Neerim District Secondary Collage Year 8 Blog

On Wednesday afternoon on the 4th of May 2022, the students of Neerim District SC drove through The Summit gates. Eager to get going, they were shown to their tent accommodations where they settled in and had some lunch.

The coaches Steph and Shane and team leader Steph (Spinks) welcomed the students into the Blueroom tent where they were taught about the Five Keys to a successful camp, target, stretch, super-stretch and ended with a quick game of GOCHA to change their state.

On day one they completed a round of initiatives (Key Punch and Half Pipe) and two rotations of activities called Snowy River Challenge and Inflatables where the teams had to work together to get through the obstacles that were in front of them. The winners of the Snowy River Challenge were the tribe Literally Anything with a time of 20 minutes and closely behind were the A-team with a time of 25 mins.

Day two and the students started the day with an Intentions session with Steph, they talked about choosing who they wanted to be for the day and how they wanted to show up for not only their teammates but for themselves as well. Using a coin, we demonstrated how we often leave our day to chance instead of making a plan, we ended the session with a game of Head and Tails to get the students to decide straight away. We played a game of “Jockeys” before the rotations began, to change their state.

The first two activities for that day were the Summit Window and Abseil on the big tower. Students had to climb the big tower to complete the Summit Window first, then they got the opportunity to Abseil down the tower to finish. There were so many stretches and super stretches being done and as the session came to a close and the debrief was underway, you could feel the sense of accomplishment in the air. Up next it was time for lunch and the students were told to get into their clothes for the Monster Course. Two rotations to go of Laser Tag and Rock Wall and then it was time to begin the epic Monster Course where the students not only completed one but two laps! The winner of the course is the time most improved from their first lap as teams realized they were competing against themselves. Both teams improved with A-team getting 12.27mins and the team Literally Anything got 8.12 improvement. As they all headed up for showers, they ended the day with dinner and a movie.

On day three and safe to say there were a lot of tired faces in the room as Steph was taking the group through a Gratitude session, with the help of a video, the group went around the room sharing what they were grateful for. The game that we played was called ‘Clap Ball’ to get us into the right state.

Feeling good and ready for the last two rotations, the students definitely did not want to go home wondering ‘what if’, as they faced their fears in the Cave and the Leap of Faith, pushing through and getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

To wrap camp up the two teams had the opportunity to nominate two people in their team who embodied the Five Keys the most, these people were as follows: from A-Team we had Chester and Maddi and from the team Literally Anything we had Blair and Justin. As a reward, they got to have a hot lap in The Summit's very own army tank, how cool!

On behalf of the summit and all of us coaches we wish you all the best for the rest of the year and thank you for coming and having all the fun.

Steph (Spinks), Steph and Shane