Video by DJ Vicente and Ashur Lockrem
The 53rd annual Youth Sport Camps, organized by the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Colorado State University, marks another summer session of engaging children in outdoor activities, friendship-making, and fun.
In addition to traditional team sport camps, the Youth Sport Camps offers two adventure camps for kids to enjoy the Colorado outdoors and build confidence. One of the main goals of the camps was to help kids experience the “spirit of adventure,” according to camp counselor Max Essl (health and exercise science, ’23), helping kids safely expand their comfort zone with activities they wouldn’t commonly do.
“The overall goal, especially for these kids, is to get into a space they aren’t comfortable in, and opening their horizons to new ideas,” Essl said.
The camp’s goal of helping kids experience the benefits of physical activity is especially important. As more children grow up exposed to technology and social media at an early age, the overall decrease in physical and outdoor activity among children has become more prevalent.
An experience outdoors
The Youth Sport Camps are made up of multiple sessions covering a variety of activities offered over twelve weeks from May 30 – Aug. 11, with a daily schedule of 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Participants in the camps ranged from ages 5-13.
Throughout the summer, various camps were available for participants, each covering a unique activity and topic, with an overarching goal of teaching the importance of health and physical activity in a child’s lifestyle.
“I really like all the activities, and I like how interactive the counselors are with us,” a participant at Youth Sport Camps said.
Each camp had a unique focus on a range of sports, including baseball, softball, soccer, hockey, in-line skating, football, and other field sports. The camps also featured music and movement camps, which taught participants about aerobic dance, rhythms, and martial arts movements.
Kids also participated in an outdoor adventure camp and extreme adventure camp, which included climbing, biking, hiking, fishing, and survival skills like shelter construction and fire building.
The extreme adventure camp, exclusive to children 10-years-old and older, gave the participants more of a challenge, from mountain biking at the Dixon Reservoir area to climbing at Duncan’s Ridge.
Youth Sport Camps also continued their sports science camp, which helped children delve into how the human body functions while exercising.
Cultivating an active community
Regardless of the activity, the overarching goal of the camps is to provide kids an outlet for physical activity and introduce them to the importance of movement in a healthy lifestyle as they get older.
“In today’s day and age, kids are so involved with social media like TikTok and Instagram, so they get to see everything behind the screen,” said Essl. “I think our participants are starting to realize that they can be outside and do the things that the people on their screens are doing.”
Essl also mentioned the growth he saw with the kids as he spent more time with them, remarking on how each one quickly adapted to each activity, especially kids who have not participated in these sports before.
The Youth Sport Camps have importance to the camp counselors as well. John Bailey, a student-veteran studying health and exercise science and the coordinator for the extreme adventure camp, noted his excitement working as a supervisor and counselor for the kids. Augmenting his degree program with experiential learning as a camp coordinator helps Bailey affirm his choice to pursue the health promotion field.
“It’s one of the most rewarding experiences that I could ever have, and you get to be in the great outdoors,” said Bailey. “Seeing the joy on kid’s faces, and how happy they are to be with kids their own age is really awesome.”
Essl mentioned the importance of helping kids become more active through the camps.
“It brings all of us together as a community, and that helps both the kids and the counselors want to do more, want to go out and be an adventurer, and push the boundaries of what we can do,” said Essl.
The Department of Health and Exercise Science is part of CSU’s College of Health and Human Sciences.
