The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
SVCS students spend week at camp
MUNNSVILLE » Twentyfour members of the Stockbridge Valley FFA attended Week One of summer camp at Camp Oswegatchie July 2-7. Camp Oswegatchie, a 1200 acre camp in the Adirondacks, is owned by the New York State FFA Foundation. Campers can go for a week or more and choose from five weeks during the camp season.
Camp Oswegatchie provides many outdoor activities for campers to participate in, including mountain biking, horse riding, archery, paddle boarding and swimming. Camp also provides more intense activities such as high ropes and double tubing.
The New York FFA State Line Officers also host a leadership class that teaches campers traits of a good leader and how to apply these traits at school and home. Throughout theweek, camp holds daily main activities for campers.
On Monday the camp has the Dark Water Dash, an obstacle course which covers 1/3 mile per lap. Campers collect tokens for each lap they complete that are added to a total and the campsite with the highest score wins. Tuesday is Carnival Night where counselors make carnival booths like fortune telling, face painting, and archery tag. Wishy’s, the local ice cream shop is there to sell ice cream to the campers. On Wednesday night the campsites hosted Skit Night. This is a time where campsites come together and come up with skits that could include storytelling, singing, and acting. That night campers also get to go back to their campsites and roast marshmallows.
Thursday night the camp holds a banquet and a dance. The banquet is held after dinner and campers can get awards such as Camper of the Week, Most Improved Camper or special awards that are given to people elected by the awards committee. The dance is held next and everyone gets ready but there is one campsite that does not get the extra time to get ready because they got “chicken pit,” a camp tradition given to the campsite which does the worst job on their de- tails around camp. Details are basically chores that are assigned to a campsite eachmorning that can earn them between 0-10 points. The campsite with the lowest score on Thursday is assigned chicken pit, essentially kitchen duty before they can go to the dance.
Before you know it Friday breakfast has arrived and every camper gets a pin that says “Never Forget Oswegatchie,” whichwill remind them of their week at camp and the fun they had for the rest of their lives.