Camp Blog

Blue & White Summer

by: 
Camp Director

            Greetings from the Blue & White Games of 2016! My name is Julia Spathis, and I’m one of this year’s commissioners for Blue & White, with my best friends Sydney Salit and Julia Zazove! The last few weeks of the session have been packed with games, from Tug O’ War to Cupcake Wars, and everything in between. We’ve watched our CITs rise to the occasion as their team leaders, exhibiting exceptional sportsmanship and dedication to the program, and are keeping the passion for the games higher than ever before.

            We started off the session with our traditional opening night of Blue & White, where we finally got to tell the new campers what teams they would be joining for life. Campers stood behind a sheet and closed their eyes to have their faces painted in either Blue or White before being revealed to their new team. From there, the entire camp traveled down to the lake, where we went to push in our new captains, Ilana Spitz and Samantha Linn for the Blue Team, and Amanda Amiel and Olivia Glantz for the White Team. The CITs joined their new captains by jumping in the lake after them to celebrate. Everyone ran to their cabins to change into their Blue & White gear for their first game, while new campers were gifted their first shirt for their new teams. The camp then began our opening game of Tug O’ War by division, with the Blue juniors and intermediates taking the win, while the White seniors still managed to end the game with winning one round, leaving Blue with their first victory of the summer.

            We gave the camp a few days off, before we came back with a camp favorite: Stratego. Five campers from each team were hidden around camp as flags, while all other campers were distributed cards with military rankings. Girls scoured camp to find the other teams hidden flags, while girls tagged each other to prevent the other team from looking, where the higher ranking defeated the lower ranking to take them to jail and have less people on the ground looking.  While Blue captured one flag, White team came back stronger, capturing all five of Blue team’s flags to gain their first win.

            The next day, the games continued with Balloon Battles, a game introduced last summer. The night started with a balloon launch, where staff sent balloons through the air with slingshots, while the teams worked to catch them in their fitted sheets. The team that caught more was given an advantage: they were allowed to hide more balloons in their landmine, a sand field that teams are challenged to walk silently through without popping balloons. White caught more balloons during the launch portion, and made it through their landmine in the allotted time popping less balloons than the Blue, leading to another White team win.

            Just a few days later, we continued with another water game, which we call Water Wars.  Both teams dressed in white shirts, where White team had a white ‘W’ on their forehead, and Blue team had a blue ‘B’. Campers were distributed water guns, and the name of one opponent from the other team, and ran around camp trying to capture their target by squirting them with colored water. Campers worked hard to “outlive” their opponents, but it was the Blue Team that came out victorious.

            We surprised the girls by giving them their first day event earlier this week, a day of Big Games. Campers were divided by the Juniors and Seniors to compete in sports like basketball, softball, soccer, dodge ball, tennis, nukem, and gaga. It was a long day filled with standout athletes in all games, like the Michael twins and Lexie Paull in tennis, the Abrams girls in basketball, Sydney Cohen, Jessie Baigorria, and Melanie Small in soccer, to name a few. At the end of the day, it was the Blue Team that captured yet another win for the session.

            Last night, we played a personal favorite game, Cupcake Wars. Teams were divided into their lipsync groups, and given cupcakes, frosting, and edible treats to strategically decorate their cupcakes to fit the given theme. This year, we challenged the teams with a Circus theme, where they created an elephant, a lion tamer, jugglers, ringleaders, circus snacks, and so much more. After their first head to head round, junior campers were asked to participate in a twist. Juniors were asked to create two sheet cakes to fit in their theme, where the better cakes would win their team an advantage in the final round. Both teams had incredible decorating skills, but the White team juniors won the team an extra five minutes in their final round. Both teams were given time to put all their cupcakes into a final display, where they captured the circus through bright colors, excessive amounts of frosting and candy, and nearly 150 cupcakes. Both teams were fantastic, but it was the White team that won the war.

            We’re coming up on the end of the session, though that hardly means the end of Blue & White. Everyone at camp is anxiously awaiting lipsyncs next Wednesday, which all of the girls have been tirelessly preparing for all session. I am so excited to see all their hard work payoff in my favorite night of the session, where even the shyest of girls can leave everything on stage and know they will be cheered on by the entire camp. It is not a night of competition, as much as it’s a night to celebrate our different talents and spirit, and a night where everyone leaves smiling, win or lose. And who knows, there may still be one more game this session before that… Until next time everyone!

Full Speed Ahead :)

Julia