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Upstate summer camps coming back to life and filling up fast

This year, New York summer camps are all about cohorts, pods, and bubbles. Not soap bubbles, said Doug Fuhrman, but a social bubble to try and keep COVID-19 out.

“There’s a lot of talk in the camping world about bubbles, and creating a bubble that you can be safe within,” he said.

Fuhrman directs Camp Lincoln at North Country Camps in Keeseville. It’s a two month long residential camp, with about 250 campers and staff. While Fuhrman says he doesn’t believe “that any camp can create a perfect bubble,” he said creating the best one possible is still valuable. To create theirs at North Country Camps, the whole staff will be vaccinated. They’ll be testing kids at camp, and all the kids will be arriving at the same time, negative COVID-19 test in hand.

“Having everyone come at once in a very controlled fashion, and only having kids leave after that really limits your exposure for the rest of the summer,” said Furman.

Camps filling up,

and fast

Even with new rules and restrictions, Fuhrman and other camp directors report camp interest and enrollment are high.

Stephen Hoitt is the Director of the Rochester-based Seneca Waterways Council, part of Boy Scouts of America. He says just their deposits have already exceeded enrollment from before the pandemic, in 2019.

“Which is crazy, we did not expect that to happen. We figured we’d land somewhere between 2020 and 2019, and to already be there in deposits is super exciting,” said Hoitt.

Hoitt’s organization runs three summer camp programs in New York, the largest of which is Massawepie, outside of Tupper Lake. Hoitt says things will have to be different this summer at all their camps to be safe.

They’re changing their dining services from family-style to single serving, and setting up circus tents for more covered seating. Certain close-contact games will probably be getting the ax, like the beloved Watermelon Scramble, a game played in shallow water with an olive oil greased watermelon.

“They take a watermelon and rub it down with olive oil, so it’s slippery, and they’ll put it in the water, and the kids got to push it into a goal on the opposite side … and the kids love to do it, but it’s in a condensed area, so that will probably not happen this year.”

It’s probably because while New York gave summer camps the green light back in February, they still haven’t released official guidelines. Camps are making their best guesses off of CDC and American Camp Association recommendations.

But there are bigger questions than greased watermelons that need to be answered. Like capacity.

Capacity is a huge question mark. Will camps be allowed to operate at 100% capacity? If not, who will they have to turn away?

To be safe, 4-H Camp Overlook, a one week residential camp just outside Malone, decided to limit their enrollment, explained Director Casey Sukemore: “We’ve gone with the conservative route, and done a 50% capacity in cabin. We really didn’t want to disappoint families and tell them no. We’d rather open up and tell families yes.”

They’ve already got waitlists for most of the summer’s sessions.

Camp Overlook, like many others camps, will be using a “pod” structure to limit kids’ overall interactions with the larger group. Camp Overlook plans to have 20 or so kids going through the week together. They’re also doing as much outdoors as possible, including all meals, and even scheduling things like shower times.

“It’s looking very different this year,” laughed Sukemore, “but I think it will be a really successful summer.”

Hoping for normal

For Sukemore, a successful summer will be one where kids can forget the coronavirus pandemic altogether.

“I’ve heard from families so much this year that campers really need camp,” said Sukemore. “So my hope is that they come this summer, and they don’t even notice that anything is different!”

Camp directors like Sukemore will be behind the scenes, sanitizing arrows and scheduling shower times, trying to pull off that normal summer camp experience.

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