Overcoming Fears

Today was the first full day of activities and smiling faces filled Camp ASCCA! Two campers overcame some of their biggest camp fears… the water slide and zipline!

The long water slide on top of the hill near the lake was visited by three of our groups today. Program staff employees Guin, Matthew, and Maggie taught the campers about the water slide rules and led them up to the top of the hill to slide down. Camper Sebastian was in the last group of the day. He is new to Camp ASCCA this year and was extremely hesitant about going down the slide. His counselor, Christian, attempted to show Sebastian that the slide wasn’t scary. However, the water slide is a “challenge by choice” activity so nobody was going to make Sebastian go down if he did not want to.

Sebastian sat near the top of the slide and watched fellow campers go down the slide with excitement and happiness on their face! He figured he would give it a try so he and his counselor walked to the slide and sat down. Sebastian finally faced his fear and went down the slide! Afterwards, he just kept looking back up to the last few campers that were going down and smiled. Sebastian was not going to go without sliding down today!

During activity rotaion, camper Katherine (Kate) Hughes was hesitant to ride the zipline. Her fellow campers and the group’s counselors, especially her counselor Abby Brown, encouraged her to try it. Abby waited for Kate at the bottom and chanted her name until she went down. After she faced her fear of the zipline, she was eager to go again!

She was also awared the ASCCA achievement for zipline at lunch for her courage and excitement during the activity.This is exactly why we encourage campers to try something new even if they are afraid. They will end up loving it just like Kate did!

Karla Silva and April Garrett, PR
Camp ASCCA 2017
Session 1