AGE-UP Retreat: Day One

On Saturday morning, we all met up at Jefferson Community Center and tossed our baggage in the middle of the room. While waiting for our peers to arrive, we sat in cushy chairs and discussed the upcoming spring season.

Shortly after, we piled into vans and carpooled to Delridge Park to practice. Welcomed by overcast skies and bone-chilling winds, we warmed up with two laps around the turf field and extra gritty plyos. Our second-years, Miyo and Tiffany facilitated our practice and had us participate in dishy and huck drills. We spent the morning cheering each other on and secretly cursing the wind, which wreaked havoc on our throws. Look how cloudy it was!

For lunch, we made our own sandwiches and munched on chips. A few of us (me) did both at the same time (not pictured, unfortunately). Also, the weather cleared up!

After, we divided into mini teams led by a coach and a second-year and tore each other apart. Though no clear team was the winner, we divided once more to play galaxy wars.

With practice done, we headed to Camp Long, where Miyo, Kendra, and Tiffany led us through an activity where we were given prompts involving aspects of coaching and performed skits relating to them. We then played “life and death in the forest” with Shannon and Alyssa while Team Top Chef and others made lasagna for dinner.

After dinner, we filled out winter session evaluations, acted out tableaus, and circled up to share appreciations. The catch? As each person shared what they appreciated about AGE-UP, they looped a bit of yarn around their wrist and threw the yarn ball to another person.

Eventually we were all connected!

After cutting the yarn (to make sick bracelets), we stayed in our circle and went around showing off our secret talents. Rest assured, AGE-UP has SO much talent.

Approaching bed time, we dispersed to our cabins and got ready for bed.

As for my cabin, we decided to go around scaring the other cabins. Unfortunately, on our way to Cabin Two, Sam caught us sneaking in the dark… but he approved so we went ahead and threw pine cones at Cabin Two. We didn’t scare them.

We moved on to scare Cabin One by screaming in front of their windows. Successful, we giggled and ran away.

Knowing they would probably try to scare us in the morning, we eased ourselves to sleep and got ready for day two.