“Winning Olympics.”
That’s what one of our campers told his mom when she asked at dinner what his best memory of summer was. It’s a great answer. But it’s 100x better when you see the summer he had.
Tyler has been a Twin Creeks camper for nine summers. His mom Tracy sent me a list of what he did this past summer:
“Winning Olympics.”
Now, based on the rest of this list, you would think Tyler meant winning the actual Olympics. The one happening in different countries around the world every four years.
Nope. He meant winning Olympics with the Green team, something he and other campers had been striving for, for years.
Twin Creeks runs Olympics once a session. All day Thursday, green vs. white, about 1,200 points on the line.
15 years ago we introduced “teams for life.” You keep your color across every summer, no matter which session you’re in or how you age up.
Start on the Green team? Finish camp on the Green team. You are Green for your camp life. We started it thinking it would add a fun little wrinkle to the proceedings. It did that, but it added a lot more. It created loyalty. Streaks, and some low-level (camp-style) rivalries kids keep track of over years. They are better at keeping track of it than we are.
New campers get sorted onto a color when they arrive, mostly to keep the teams balanced. From that first day, that color is theirs for life. They don’t have to catch up with anything because they are part of it from the start. (Oh, and FYI, siblings and cousins are always on the same team.)
Kids who’ve been there for years bring everyone up to speed real quick. They’ll explain the history, and everyone feels part of the same thing from the first event that summer.
Tyler’s team is Green. Green hadn’t won in 10 or 14 years, depending on who you ask!! Last summer, Green lost Olympics by six points out of 1,200.
This year, Green won.
The announcement was simple. “The winner is Green,” and I got out of the way. What happened next was something out of a movie. Green tackling each other, Green screaming, nine years of Green kids finally getting theirs.
Tyler had a summer most adults would trade for. Boundary Waters. Santa Barbara. Colleges. A house full of family. And when Mom asked him at dinner what stuck, it was a Thursday in West Virginia and a team called Green.
It’s sometimes hard to sum up why these things matter so much when it feels so simple. But it’s because when kids are given the conditions to care about something and about others, they step up in every way and more.
Somewhere on Green there’s a nine-year-old who just won their first Olympics. And there are kids from every other color team who didn’t win. They’ll all carry that into next summer. Because for kids, this means everything.
