Week 5 of the summer of 2022 just passed and, with that week being a large part of my summer for so long, I truly missed being there. Seeing the many pictures from Olympia friends and family tugged at the heartstrings for sure. 


It's the experience you miss, but it's the people you miss.


People like Linda Driscoll.



Week 5 of the summer of 2022 is also the 25th summer for Olympia gymnastics fixture Linda Driscoll. Here is the beautiful message she wrote for the "Soul Of Olympia" chapter in "A Hero's Journey: Beyond Little Norway and Olympia Sports Camp." The book will be out sometime in the fall and I can't wait for people to read stuff like Linda provides.


Thanks for sharing Linda, and thanks for the generations of gymnasts you have inspired.

 






 

When I moved to Huntsville from Toronto in 1990, I was looking for a way to “embrace” living in small-town Ontario. To become “one with the community.” Four years later, the   Beamers Gymnastics Club was born. 

 

Then I heard about Camp Olympia.

 

The vice president of my parent board worked at Olympia as a cook in the summer months and she approached me about maybe seeing if Dave Grace would want a gymnastics program. Taking my life as a gymnastics coach one step further, I talked to Dave and week 5 gymnastics became part of Olympia. 

 

Life then gave me a turn. The club I formed closed 12 years after I started it and I moved back to the hustle and bustle of big-city Toronto. It was unthinkable not to return every summer to a place that I now called home. Olympia is my opportunity to reconnect and maintain friendships while coaching a lifetime sport. It became for me an annual part of my calendar. And my life: 23 years later, I am still here and still loving it!

 

To make Olympia even more special for me was that in my early years, my coaching staff was composed of my previous competitive gymnasts. I mentored them and watched them grow into amazingly strong women. I treasure the opportunity Olympia gives me to maintain strong bonds with these coaches. I have been invited to their weddings, shared in their accomplishments, and shared in their sorrows.

 

Olympia is timeless.

 

Every summer, as I drive up from the city and pass that corner on Hwy 11 just past Gravenhurst and see the sign saying “Huntsville 53 km,” a weight begins to lift off my shoulders. The car somehow increases speed with anticipation, memories pour into my head, and I begin to smile. I’m heading toward home.

 

I can’t wait to get to camp and reconnect. Many of the coaches I see only that one week of the year, but the feeling of seeing them wipes away the 52 weeks between us. I will always be grateful for this awesome experience among so many awesome like-minded people. It’s a pleasure to see the young campers learn new skills, make new friends, and perform with confidence and grace at the show at the end of the week in front of 300 others campers.

 

My week at Olympia is the highlight of my summer as the community of week 5 allows me to laugh with friends, relive old memories, and most importantly, create new ones.

 

One other aspect to my Olympia journey: my niece Lisa started coaching with me, then loved the camp experience so much that she worked as a counsellor for three years. Every summer, we still coached together. Then life got busy. She moved away for school and got married. Then, to my delight and surprise, she wanted to coach back at Olympia. She now brings her husband Brent and son Wesley. So, it lives on.

 

Long live Olympia!



 

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.

 

  

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
 Karl Svoboda began his rugby career at Belleville's Centennial Secondary School and the Belleville Bulldogs club team. When he started with the Bulldogs at 16 he was the club's youngest player. When he retired from the game he was the club's oldest, and probably most accomplished. Karl had success in rugby the world over. He won three OUA championships with the University of Toronto Blues and he first made Canada's national team in 1985. He ended up being team captain of the national team for years and played in the first three Rugby World Cups in 1987, 1991, and 1995. He also played senior rugby for the Ajax Wanderers and attended the prestigious Oxford University in England at the dawn of professional rugby in 1996. I gleaned this information from research because for a decade or more of sharing week 5 coaching duties and sitting around campfires this understated superstar would rather play guitar and talk about fishing or that day's bike ride or swim than boast
Read more
Image
In the summer of 2019,  Blaine Scatcherd  was introducing himself at the opening meeting of week 5 and told the assembly of coaches that he worked as a counsellor at Olympia for 4 ¾ years. People who knew the story, including Dave Grace, roared with laughter at the self-effacing honesty Blaine showed when recounting an incident that may have been the worst in his career, yet a defining moment that changed him forever and made him a better teacher and coach, and a better person.    Blaine Scatcherd is from Ottawa, where he was coached in football at Glebe Collegiate Institute by Olympia coach Skip Riddell. He went on to play football at Acadia University and played professionally in France for 2 years before embarking on his teaching profession.   “Skip recommended to me in grade 11 that I work at Olympia as it was a great place for an athlete and would-be coach, so I applied to Olympia with Skip’s reference. I went down to Toronto for a group interview and thought I aced it. I didn’t g
Read more
Image
They say that a picture tells a thousand words. How about two pictures? In the writing of A Hero's Journey: Beyond Little Norway and Olympia Sports Camp I got to interview a lot of people dedicated to Olympia and to the vision of Dave Grace. Out of this process I learned three things about the 50- year journey of the staff of Olympia: 1- Olympia inspires young people 2- Staff inspire others to do the same 3- Staff move on in their lives, carrying Olympia with them, while others replace  Staff like Randy Kipfer and Kevin O'Reilly This picture of Harlem Globetrotter Curly Neal with some amazing counsellors can be found in the book at the start of Chapter 6-Allies and Ogres . It captures an Olympia moment shared by good friends and a world-class basketball entertainer, but the insert is the key element of an Olympia journey that spans decades.  There are literally hundreds of stories of staff who have graced the lands of Interlaken. Every story is unique, every story is echoed th
Read more