I’ve always felt comfortable being in the midst of controlled chaos. In college, I napped while wrapped completely in wall-shaking electronic trance music. One of my crowning achievements in St. Johnsbury was bringing in 1,070 high school Ultimate players to our home tournament. Controlled chaos appeals to me because it’s a sign that something or someone has grown well-beyond their normal capacities — grown in such a way that’s only possible when a group comes together to form something that is well, well beyond the sum of its parts.
The individuals that make up Ultimate Peace are rock stars. What’s created when we all come together is like nothing else on the planet.
Flickr Photo Album – 7/4/13
YouTube Video – 7/4/13
I’m now getting used to a decently normal amount of sleep. I think I like it enough to maybe try it again tonight. We’ll see how it goes. After my normal round of Barkan-made coffee, I headed over to the dining hall for our last breakfast as just a UP staff. At this point I’m pretty happy with the cereal and cornflakes and cocoa options, but to be totally honest, I’d love to see a really nice omelet station. After some breakfast social time, we all came together in the auditorium for the last round of announcements before we all went out to tackle our last task-team items. Oh, yah, there was that staff conga line at breakfast :)
Tomer joins the line!
The first cheers signaling the arrival of the first campers went up at a bit before 10am. Of course the kids were showing up early. I would if I were them. The welcome committee was in position to give, as Curme put it, “Some amazingly awesome spirited awesomeness” into the incoming campers. Okay, he didn’t really say those exact words, but the message is the same. As kids got out of their busses and cars, the committee would have a human tunnel setup with background music and a TON of cheering. It was quite a sight.
Spirit awesomeness received!
They even set up an ambush, where after faking sleep, and waiting for the incoming small group of campers to pause, they rushed them and got a great reaction. Oh, and then there was this side photo shoot I was roped into. This is what you get when you put two Spirit Wizards in the same place at the same time.
Spirit Wizards Curme and Jez
Walking back and forth between the welcoming and registration area gave me the chance to see the whole day unfold. Music was being played in all corners. Disc throwing and Cuban Shuffle dancing was all over the place. Needless to say, the camper reception was exceedingly well, and by earlier than expected, everyone had arrived.
Ali shows off his shuffle moves!
We then all moved into the auditorium where David gave the Summer Camp 2013 intro speech. The energy in the room was quite high and only built higher as the day progressed. The big ending was the announcement of all the teams. One by one the coaching groups came onto stage and Abe read off the team rosters. After coming up on stage to a round of high-fives and cheering, each team went outside to have a short team meeting before lunch. Ava, Hannan, Silver (Anna Glass) and I had a great time getting to know our group. It seemed at first that they were a bit shy, but alas, all it took was about 3-minutes of a goofy game for all that shyness to come crashing to the ground.
Wah!
In the dining hall, the cheering started up only about 5 minutes after every team had entered. Even though the bulk of our kids are new to camp, they weren’s put off by the noise — they stepped up and helped keep the spirit cheering going. In fact, their younger (than training camp) ages seems to be a big boost to their boisterousness. Go Summer Camp kids! After lunch we were all back in the auditorium for more camp orientation, the bulk of which was the staff skits covering the 5-values, 3 C’s, and camp rules. The UP staff isn’t going to win any Oscars, but we might come close!
My arms aren’t my own!
The meeting wrapped up with Nancy talking about the team flags! Shortly afterwards all the teams grouped up at various locations around Manof for two hours of team-time. During our meeting we gave our jerseys, shared fun, strange facts about ourselves, and then for the bulk of the time worked on our flag.
Flag work
We are super happy with how our flag came out!
Not only will Maroon 5 cheers be spectacular, we managed to pull the 5-UP values into our team name! Before heading back to the auditorium, we had to pull together a few fun group photos.
Jump!
In the auditorium we learned more about the roles of the UP admins and then moved back outside for our first team practices. We knew that the kids were going to be newer this week, but they really brought their A-game! My girls could throw, and were determined receivers! After basic throwing, we moved into Go-To and then performed very well! It’s also important to note that the weather, while hot, has been relatively manageable, something that has really helped out players. Still, we hydrate like crazy.
At 6:30 we moved off the fields with a strong round of the Ebo Lay Lay cheer, and then regrouped at 7pm for dinner, which was as raucous as it really could have been. Each team unveiled their flag, and there was a bunch of table stomping and cheer passing. It was a perfect Day 1 dinner. At 7:45 we were all in the auditorium to watch a short high-level Ultimate clip followed by Nancy talking about the evening activity. The kids were then sent out in teams to the activity stations as I retreated to the Mohodoun to dive into the day’s media.
By all accounts everything went really smoothly out at the activity stations. At around 9:40 staff started filtering back into the Mohodoun for a little time to decompress before the 10:20 all staff meeting where we met a few new arrivals and talked about the day. The overall consensus was that the day went really, really well. Everyone is in that zone of being comfortably tired. It really was a great day.
All-staff meeting
I just got back to my media station after running the first nightly Heads meeting of Summer Camp. All is set for tomorrow to be another wonderful day.
I can’t wait.