Ok, I know it’s not Tuesday…I know I said I was taking a break from Tuesdays with Dave as I transition into the publishing side of my journey, but I have two reasons for writing a blog today.

 

First, I am in need of assistance in gathering pictures for the book. I have a bunch of my own but in the effort to capture the breadth of the Olympia experience I would love to have others to choose from. If you have any pictures you think would identify with the hero’s journey, please email them to me at coachdools71@gmail.com. I have about a week before I must decide which pictures to add to my manuscript. Thanks in advance.

 

Secondly, last night I was on a zoom meeting with Dave Grace, Greg Rogers, and a few other Olympians looking ways to help spread the word for the summer of 2022. It’s inspiring to listen to these great people who have given years to Olympia sharing ideas to get the numbers up after two years of a global pandemic. These coaches know how great a place Olympia is for kids and want to help the camp be the vehicle to impact campers lives just like it has their life. These leaders remind me of an adage shown throughout the book, Olympia is a place where, but Olympia is a people who….

 

This meeting created in me a sense of how I can help through the sharing of my skills, namely this blog, to bring Olympia Sports Camp out of the ashes of COVID. That, in turn, made me want to share the following. This is the epilogue to the Hero’s Journey: Beyond Little Norway and Olympia Sports Camp. After 400 pages of non-fiction writing about the history of Olympia, Kiwanis Camp, Little Norway, the European settlement process, and the indigenous beginnings of the land we call Interlaken, the book ends with a taste of fiction. I’m not sure if it truly is fiction as this scenario has taken place dozens of times every summer for 49 years and will be done many times throughout the great summer of 2022. I hope parents reading this may see that Olympia is a great camp that their kids need to get to this summer, perhaps more than ever. 

 



 The 13-year-old boy and his 11- year- old sister boarded the bus in Toronto, heading north for a week’s adventure they had been looking forward to for a long time. For two years they really had done nothing and had nowhere to go, so this week was going to be special. They had heard of this camp in Huntsville through friends but had never been. They really had no idea what they were in for. 

 

The bus made it’s 3-hour journey as they both could feel the excitement building. They saw a sign saying “Huntsville 53km” and knew they were getting close. They drove through the beautiful lakeside town of Huntsville and then turned on to Limberlost Road, with its sign that said, “Olympia Sports Camp 14km.”

 

As the bus approached the entrance to the camp, they passed an entourage of cars on the side of the road as parents were dropping their kids off. A horde of counsellors was waving and yelling as the bus passed the iconic sign and entered the camp property. The bus pulled up between the dining hall and the tuck shop and the campers got off. They were separated into cabin groups, met their family for a week, did some great introduction games, went for their requisite swim test, then a couple of hours after they arrived, they made their way to the gym for the opening ceremonies. It was starting to feel like home. 

 

Nervous as first time Olympians, they followed the crowd and felt the energy of the camp, the energy of the counsellors, and the feeling that this was a cool place that was going to be a lot of fun. They saw all these cool people as heroes, yet they soon learned that they too could and would be heroes. Then the music started.

 

The next generation of Olympia had arrived.



 Pay It Forward. 2022 will be a great year as the camp will return and flourish, but we need to be allies. The camp website is  www.olympiasportscamp.com Register your kids. Get your kids to get a few friends to join them at camp. Send a note to your club teams, your school teams. Do it for the kid whose life will be changed because they got to go to Olympia Sports Camp in the summer of 2022. Help spread the vibe that after two years the best sports camp in Canada ( with the four reasons we hear at every opening) will be back and be better than ever.  

 

 

 

The link to the blog is TuesdayswithDave.blogspot.com

This blog is about the journey of the writing of the book A Hero's Journey: From Little Norway to Olympia Sports Camp. The blog will contain excerpts from the book and my personal thoughts on what the place and the people that make up Olympia's journey is all about. The title comes from the great book Tuesdays With Morrie, by Mitch Albom. The blog's title is recognizing Dave Grace as Camp Director, but all content is my own. 

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