Counselor's Game Night, Speedball, and Swimming

After dinner tonight, all the teams split up for a busy evening activity session of jumping in the river at Foster's, and games of speedball, tank, and blanket volleyball. It was a fun filled night, and everyone was ready for a snack when we returned to the Round Hearth.

Tomorrow morning we'll have our speed instructional session with Danny Noyes on skates at the Stowe Lot, with a hike up Mt. Mansfield in the afternoon!

Skate Park!

This afternoon we headed to the Johnsonville Skate Park! We had a great time trying new skills, and everyone did a great job of pushing themselves out of their comfort zone and having success on features they hadn't tried before.

It was a really impressive showing - a record number of campers dropped in on the bowl, and almost everyone tackled the half pipe!

After dinner, we'll make up our scheduled swim at Foster's, and play speedball and field games!

Morning Field Session - AGILITY

This morning our field instructional session was focused on the second part of BASE - Agility. Justin Sperry, the Head Alpine Ski Coach at Colby-Sawyer College and our Assistant Director for the week, ran the campers through 3 stations of agility ladder and cone drills. He asked the campers to focus on precision, intensity, adapting to changing conditions, and pushing each other through competition.

The campers put in a ton of effort and maintained focus with the high temps, and the session ended with a game of Quebec ball that engaged the whole camp!

This afternoon we're excited to head to the Johnsonville Skate Park to put the BASE skills we've been working on to good use!

Camp Life is SWEET

Video Analysis and Movie Night

Tonight's Counselor Game Night, Speedball, and Swimming at Foster's was postponed due to thunderstorms in the Stowe Area...but we were able to be flexible and move our planned movie night forward a day!

We started off our night session with video analysis of our morning athletic stance work on skates, with campers and coaches identifying strong techniques and things to work on in our next few days on skates.

Afterwards campers had the choice of watching Ugly Dolls or Shazam to round out a relaxing evening avoiding the weather!

The campers were excited for a restful night after a long day, and that should translate to a great day tomorrow with an agility field session and a trip to the Johnsonville Skatepark!

Empty Tent?

An empty tent with only towels and slides in sight means EVERYONE IN THE WATER!!!

We spent the afternoon (with high's in the high-80's) at the beach!! A great lawn provided space to play, and the sandy beach brought out the sand-engineers of the group, but most of the time the group was splashing around with keep away games in the water.  We returned to the RH for our weekly slip'n'slide.  We encourage all the campers to shower each night, but it didn't hurt that the primary substance to make the slider slippery is Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo!!

Morning Skate Session with BALANCE

This morning we hit the gondola at Stowe Mountain Resort for our first instructional session of the week on skates.  With the focus of Balance, we took some extra time after our dynamic warmup while we were still in sneakers to work through balance and stabilizing exercises before transitioning to skates.  The camp learned that stabilizing the core is extremely important for balance in all sports, and it certainly is for skiing and balance through movement and jumping on skates.

After our warmup on skates and moving through our Basic Athletic Stance progression, we took the time to organize the groups to capture video of all.  I will be uploading 2 clips of each camper to a video program called Sprongo so we can pull them out on the big screen tomorrow night and review with each camper before we return to skate drills on Thursday.

Looking ahead, we are excited to spend a hot afternoon at the lake!!