Final Four Blog

Today marked the first day of the 2015 Final Four games! When the bell rang for wake-up at promptly 8:30 a.m., the girls jumped out of bed with excitement and put on their team’s shirt. Campers and counselors carbo-loaded for the day’s games with Ducky’s delicious French toast, and then headed to their team’s last practice for opening ceremonies. Right after breakfast a thunderstorm erupted, and it was so strong that hail began to fall! But this only delayed Final 4 for a half hour, as we were able to do our opening ceremony inside Happy Camper Hall.

Each team’s opening ceremony consisted of a skit, song, and several cheers that told each team’s ‘story’ and portrayed their unique qualities. Duke’s opening ceremony came in first place. Duke wowed the crowd by showing when their basketball team won the NCAA championship and then went back in time to explain how the team got there. Their creative cheers, which were parodies of campfire songs, and their cool formation that spelled D-U-K-E are what set them ahead. In second place was Syracuse. Their skit took place at a ‘Cuse football game and showed how the team had to bond together when their star player got injured. Counselor Sarah Mossler and Emily Karonis made the whole camp laugh as the ‘Cuse sports announcers, fully decked out in dress suits and mustaches. Notre Dame came in third place. Their premise of the Fighting Irish’s skit was that Notre Dame Leprechaun, played by counselor Jenna Lachman, lost its luck and needed to get it back.  Thankfully, after the Leprechaun watched Notre Dame beat all the other teams in different sports, they were able to regain their luck and form an even stronger school. And in fourth place came Tulane, who also had an impressive skit. Their plotline was that Princess Penny had always dreamt of going to Tulane, but couldn’t because the campus got destroyed by a hurricane. The team had to rebuild Tulane University to prove that nothing could ruin their school’s spirit and success. Every opening was amazing and made the judges’ decision very difficult!

We then had team relay races. But since we were indoors,  we had to modify the relays. The juniors competed in crab walks and skips, the intermediates competed in frog jumps and heel-to-toe walks, the senior competed in karaoke running and the infamous treasure hunt speed-walk, and the staff competed in bear crawls and piggy back races. To end the relay races, the counselor, C.I.T., and P.A. captains from each team had an intense Indian Leg Wrestle competition! To say the least, a fun time was had by all!

After lunch, the campers participated in Series, which are individual competitions against the other teams. For example, girls competed in side-walk chalk drawing, swimming, dancing, tennis serves, cross country, gymnastics, rock painting, and more! Syracuse dominated the series games, but all teams  did an awesome job. Final 4 is off to a great start, but we still have two more jam-packed days ahead of us and we could not be more excited to go full speed ahead!

All the best from your Final 4 Commissioners,

Meredith Leon, Nikki Sheinkop, and Melissa Kramer J