Feedback from campers at Viking year after year confirms that it’s truly the people who make the kids come back to us and want to remain part of our community. Kids love Viking because of the kind of people they are surrounded with. We bring forward a force of positive role models in our staff who lead by example and model values of collaboration, engagement, and standup sportsmanship. In doing so, Viking Summer Camps inevitably foster these same qualities in our campers, spreading a cascade of exemplary character development that lasts a lifetime.
Campers and coaches alike come to us from a diversity of different backgrounds and all unite in fun and friendship through common goals. The skills children build working together in sports teams have lifelong benefits that strengthen the quality of their relationships as they move into the other domains of their life and become members of other communities.
One concrete example of this is our Coaches-In-Training Program. Once campers have aged out of the Viking Multi-Sports Summer Camp Experience, they are eligible to interview for a position as a Coach-In-Training (CIT). Many longtime campers feel so connected and engaged with Viking by age 14 – 16 that they feel compelled to give back to the program. Check out our section on the CIT Program on our website at http://www.vikingcamps.com/pages/cit for more information on this.
The passion that our CIT’s bring to camp, to support our upstanding coaches and directors, is a testament to the strength of relationships built through programs at Viking. The positive energy in an inclusive environment that emerges out of this passion is the fuel of Viking Camps and the main reason why kids love Viking.