How to Make An Exciting Trip Announcement

Jumping into the second week of Main Camp!

Imagine that you are a camper at Falling Creek with a fresh new week of activities and trips ahead of you. The possibilities are seemingly endless, and there are countless opportunities to join a trip heading out of camp. From mountain biking and paddling to climbing and backpacking, how do you decide what to do first? Not to mention the variety of opportunities to sign up for other adventures, such as blacksmithing, horseback riding, sailing, and Sliding Rock trips. For counselors, one of the fun parts about leading trips is getting campers to choose to sign up with you. Convincing campers to choose your trip above all the others often comes down to having an exciting announcement. So how do you make this exciting trip announcement?

Step 1: Plan a Fun Trip

You can’t announce a fun trip if you don’t have one planned, but luckily our counselors are pros at planning and executing great trips. Paddling on Lake Jocassee for three days in fun enough, but our counselors make sure to plan routes that have waterfall sightings, plenty of stops for jumping off the rocks into the lake, and they never forget to pack the s’mores. The climbers not only plan beautiful routes in Linville Gorge, but they pack hearty meals for supper and cook on top of the mountain so boys are treated to dinner with a view. When the backpackers travel to Panthertown to summit incredible peaks, the trip is made even better by the stories that Matt Ambrose, Andrew Krusen, and Matt Kornegey tell to the campers as they hike, plus they make sure to take breaks for creek stomping and view seeking. It’s not just the basic trip that the campers enjoy, but the whole experience of being outdoors and doing something exciting and memorable with their friends. The counselors know this, and they work hard to go that extra mile to make the trips unforgettable.

Step 2: Perfect Your Cheer

Every activity has their own call-and-response cheer. Most are goofy, creating hype for their activities and putting a smile on everyone’s faces. The key to the activity cheer seems to be announcing it with as much excessive volume and passion as possible. In Fly Fishing, the cheer is accompanied by an arm motion, mimicking a fly rod cast. As your arm goes back, you yell “Yeee…” and when you shoot your arm forward like you’re casting a line, you yell “haw!” For mountain biking, the chant has been the same classic cheer of “Shocktaw!” for years. You hold up you index and pinky fingers on both hands (like the front shock of a bike), and place the right hand over the left to form an “S” shape for “shocktaw,” the made-up bike tribe. In Blacksmithing, Will has decided to make all of his announcements in a thick “New Jersey” accent, never breaking character once. He ends the announcement by shouting “ayyy,” and the campers join him in saying “I’m smithin’ here!” in the same accent. Sailing has another popular chant, which is more of an arm motion than a call-and-response. After the counselor shouts, “sailing!,” the boys hold up their fists and arms in a “football touchdown” motion, raising their arms up and down while shouting “ooh ooh ooh!”, just like the Tusken Raiders yell in Star Wars As you can see, the cheers don’t have to be complicated or even make sense, they just have to be something unique that campers can get excited about shouting in response.

Fly fishing: “yeeeehaww!”

Step 3: Gather Props or Helpers

Even when your activity cheer is a hit, it still helps to add props for that extra something. During this session’s paddling announcements, all of the counselors have been wearing Christmas themed santa hats, sweaters, and reindeer antlers. They’ve been shouting “happy holidays” after each announcement, referring to the Yak Shack as “santa’s workshop,” and describing their trip destinations as the North Pole. Though it’s silly and nonsensical, that makes it even more funny. When the backpackers made an announcement about an upcoming trip, they got the help of their fellow staff members by getting them to throw necessary hiking gear to them as they told boys what they needed to bring. They end every announcement with the cheer, “ahhh, take a hike!” while spinning a raised finger above their head. Once, Will from blacksmithing even sang a song to announce his blacksmithing preps (while still maintaining his New Jersey accent character), and six of the other blacksmithing staff members began snapping their fingers and stepping down the aisle to the beat, all while wearing matching sunglasses. The more elaborate and ridiculous, the better!

Paddling announcements about “Shredding it!”

Step 4: Announce with Passion

Before the counselors can expect campers to be excited about their trip, they have to be excited for it themselves! Every time Dusty announces a climbing trip, he shouts “Dude on rock?” as loud as he can, and the campers reply, “rock on dude!” He shouts it twice, with the second time being even louder than the first. For horseback, Clarke once recited “Aragorn’s Battle Speech” from Lord of the Rings in its entirety, riding a pretend horse the whole time and being as dramatic as possible. No matter the trip, the cheer, or the props included, announcing with passion is the best way to get campers excited about your announcement.

“Paddle Hard!” announcement excitement at Morning Assembly

Step 5: Fill Your Sign-Ups and Head Out For A Great Trip!

Every day we have several trips out at once, full of excited campers heading on fun adventures. Camp is unique because boys are able to try new activities and visit new places that they may otherwise never be exposed to. The announcements are important to recruit boys on new kinds of trips, and help them realize that they might really enjoy a new activity. Just today, we had boys paddling the Green River Narrows, climbing Gilbert’s Rock, enjoying Sliding Rock, riding bikes at Dupont, and hiking in Gorges. I’m sure it was hard for the boys to decide which trip to choose after such great announcements, but the good news is that tomorrow we get the opportunity to do it all over again!

-Annie Pharr

Paddling hard on the Green River Narrows trip today

More Highlights from this Monday:

• John I. achieved Ranger in the H.E.A.T. (High Energy Action Training)

• Breakfast: warm french toast sticks with syrup, sausage links, fresh strawberries, blueberries, oranges, and grapefruit, plus yogurt and granola.

• Lunch:Grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches, french fries, and mixed vegetables, with oatmeal raisin cookies for dessert

• DInner: Buttered noodles with marinara sauce, chicken breast, bread, peas and carrots, full salad bar, and cinnamon sugar churros for dessert.

• Evening Program: Tribal games! Cherokee played games in the “Thunder Dungeon,” Catawba played sharks and minnows and other games on the turf field, Tuscarora played foosball, ping pong, chess, and Magic under the Dining Hall, and Iroquois enjoyed an evening swimming and the waterfront special features such as the Blob, and diving boards on the upper lake.

• The F.A.R.M. gained two new animal friends today! Marvin and Wilma are our new American Guinea hogs, a heritage breed that is on the smaller side and very friendly. They will make a great addition to our growing farm program!

• Parents, your “Mama Letters” from this first week are now available. You can read them online in the Forms & Documents area of your CampInTouch account. There is a “print icon” next to the letter and if you click on it, the letter will download for your review.

One of camp’s new pigs, Wilma

The other pig who will be living at the F.A.R.M., Marvin