by Cory Garcia, Rosh Sports
Yom Sport is a day of competition, where cabins are divided up into two or more teams, assigned a color, and compete in games for an entire day. Once the competition is over we end with a closing ceremony and trophy presentation. Yom Sport is an amazing day for Jr Camp because it’s activities are centered around running around and playing. It is basically a day of recess. This used to be a camp-wide event, but in recent years there has been a large out cry from the sessions in Teen Camp that they are tired of Yom Sport. Many of our Teen Camp campers have been here for years and begin to find the events of Yom Sport a bit monotonous. In an effort to make this day fun again The Trials were born!
The Trials are a cabin-based day of challenges better suited for the teens participating. Instead of games like soccer, football, and dance offs, The Trials have three competition blocks as part of the morning: Knowledge, Skill, and Strength. The cabins compete in general trivia, problem solving skills and tug o’war. These challenges utilize the strengths of a greater variety of cabin mates and require everyone to work together to successfully compete and win.
Starting after lunch, cabins found large amounts of cardboard, duck tape, and plastic outside their cabins. The task, engineer and construct a boat that would hold one member of the cabin and race across the pool. At the pool, members of the cabin pulled on one end of a large rope to get their boat, and racer, to the other side. This was a race against the clock, teams were ranked from fastest to slowest. After a full day of events, point were tallied and the winning cabin who was awarded an In-N-Out dinner.
Yom Sport is still a perfect event for our younger campers. Spending the day on the fields and in the pool. But, by ramping up the challenges to be more age appropriate, making teams cabin based, and having a real prize, we made The Trials a great event for our older campers. Teen campers only complaint was that the Trials only happen once a session.
