NYSP Sports Activities

For this second half of camp, my responsibilities switched from teaching education to sports activities for the children. My chosen sport to help assist coaching was volleyball.  For this sport, I am currently working alongside two adult staff members as well as another student and myself.  I have the opportunity to not only teach but also play right alongside the students.  Many of the younger students need help with basic volleyball skills involving bumping, setting, and how to serve the ball.  The older children are quite manageable overall and are very into playing the game and keeping score themselves.  For those children who are not necessarily familiar with volleyball, I have taken them aside and played other games with them involving the volleyball, such as setting the ball to each other or playing catch.

Over the past few weeks coaching volleyball, I have grown rather close with the other staff "coaches" for volleyball.  They have each taught me so much about life and how blessed I am to attend a good school and I will have my degree in half a year.  These words of wisdom served as my motivation to teach these kids not only volleyball skills but patience, good sportsmanship, how to take turns and rotate to make sure everyone has a fair chance to play, etc.  The children really look up to me and treat me like a real coach of volleyball, even though I have never played on a team before and only play in a recreational sense.  Overall I love sports, staying active, and being physically fit.  Having the chance to teach the children I have worked with the importance of doing so is quite rewarding to me.  Many of the kids have improved not only in their volleyball skills, but also in the way they treat one another on the court, approach each other, and work together as a team.  I am thrilled to have been a part of this.

Some of the conversations I have had with my campers while playing volleyball have also impacted me, for example I can remember a few days ago an older camper talking to me about colleges and where she should attend.  She expressed her dream of becoming a pediatrician, and her wish of wanting to get into a good medical school.  I explained to her the importance of keeping her grades up, studying at home for school, and staying active and involved in extracurricular activities.  We talked about SAT and ACT scores and how much she wanted to make a difference in the world and work with children.  I told her you can do anything you set your mind to and that she had to stay focused and determined to reach her goal, even after years and years of schooling.  She knows it's something worth working for and achieving; she said that she's glad she talked to me about everything, which made me feel great inside knowing I could serve as a small stepping stone in helping her achieve her dreams.  This is just one of the experiences I will take with me from this camp.  As a whole I love this organization and am glad to have been a part of it through helping change the lives of the campers in small ways each day.