Tiger Club

Starting last year, we began to recognize an important group of campers – those who invite friends to Camp Champions.

We can do many things to make camp special. We can build exciting activities like the Pirate Ship, Spin Cycle and Tower of Power – all built in the last 2 years.  We can create special events like Trojan-Spartan games, beach party with inflatables and fireworks shows.  We can hire the best staff from 8 different countries and train them with the longest orientation in the industry.  All of these parts of camp are aspects we can influence heavily.

But one of the most important parts of camp is your child’s cabinmates.  So much of the camp experience is created in the cabin and the friends made there are a critical component.  Here is the one area where are camp families are more important than we are. When a camp family decides to recommend camp to another family that they feel will appreciate our culture and mission, that helps create great cabins.

We have always had the vast majority of our new campers come from word-of-mouth referrals, but we did not have a formal way to thank our families.

Enter the Tiger Club.  The Tiger Club is our way of thanking anyone who brought a friend to camp.  Campers in the Club get an ice cream social and a pin (see picture above). 

Last session, one of our campers got her pin, but her brother did not.  After Closing Ceremony, he asked me about it, so I gave him mine.  He sent me the sweet note above.  The little things make you smile.

Odd Treasures

Camp scavenger hunts can yield odd booty.

The youngest boy campers were assigned to gather a list of items.  Some items are fairly common – a leaf from the Nature Tree or a noodle from the pool. But other items came in the gift of knowledge.

• The British word for flashlight. For those of your curious – the word is “torch”.  The campers could go to any of our 10 UK counselors for this one.
• A dance move from Robbie Sir. Robbie Sir taught them the “sunscreen”. His opinion is that any activity can be made into a dance if you just do it in time to music. We have been water sprinklers, lasso-ers, basketball dribblers, trunk packers and swimmers. The dance today involved pantomiming getting sunscreen out of an imaginary tube, putting on your hand and rubbing it on your face.
• A photograph with Chibante Sir. Alex Chibante is one of our most adored counselors.  He has spent part of the summer dubbed the “Moon Prince”.  The reason?  He was wearing a t-shirt with a white wolf howling at the moon.  A 7-year old looked at his face, at the t-shirt and then back to his face, “Chibby Sir, you look like a Moon Prince”.  It made no sense to us either, but when you score a nickname like “Moon Prince”, you do not complain.
• Something from George Sir. George Sir is an interesting guy. An Division 1-AA All-American football player from Davidson, he undermines virtually every stereotype of the typical jock.  When ask to give them something, George Sir decided to “give them wisdom” in the form of maxims from Publilius Syrus, the great Roman philosopher.  Here is what he shared, “Do not despise the lowest steps in the ascent to greatness.”  He also told them, “When gold argues the cause, eloquence is impotent.”  This so amuses me. They had no idea what he was talking about. He could have said it in Latin and they would have been no less confused. They, however, were very excited that they got “wisdom”!

 Steve Sir