Focus and Fun

August 8, 2016 by Don Gentle

Today’s Pictures

I always tell the parents that projectiles and adolescent boys go hand in hand.  There are 115 boys signed up for riflery and archery.  The boys truly love this sport.  Even the dads on Father-Son Weekend get excited about this activity.  What I also tell parents is there is no other place where you also have full attention of the boys.  They uphold all the rules with the utmost respect.  You rarely have to tell them to do anything twice.  Part of this is because they want to shoot so much, but the other part is…well they really want to shoot again.  There is also no other place where you can see boys focus on just one thing, learn to do the exact same process exactly the same way every time to get a consistent result.  Did you hear about the focus part?  Target sports are fantastic and fun activities that help boys focus.  The staff down here are incredible.  I really enjoy seeing these boys’ eagerness to learn. I’m sure they will want to bring you down to the range on parents’ day.  Be ready!

Speaking of awesomeness.  You could see a different swagger in the boys today.  I think they are really starting to find they place here at High Rocks.  You can just see the confidence as the move around camp from place to place. When they get to an activity, you cna see them put on their equipment and be ready for the event.  It always happens this way; you just see the difference one day.

One of the many duties I perform as a director is to tour prospective families around camp. I can’t think of a better time to visit a camp than when it is in session. It is such a fantastic way to see camp. Today I showed a couple of different families around High Rocks. The best part of my tour is to always catch a couple of guys and ask them to tell me their favorite part about camp.  As you can imagine, it is always a gamble. You never know what an eight or ten year-old might say.  Anyhow, it usually impresses me.  I get phrases like “everything,” and “I can’t pick one thing, it’s all awesome.”  Those were a couple I heard today.  The other day a boy came out with “the community.” I was floored!  Of course, we do focus on our community here and how important each boy here contributes to that community.  I never thought I could actually here it come out of a young campers head.  Delightful!

It was another great day in camp.  It looked like it was going to rain a bunch, but other than a little mist, the rain moved out and we even enjoyed a nice breeze with some afternoon sun!  We have all sorts of trip heading out in the coming days.  Our hope is to get some pictures of the these guys enjoying their adventure.

Stay tuned,

Don