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Tak Talk Blog- Camp Takajo – July 14, 2018

By July 14, 2018 January 4th, 2019 Tak Talk
Camp Takajo Swim Meet 2018

With just one week to go before visiting day, I find myself reflecting on where we are as a community as we approach the halfway mark of the season. There is an expression at Camp Takajo, “The days are long, but the weeks fly by.” I do my best to soak up each and every moment in a day because I know once visiting day passes, the summer seems to fly by.

Camp Takajo Swim Meet 2018Today, we hosted a 14-and-under flag football tournament, and the Takajo Invitational Swim Meet. It was hard for me to know where to put myself, as I bounced back and forth between the waterfront and our playing fields. While our swim team placed second of five camps in the meet, our football players prevailed on the gridiron.

One of the things I enjoy most about being a camp director is my interaction with the campers when I go into their bunks to say goodnight. I  visit the bunks every evening for a multitude of reasons. Most importantly, I am a huge believer that you can tell a lot about a child by looking into their eyes. When I walk into each bunk, I am very conscious of each child’s demeanor. I look at whether they are interacting with their bunkmates or sitting alone on their beds, whether they look relaxed and content after a long day or sad and alone.

Very often, a pat on the head, a warm embrace or a brief conversation is all that it takes to let our little guys know they are loved and cared for at camp. I also believe in visiting the bunks in the evenings because it is a wonderful way for me to make sure that our staff is managing the health and wellness of our campers. Showering every night, brushing teeth, placing dirty clothing into the laundry bag– these are things that we expect our counselors to oversee on a daily basis. I chuckle when I hear a counselor say, “Come on guys, brush your teeth. Jeff is one bunk away.”

As I made my rounds this evening, one of the Warrior bunks asked me to tell them a story. It has become a ritual with this bunk of boys because they like to hear me re-cap the day. The other day, I had told them the heroic story of our 15-and-under baseball team and how they came back in the bottom of the final inning to win the game. The boys sat at the end of their beds and listened to every word I said. However, tonight’s story was a little different. It was about our 15-and-under lacrosse team, which consisted of some of the most talented lacrosse players Takajo has had in many years. Many of these boys play on high-level travel teams and focus all their athletic attention on this sport.

With great excitement and anticipation, our 15-year-old boys traveled to a nearby camp to compete in a lacrosse tournament and were shocked to end up on the losing end in their first game of the tournament. The boys were deflated, looked at each other for answers and thought about how to redeem themselves in the next game. At the end of the second game, Takajo once again fell short and was eliminated from the tournament. One of the boys in the bunk stopped me in mid-sentence and said, “This is not a happy ending, Why are you telling us this story?” My response was very simple. While we may have had some of the best individual players, we could not figure out how to play as a team. Competition on the field is a microcosm of life, and it requires communication, teamwork, and the ability to handle stress under pressure to be successful.

One of the little boys said, “There is no ‘i’ in team,” and I smiled. These little boys learned that something positive can come from a defeat.