The Season: Summer Camp Edition

Since my appointment as coach, I have instituted several changes throughout the Bethany Christian tennis program. I made sure that we looked the part as competitors by changing our uniforms from t-shirts to true tennis gear. We began a tradition of video scavenger hunts during the last week of the season. We've come together to celebrate the start of season with midnight practices, complete with the process of praying the lines. We've actually started getting together for conditioning week, something unheard of before my time. There are probably more things as well. But the one new part of tennis season that I am most proud of is the summer camp.

Summer camp is probably the most fun that we have all season, packed into one long, tired, and community filled week. We all pile into an old school van, load up some semi-willing senior's car with our extra gear, from tennis bags to sleeping bags. We play tennis 4-6 hours a day, come back to the church where we crash and play video games, speedball, dodgeball, cards, sleep...whatever our bodies can handle.

What's amazing is that within the tradition of summer camp, new traditions have formed. We always play hide-and-go-seek, and in the enormous church building that we call home for the week, some ingenious and unfindable hiding spots have been used. We always do devotionals in the evenings, either written out or spoken in the youth room. We always go to Pizza King for one of the evening meals. And usually hit the Great Wall of China Buffet at least once during the week for lunch, and regret it later. Recently, speedball has become a loved and heated tradition.

I'm hard pressed to find anyone who regrets spending time together at team camp. This year was no exception. You can find my top ten camp memories here, but let me just tell you my perspective on the week.

After all the good things that I've just said about camp, I entered this week not looking forward to it at all. It was the first tennis camp since we have had children, and I was leaving my wife all alone with Gideon. Not exactly the best way to win brownie points. We had also spent the entire weekend before camp started, from Thursday night through Sunday night, in Kokomo for my brother's wedding, where I had had the responsibilities of the best man. From Monday to Thursday I had been running my elementary and middle school camp with Sarah Yoder and running the first of our Michigan matches. I was exhausted before the exhausting week ever started.

But it is a good tradition, and I can't let the guys down. It actually went through my mind to just have the camp at Bethany, with no overnight. Then I realized that would kill the whole purpose of the camp. So, I made phone calls on the drive home from Kokomo to make sure I knew who all was coming and then had the van fired up and ready to go come 8:00 Monday morning.

When it came to this year's camp, I have very few memories of the actual tennis played throughout the course of the week. I remember Austin and Daniel dominating a doubles game that they got paired in. I remember that we played Team 105 and Kyle Miller was the first to be picked, above any varsity player. I think his team actually won too. I remember the drawing that we found on the number one singles court. I remember running through the woods calling out how much time was left. But the biggest impression I had about the team is that they took their tennis seriously.

When we hit the courts we were ready to practice, with one exception. And this was a team expectation, not a coach expectation. When someone wasn't ready to try hard, to practice correctly, and just wanted to goof around...well, the rest of the guys weren't happy about that. And they often would let them know. Even guys who I might have labeled as slackers in the past, they were encouraging each other to work hard throughout the week.

I have to highlight that. Most of the times, people come to camp just looking to have a good time. This team realized that we were going to have a good time, so their purpose to be at camp was to get a tennis workout. And I hope that happened.

But of course we had a good time. At Pizza King I discovered that several of the seniors guys had an affinity for barbeque sauce on their pizza just like me. During speedball we found that we need to have a very strictly defined rulebook and an appointed, impartial referee in order to keep the game from descending into argued and violent conflict. Jared and Luke were basically unfindable as they hid on a roof beneath the outer roof. We dressed up as Roman soldiers and marched through the church with spears out, looking for Russell hiding in the tiniest places (stuffed into the dishwasher this year). We took showers one at a time, seeing who could undress, shower, dry, and redress in the shortest amount of time. I think Daniel might have won that contest, in under a minute and a half.

And we laid out the verbs for the season: Recognize. Remember. Bless. Pray. Okay, so I stole the whole verb followed by a period idea from modern advertising (Goshen Health Systems: True. Care. Well, okay, I guess those aren't both verbs, but, whatever...) I had gotten up at 5:00 to type out the devotionals for all the players to read, but the printers at school were all offline and the network was down and I didn't have time to run home and print them all out. So in a last second change I talked about these foundational values every night to the team. I wasn't sure that they were completely convinced. A lot of that changed when we got to the season though.

I got to see my son throughout the camp as well, as Courtney came over twice to my parents house and to her parents house as they hosted the team, each on a different night. It ended up being a wonderful week. Okay, so I was still tired all the time. But it is week's like this that make the team more than players to me. It is times of community like this that make me see the team as my brothers.