Focusing on the theme of teamwork, JASY campers and coaches created team names, cheers, and worked together to motivate campers through competitive and skill-building relays, races and games.
Anticipation for camp activities was high as campers strutted off the buses with bigger smiles today. Dance moves, high fives, and handshakes were shared down the welcome line with less hesitation and a new confidence. With greater ease, the campers. transformed from classmates and students of St. Margaret’s, Seaview Gardens, and Whitfield schools to teams of Jamaican youth athletes sporting customized red, yellow, green and blue uniforms.
Fitting this transformation, today’s camp theme was teamwork. Our common goal across JASY teams and venues was to connect any activities, direction, and team discussion back to the values of teamwork. Team coaches got to know each of their campers’ names, individual needs and skills. Through team reflection times, they challenged campers to think about real life examples of when they must work well with others to accomplish a goal. Bonds between campers and their volunteer coaches are already beginning!
At the venues, JASY volunteers facilitated lessons and games requiring teamwork. In the pool, we had relay races across the shallow end. Campers were cheering each other on and swimming their fastest to help the whole team succeed. On the football field, skill building [soccer] drills reinforced the teamwork theme and hyped up Friday’s football game between the Blue and Green teams. In Olympic Village, jewelry making with beads required sharing and giving of beads, necklaces, and bracelets across teammates. Fun with a parachute in Caribbean Games took entire teams to rustle and raise the multicolored fabric in the air.
As the week goes on, we will continue motivating each other as an entire camp through team names, cheers, and challenges. Creating team identities and spreading those energies throughout the day help to reinforce more than a camp theme to the campers – working well in teams is a necessary life skill to find opportunities and success.
What our JASY Campers believe TEAMWORK is:
encouragement, supporting each other, winning together, coming together as one
T – together
E – everyone
A – achieves
M – more [written by a JASY camper on Team Red Dragons]
Our JASY volunteers also found that teamwork isn’t just a lesson we are teaching the campers; each night after camp we reflect on the successes and pain points of the day in order to plan solutions for the next day. We saw improvements in the changes we agreed to implement today at camp, and those we were flexible and quick enough to adapt in the moment. Our process requires high awareness throughout the day and transparency, encouragement, constructive criticism and open-mindedness at night to improve camp logistics and camper experience. As coaches, volunteers, and facilitators, we are trying our best to set an example of teamwork as we teach it to the campers.
Take a look at our second day at JASY Camp by viewing our daily video:
Stay tuned for stories from Day Three of JASY Camp where we will focus on the theme of Joy.
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