There’s excitement in the air around camp, and we bet you know why…
…Thursday night was Spirit Night!
OK, OK — we know, and you know, that this Saturday is Visiting Day. It’s a highlight of the summer for campers and parents alike. For parents, it’s your chance to see what your daughters have been up to all summer — meet their counselors, see their new skills, check out their art projects. And for campers, it’s a day to show off their summer home, plus revel in a little special family time!
Just like you spend extra time getting your house ready to welcome special guests, we invest extra effort in getting camp ready to welcome our most special visitors: our parents and families. During the week before Visiting Day, excitement runs high around camp as campers rush to finish art projects, perfect new skills and clean up their bunks in preparation for the big day. There’s a thin line between excitement and nervousness, and as much fun as it is to think about the joy that comes with Visiting Day, campers also sometimes have a hard time focusing on day-to-day life at camp as they think about the family reunion to come.
More than a decade ago, we landed on a way to channel that pre-Visiting Day energy into something fun and productive that celebrates camp and all the things we love about it. In the days running up to Visiting Day, amid the preparations for Saturday, we spend extra time preparing for Spirit Night, an evening when campers quite literally sing the praises of their age groups.
Spirit Night is about bringing campers together to reflect on what makes their age group special — their interests, their inside jokes, their love for camp and what it means to be a camper in their age group. Girls from each bunk work together to write original song lyrics that tell the story of who they are and what makes their age group special — the things they all have in common. On Thursday this week, we gathered all the age groups together in our annual Spirit Night to hear each song performed and embrace the spirit of togetherness that unites girls across cabins, across friendships and through each summer, year after year.
On Saturday, you and your families will be ready and waiting to run across Main Campus and greet your campers, and they’ll gather in a spirit chain to chant “let them in!” The excitement of Visiting Day is the excitement of sharing camp with the outside world and the people we love there. We know there’s no better way to prepare than to spend a special evening celebrating what it means to share camp with one another — the campers and counselors who truly understand what it means to be a Bryn Mawr Angel!