This summer, as we celebrated 90 summers of traditions at Alleghany, we decided to start a new tradition: Blue and Gray Team Cookouts on the last Sunday of the summer.
Well, it’s sort of an old tradition revised.
Back when each session was four weeks long, and the majority of the campers stayed for eight full weeks, the teams used to host parties for each other. The Blues would plan a theme and location, and invite the Grays to the party, and vice versa.
Since time is a bit limited now, with shorter sessions, we wanted to try something similar but knew we would only have one night to be able to do this. So we decided on team cookouts that would happen simultaneously, just in separate locations of camp.
Top chef!
We told the Blue and Gray captains about this and let them decide how they wanted to structure their team’s cookout. We likened it to a sports banquet at school, and told them they could be as creative as they wanted in planning it.
The captains decided that ALL the 16s (oldest campers in camp) would play a part in leading the events, not just the captains. This helped deepen the stakes as everyone got into the friendly rivalry.
Well, the cookouts were a huge success! But I wanted to hear it straight from the captains, so they were gracious enough to write this up for me:
After the Canoe Meet on Sunday, we were really excited to bring back the tradition of Blue/Gray team parties. Well, we found it to be a good time to boost team morale and get to know each other better outside of competition.
The 16s enjoyed the leadership opportunity by serving the food and creating and presenting songs.
Both teams made banners and bracelets to symbolize togetherness and sportsmanship. Juniors were paired with Seniors to make new friends and to get to know each other better. The cookout ended by getting all members of each team to sign that team’s banner. All in all, the cookouts were a blast and we hope to carry on the tradition in the future.
Love,
–The Senior Blue and Gray Captions, 2nd Term 2011
Randall Ackerly & Lizzie Cornick (Grays)
Abi Edwards & Lizzie Pate (Blues)
–Elizabeth Dawson Shreckhise, Assistant Director
