Planning a Memorable Trip
It’s our last week of June Camp trips!
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 fly fishing 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 it attention-worthy? Our counselors are pros at this!
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 great at planning and executing memorable trips. Paddling on Lake Jocassee for three days is fun enough on it’s own, 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 hike the Art Loeb to summit incredible peaks, the trip is made even better by the stories that they tell to the campers as they hike (plus they make sure to take necessary breaks for creek stomping and view admiring). It’s not just the trip activity 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 sure their trips will be 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. For paddling on Monday morning, Grant announced his 2-day French Broad/Tuckasegee trip, and yelled “PADDLE HARD” afterwards. The whole gym full of boys shouted back, “Boof baby boof!” (a nod to the paddling technique where you keep the bow of the boat raised to land flat from a drop or to stay on the top of the water.) 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,” their made-up cheer. Sailing introduced a popular new chant this year - After the Dave’s announcement, he yells, “here comes the….” and all of camp shouts “BOOM!” 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.
Step 3: Gather Props or Helpers
Even when your activity cheer is a hit, it still helps to add props for that extra something. Lew, Hays, Gilpin, and Cricket have all been great at making high-energy mountain biking announcements, which create droves of campers flocking to their signups. Often, one of them will be the bike, giving the other counselor a piggy-back ride up to the stage while holding bike handlebars and wearing their helmets and sunglasses. This is exactly what Hays did yesterday when announcing his North Mills River bike trip, while campers laughed as he attempted to balance on his “bike.” When Cricket announced their Dupont 3 trip yesterday, Gilpin stood behind him, pretending to be his hands. Though it’s silly and nonsensical, that makes it even more funny. When the backpackers made an announcement about this week’s trip, they got the help of “Mr. Backpack,” a talking backpack who read the list of boys going on the trip. We’ve seen announcements set to song, ones with dancing and jumping on tables, water pitchers thrown, and plenty of costumes. The more elaborate and ridiculous, the better!
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! The backpackers end every announcement with the cheer, “ahhh, take a hike!” while spinning a raised finger above their head. But they don’t just gently spin their wrist a couple times for the “ahhh” part of the cheer… they brace themselves, lean back, and throw their whole arm in a circle above their heads, screaming “AHHHH” until the whole camp is saying it with them. On Monday when Luke and Scuba announced their Looking Glass and Linville Gorge trips, they slowly raised their hands with their first two fingers bent like a sloth claw the whole time. All the campers mimicked them, slowly pretending to climb like a sloth. At the end of the announcement, everyone yells, “slothclaw!” as loud as they can. No matter the trip, the cheer, or the props included, announcing with passion is the best way to get campers excited about your announcement.
Step 5: Fill Your Sign-Ups and Head Out For A Great Trip!
Every week 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 yesterday, we had boys paddling on the Tuck/French Broad trip, climbing at Looking Glass and Linville Gorge, enjoying a day of sailing, fly fishing on the Green River, riding bikes at Dupont and North Mills River, and hiking in Pisgah. 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 today we get the opportunity to do it all over again!
