Jack's Camp Friends Newsletter |
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Hey real quick. Want to spend a week with me doing the best behavior management training you can imagine? Send your future camp leaders to Skywild New Hampshire next week.
You know how you have kids that struggle to fit at camp? Come learn how to support them and understand neurodiversity.
It’s the best professional development I have ever done; my bad-ass girlfriend leads it, and it’s free.
Come and/or send your staff. 3 more spots. Just email me if you want in.
Camp Skywild at K&E - Wilmot, New Hampshire August 14-22 https://www.campskywildnh.org/
Ok, now on to lakes, planes, and cancellations
A plane was supposed to land on our lake. You read that right.
That was the Color War breakout plan. Fly over camp, land on the water, and the Color War captains climb out of the plane.
Depending on what kind of camp you work at or grew up, this sounds either totally insane or way too small potatoes for a Color War breakout.
Maybe you are somewhere in between.
But it doesn’t matter either way, because the plane didn’t land on the lake.
The cloud ceilings came in too low, and the plane got canceled.
But now, there’s a problem because Color War is kinda (definitely) a big deal and the breakout is something kids at camp have been waiting for, for weeks.
So when we went back to the drawing board, the goal was to make it a 7 out of 10.
Best breakout ever? Nah, but please can we get to reasonable.
Geof (head of maintenance) and the rest of the crew stepped up.
What We Came Up With Instead
A dump truck drove into camp, launching fireworks out of the back.
Everybody ran toward it, and the truck rolled slowly through, still launching fireworks the whole way, with staff walking behind it in silly costumes holding huge road flares.
The whole group reached the assembly area, and the PA’d music on the PA cut. It was about 9:15 at night. We never do anything that late, so it was dark, and the kids knew this was not a normal night.
Then music started playing down in the hollow, and everyone ran.
A bright spotlight hit figures in morph suits, standing in as the captains.
Off to the side, a pallet castle about 25 feet tall went up in flames behind a barrier, with crazy sparklers and fireworks going off around it. There was a flamethrower.
(I know someone is going to say, BUT JACK, IS THIS SAFE?!!?!. Yes. Everything was roped off. Jack loves safety more than fun. But they aren’t mutually exclusive.)
Then the head coaches ran out with sparkler swords, threw the swords into the fire, and ran into the crowd.
That was it. That was the breakout.
You can watch the whole thing here: Instagram link.
Elliott Snedden has been crushing everything with K&E video and media, and this one is worth your next minute.
Basically Just the Fireworks
Now, the real reveal.
The whole thing cost about $500 bucks.
The dump truck was ours, but every camp has a pickup truck. Someone had to stack the pallets. Someone had to climb into the morph suits. Someone had to stand there with road flares and make it look cool.
We probably didn’t even need the fireworks. The fireworks made it something else (and was basically the whole $500). But it could have been something else.
The part that took the most was time and thinking about it.
Being boxed in helped. The original plan fell through, the stakes felt high, and we had to make it cool with what was already here.
I suspect most camps have 500 bucks somewhere for making sure something great happens this summer. But even if you don’t, honestly, it’s not really the point.
Because every camp has teams of people who want to be awesome.
We have a great one at K&E, and I’ve visited and know enough camps to know that while ours is great, it’s not like some outlier. Camps have great people kinda everywhere.
The rest of it was a team that wanted it to be awesome. It pays to have a great team, and Geof took a canceled plane and made something way better anyway.
We wanted to land a plane on the lake. What we ended up with was way better and way cheaper, mostly because we had to figure it out.
So maybe that’s the move next summer. Book something big and expensive, cancel it at the last second, and see what we come up with.
You got this,
Jack
PS - Doug and I are planning a Write For Camp Cohort 3.0 for this fall.
It's going to cover a ton of what we've been working on this year.
Newsletters obviously, but also Lead and Welcome sequences, Sales and Re-registration Emails, Content Calendars, and how to use AI responsibly in all of it.
Basically the whole system for what your camp says and when it says it.
Interested? Just throw your name on the Write For Camp Waitlist, and we'll be in touch soon.
