Editorial

Summer camps have great potential

Monday, June 16, 2003

McCook Community College is onto something, and it could be big ... really big. The exciting opportunity -- which has the potential to attract hundreds of youngsters to the campus and generate thousands of dollars for the college -- is expansion of the summer camp program.

Optimism is building due to the highly successful "Wind on the Buffalo Grass Young Writers Enrichment Camp," which took place from Monday, May 26, through Saturday, May 31, at MCC.

"It was wonderful," said Ann Kester, the MCC English instructor who spearheaded camp preparations. "We had a capacity of 40 participants, and we reached that level well in advance of the deadline. In the last few days, we were getting calls from as far away as Norfolk, Fremont and Scottsbluff, but, we had to turn them away due to the tremendous response."

In the talking stage for two years, the camp started taking definite shape last September, when the co-director of the Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival, Cloyd Clark, met with Dr. Richard Tubbs, vice president at McCook Community College; Jerda Garey, mayor of McCook; Kim Van Pelt, representing Educational Service Unit 15; and Kester. At that meeting, plans were set in motion for a week-long camp in advance of the storytelling festival.

Capitalizing on this region's heritage, the organizers selected, "Wind on the Buffalo Grass" as the theme for the enrichment camp. Along with this, they scored a true coup, enticing Dr. James Riding In from Arizona State University as the principal speaker. Giving further impetus to the event, the writing camp received a major grant from the Nebraska Humanities Council.

With that start -- and the added help of Dr. Mary Ellen Goodenberger of Stratton, Debra Carpenter of Rushville and Kester -- the college and ESU 15 sent out invitations to gifted and talented young writers in a wide area of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado.

The overwhelming response brought young writing enthusiasts to the college from Palisade, Imperial, Holbrook, Danbury, Paxton, Stratton, Benkelman, O'Neill, Cambridge, Trenton, McCook, Roscoe, Champion and Curtis in Nebraska and Colby and Healy in Kansas.

As the young writer activities showed, McCook Community College is an excellent venue for summer camp gatherings. The Ralph G. Brooks Residence Hall, unoccupied by college students during the summer, provides comfortable, air conditioned accommodations, and the experienced college cooks serve delicious, and plentiful meals. There is wonderful support from the town and area, too, with the young campers treated to trips to the Dancing Leaf Earth Lodge near Wellfleet and the Massacre Canyon site near Trenton, as well as activities at the beautiful and convenient Kelley Park.

The writing enrichment camp showed McCook Community College is an excellent host for summer activities. Let's expand on the idea. Let's do another writers' camp next summer -- as is already being planned -- and let's host other camps as well, for youth, teachers and anyone else with a need -- and desire -- to expand their horizons in a fun, and focused, environment. The college is a great treasure. Let's use it to the fullest extent possible, making use of facilities in summer as well as the fall, winter and spring.

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