was so we could get everything ready for our activity and learn more about how the activities ran.
On the 5th of June OSD started (Orientation Staff Development), and this was were we learnt how the normal day worked and how cabins worked and everything to do with Camp. During this time we also got to do different activities giving the AD/AS's a chance to pratice running their activity areas. I got to try windsurfing during this period which was good, unfortunately there was very little wind so couldn't actually go any where but could practice how to stand on the board and how to turn. OSD lasted 10 days and on about the 13th I think we got put into the cabins we would be in for the 1st session and I got placed in Kingfisher (KFC) with Scott, Chris, Jackson and Spencer. I was in the upper chalet with Jackson and then Chris, Scott and Spencer were in the centre chalet. KFC is the biggest cabin on Camp and the center chalet is huge, the only trouble is the lighting isn't very good so it can seem a bit gloomy. I was also in KFC for the 2nd session but got to move down stairs, and there was Kyle, Justin and Taylor as the counselors in the cabin and then we also had an LT2 Walter in the cabin with us.
The 15th was the 1st day of activities and the 1st time of running archery with campers and overall it went ok, but was a bit slow getting campers shooting as had to find out if anyone had shot and gained awards at archery before and then get the campers to their ranges and then assign bows and staff to ranges dependant on the numbers of campers, and as most of the staff hadn't ever done archery before and they were not sure what to do, but I had thought of this already and had produced a step by step guide on how to run a range and so I gave this to each staff member and it meant they could run the range the same as everyone else. I also wasn't sure on which bows were best at which range and so this took some extra time to work out. but the 2nd day ran quicker and the 3rd day ran well as everyone knew were they were meant to be.
About halfway through the 1st session the maintenance got the field archery targets out and into positions and then I just went around and repositioned any that I considered could be better, but overall they set them up in very good places. They even had a platform to shoot from at a dinosuar, bear and leopard. In total there were about 15 targets throughout the woods. Once this was all set up I then tested it out with the 2 best archers had at archery during the 1st session and they enjoyed it and it seemed to work so opened it up to anyone who had their Bowman Sharpshooter or higher award, as it was very easy to break or lose an arrow in the woods so needed people who were competent shooting. During the 1st session we were shooting some aluminium arrows which were not very good and bent easily so we soon ran out of them and just shot the normal wooden ones, but for the 2nd session Rugg's brought some carbon arrows which cost about $7 each. These worked alot better but we still ended up losing/breaking about 15/20 of them in 4 weeks. Generally had between 3-8 archers per block for field archery which was a good number as only had 1 left handed compound bow and 4 right handed ones.
Had a few competitions for archery during the 8 weeks for the first 4 week session had a competition against the girls Camp and they won by 3 point average but we had archers shooting 40 + 50 yards and they had 2 more archers than us shooting 15yards so they had easier targets, so if had been shooting the same would of beaten them easily. We faced the girls again during the 2nd 4 weeks and that time we did really thrash them by about 200 points and they had 2 extra archers than us. During the 2nd session we also had a competition against Camp Chippewa and didn't realise how serious they took archery and they brought there best archers and beat us by a fair bit but the one camper on 20yrds did draw in 1st place on that range.
During each 4 week sessions we have colour wars once in the first 2 weeks and once in the second two weeks. For Colour wars the whole camp is split in half and you are either red or BLUE. I'm blue. The 1st day of colour wars is mainly team based and you do different activities and score points. The second day is more individual based and you score points again and then the team with the most points get a head start in the relay in the afternoon. For the relay everyone on the team does something and it goes around the whole camp and at the end the Team captains have to build a fire to burn through a rope. I only worked colour wars the 1st session and blue team won that time and then the second session red team won for the 1st time in something like 4 years.
Colour wars and the other special days like around the world were you are split into teams and each assigned a country and then you have to go around in your team doing activities, and Carnival which is when get a load of inflatables etc, are all run and organised by the LT's which are technically still campers but are on a Leadership Training course with camp to become counselor and the course runs over 2 years, and the people who do it are only 15/16. The LT's also have to Max and Min in different activities and both session I had 2 maxing and one mining in archery and they have requirements they have to meet, but basically for maxing they have to be able to run an archery session, and know some basic things about archery such as equipment maintenance and coaching techniques. They also have to do alot of other work writing journals etc, but they were really good at archery and you could easily forget how young they were and only 1 year older than the seniors. the program is strict about who it has and they only have about 8 LT1's each session and only 4/5 LT2's the whole summer I think it was.
The weather during the summer was really nice the 1st session, and I never had to cancel an archery session but during the 2nd session the weather was more turbulent and generally it was nice but I did have to cancel archery a couple of times and on the 27th the whole of the morning activities were cancelled and we had to stay in the cabins until lunch time.
I did get to do windsurfing again during the 2nd session, as I was told I had to do another activity for a period so chose windsurfing and that was good meant for the 4th period for 3 days got to go down the waterfront. Chose a good block to do it aswell as it was sunny everyday. By the end of the 3rd day I had learnt how to turn round after watching the campers and copying them.
Did Clout archery in the last block of the 2nd session meant to do it before but never got around to it. it was good except it was a bit of a walk and so if did it again next year would have to have it over two periods. But it was good to actually try clout archery, and while doing that had Jon Hamre run the normal archery session has he had been for the last couple of blocks when I was doing Field archery so as many campers could do archery as possible.
After the normal camp was finished I went and did Family Camp which was on girls camp and that was good, there was lots of cake all day and the day was alot less structured with more free time. I would like to try Co-ed as with family camp they didn't have to turn up to activities on time or at all so it made it difficult getting everyone started and getting the session to run smoothly, also the girls equipment is not as good as the boys and they don't have many big bows they have alot of the small rubbish ones.
Overall really enjoyed my time and camp and want to go back next year as now I know how everything works I can do an even better job, and the people who worked there were great and made some good new friends, some of whom I plan to visit while travelling.
