The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
SENDING YOUTH BACK TO NATURE
Variety highlights summer camp options in Northeastern Ohio
There exists an overwhelming variety of summer-camp options available to children and families these days.
Never theless, when many people think of summer camp, they think of day and overnight programs involving cabins, campfires, fishing, canoeing, hiking and a number of other outdoor pursuits that characterized people’s summer-camp experiences for generations.
“There are many options for summer camps in the region,” said Angela Gartner, editor of Northeast Ohio Parent Magazine. “Many camps are providing kids with the opportunity to get involved with music, dance, theater, build with LEGOS, work with technology or try new sports.”
But, Gartner said, that doesn’t mean folks are turning their backs on the traditional summer-camp paradigm.
“Traditional overnight camps are also still being passed down from generation to generation,” she states. “Parents who have gone to these camps see the value of this experience and are sending their children.”
One place where this notion is alive and well than at Kirtland’s Red Oak
"There are many options for summer camps in the region." — Angela Gartner, editor of Northeast Ohio Parent Magazine
Camp, where administrators like Executive Director David Faulstich aim to provide a good, old-fashioned, back-to-nature experience to all its campers, whether they’re day-campers or registered for one of the twoweek resident sessions.
“I think, certainly, i n the last 15 to 20 years, every school, church, community center... has developed its own summer camp,” he said. “There’s surely a lot of segmentation. There’s sailing camp, photography camp (science, technology, engineering and math — or STEM) camp. And there are a lot of great programs out there.
“But, what I think sets us apart is that you get that broader experience. (The kids) choose what they want to do. The only things that are strict are their swimming lessons and riding lessons.”
Turning off the Internet
Both Faulstich and Red Oak Camp’s marketing and communication director, David Baxter, agreed that one of its advantages is the campers’ ability to focus on their own choices throughout the camp’s many offerings.
“We always try to encourage them to try all the activities,’ Baxter said. “But if Jimmy really likes fishing and he wants to delve deeper into that — learn how to fly fish, for example — then that’s great, too. Every activity we have builds on itself.”
Faulstich agreed there seems to be a kind of Renaissance among tradi- tional, outdoors-based summer camps in recent years.
He said it could be that parents are looking back on their own summercamp experiences with fond memories or they see them as a way to separate their children from cell phones, video games and other modern-day distractions.
“There’s a little bit of a turn of, like: ‘ Oh! I’m going to send them to you and there aren’t any video games? There’s no phone? I don’t have to have that battle? You’re going to make them use a shovel?’” Faulstich said. “And, so, I’ve seen a little increase in excitement and enthusiasm around the older-style, the throwback to what parents remember from their summer-camp experiences.
“Because, now, Baby Boomers, even parents from Generation X, are looking back at when they were young and they’re realizing that maybe their son or daughter is missing something.”
He added that, “furthermore, they’re having these battles around Instagram, or whatever it is, so they’re excited to hear that ‘oh, they can go away and not have access to all those things.’”
Feeling at home
Just as today’s parents may see the great outdoors’ curative properties when it comes to curtailing their children’s dependencies on technology, if even for a week or two, others see camp as a way for their children to feel at home in the woods, if even for a week or two.
Take Camp Ho Mita Koda in Newbury Township, for example.
Established in 1929 as a woodsy haven for children with diabetes, it contin-
ues its mission today, giving diabetic children ages 6-15 the opportunity to just be kids in the woods, having fun.
“It gives them the opportunity to have an amazing summer camp experience in a really safe environment, medically, because we have around-the-clock medical care,” said Camp Ho Mita Koda Foundation Trustee Kristin Warzocha.
She explained that, besides providing campers with a safe place to play and learn outdoors, it builds relationships with people who they’ll call friends for the rest of their lives and be around role models who deal with similar concerns.
“It is a diabetes camp, first and foremost,” Warzocha said. “They have people they can look up to and learn from who are facing the same issues they are.”
Assistant Camp Director Abbey Holbrook said the place tends to get so fa-
miliar to campers, they often start referring to it as “home.”
“They’re used to being different, outcasts, even, at times. But here, it’s almost like someone without diabetes is the outcast,” Holbrook said. “And that makes the campers feel more at home than home actually does sometimes. This is a place where the kids can be safe, a place they can go meet the people they’ll be friends with for life.”
W a r z o c h a, whose 12-year-old daughter, Sam, is diabetic and comes to Camp Ho Mita Koda, concurred.
“I always tell people that, as a parent of a child who comes to camp here, I feel like this is the safest place for her,” she said. “Not only do the campers here share a condition, they get around-the-clock care. Where else can you get that?”
She added that Sam, who was a bit apprehensive be----
fore her first day at Camp Ho Mita Koda five years ago, is a big proponent of it today, to say the least.
“She would give up Christmas and her birthday to come here,” Warzocha said.
Among its trademark attention to campers nutrition and healthcare needs, Camp Ho Mita Koda provides its campers with many of the activities that have become staples on the summer-camp scene, including water activities in the property’s lake and pool, hiking, ghost stories (if campers choose to partake), fishing, a ropes course, zip-lining, a rock wall, archery, equestrian pursuits and even paintball target practice.
Focusing on different age groups
Along with the numerous dedicated-camp properties offering resident and day camp opportunities, organizations like the Geauga Park District and Lake Metroparks also offer summercamp programs.
In its sixth year, the Geauga Park District’s weeklong Adventure Day Camps give kids in two age groups — grades 5-7 and 8-10 — a chace to participate in a variety of handson outdoors experiences aimed at teaching them self confidence, outdoors skills and appreciation for the abundance of recreational opportunities existing right in their own back yards, according to Chief Naturalist John Kolar.
“We developed these summer camps for these specific age ranges because, based on our experience at that time, we felt that we needed to offer more programs for this age group,” Kolar said. “And we wanted our camps to be as handson and active as possible.”
From biking, kayaking, fishing, launching rockets and more, the program seems to deliver.
Kolar added that it’s the hands-on nature of the outdoor activity-based camps that have garnered them lots of positive feedback and popularity.
“What I think makes our summer camps most unique is that the kids are outside in the great outdoors for the entire day,” he writes. “They are out there learning to appreciate, enjoy and explore our natural world! They have the opportunity to try out a kayak, ride a bike, catch a fish, hike in a stream and even build and blast off their very own rocket!”