Falcon Camp

Good Things Happen By Design

THE FALCONER

November 2007

REGISTRATION NEWS

  Camp is filling quickly per usual this time of year but there is still room for you to join us for a fabulous summer.  If you’ve already registered, look for your name on page 3.  If not, send in your registration papers soon!

 This is the best time of the year to tell your friends about Falcon and have them visit us at a camp fair or receive some information (there is time for most of you to join us this year).  You are welcome to call or email us anytime to see what is available.

  Many of our new campers come to us after hearing about Falcon from our camp families. Think about who might make a good bunk mate, who lives on your street, or in your afterschool groups and teams. Wear your Falcon clothes and talk about camp. You will be pleasantly suprised by the number of people who want to know how you have so much fun in the summer.  

Camp Fair Schedule

  We have already completed the first half of our camp fair travels with trips to Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh; Beachwood, Solon and Westlake in the Cleveland area, and the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus.  There are still several fairs to attend so if we are in your neighborhood, come visit us and bring a friend!  Wear a Falcon shirt to show everyone you are part of Falcon, too! If you know of any events where we might take part in your community or school, please let us know.

March Camp Fair schedule:

SportsOhio Summer Camp Expo

Field Sports at SportsOhio

Dublin, Ohio

March 9   1:00pm-3:30pm

Olentangy Summer Activities Expo

Olentangy Orange Middle School

Columbus, Ohio

March 11   5:30pm-8:30pm

GEAR Summer Camp Fair

Sycamore Community School District

Business Club of Montgomery

Cincinnati, Ohio

March 14  9:00am-1:00pm

Summer Camp & Activities Fair

Chagrin Valley Athletic Club

Chagrin Falls, Ohio

March 15   10:00am-2:00pm

Happy Anniversary!

  Falcon Camp is celebrating our 50^th anniversary in 2008 so hurrah for us! There will be some special celebrations this summer and a few gatherings throughout the year and we’ll let you know details as they get planned. We are

very proud of our traditions and the strong reputation we have

developed over our 50 years. Later this month, we’ll start with a short history of Falcon and a series of remembrances on Falcon’s web site.  We’ll track down Falcon alumni, reprint newsletters from different decades, share your favorite Falcon memories and more as we show the best of Falcon to all of you.

From the Director

It has been an absolutely hectic winter for us this year. Busy as is typical with phone calls, receiving applications, camp fairs and all the other things that go into our winter season. Add into the mix having the outside of our house redone, traveling frequently to see our son Cas in his first year of boarding school, preparing for our daughter Hannah to graduate from college (and find a job!), and it seems like it should still be sometime in December.

   Without a doubt the most time consuming and difficult task we’ve dealt with this winter is to select our CIT’s and our summer staff. We had more CIT applications than ever before and there was no way we could accept all who applied. There really were some hard decisions to make and we are proud of the young people who were accepted and share

in the disappointment of those who were not. It is not easy to tell someone who has been with you at Falcon for years that they will not be with you in the 2008 summer.

   That difficult decision process continues with our Junior and Senior staff as we are still making our final selections. To give you an idea of the situation, we have 23 male staff candidates with Falcon experience for 16 positions. There is not quite as much of an issue with the Female staff but still we have more than we can accept. Included in the process is to make sure we have the proper number of experienced staff in all of Falcon’s activity areas. Our search for the best staff also includes applicants from outside our Falcon group as we are always looking for new ideas and skills. We have long felt that each year it is important to have a few new faces and the added diversity of international staff to help keep us fresh and creative.

  This is a good problem to have even if it is not an easy one. The large number of applicants from our own Falcon family tells you how much Falcon means to the young people who want to continue to be a part of camp and give back some of what they have been a part of over the years. We will begin announcing our staff on the web site starting next week. Returning campers and especially new families can be assured that our staff will be qualified, ready, excited and prepared to give our campers the best summer ever.   

“Fun for Now, Skills for Life”

Our new motto exemplifies what Falcon means, what our goals are and what we want to accomplish at camp. The fun part for campers is now and immediate. In the process of that fun, we are teaching skills that last a lifetime. These learning skills include activities such as archery, an appreciation of nature, sailing, horseback riding and more. They also include the important lifetime learning of social skills, making friends, being a part of and belonging to a group, role models, values and making responsible choices. Being a Falcon camper means learning how to lead your own self as a first step toward learning how to lead others.

   How great is it to be able to accomplish all of these things in the middle of having so much fun! We’re already getting stir crazy in the office and camp is still a few short months away. A summer at Falcon truly is a wonderful experience and we are delighted so many of you are joining us again in 2008. 

New Technology Is Coming Soon to Falcon

We are now in the building process of a totally new Falcon web site that will be technologically current and easy to navigate. Online applications, staff blogs, a camp safe myspace/facebook type area, alumni section and more. Some of us who are dinosaurs (Dave) will have to learn a whole new way of doing things but it sure looks like it will be exciting.

For All Horse Lovers!

Unique facts relating to horses:

1. It is impossible for a horse to break it’s collarbone because horses do not have collarbones.

2. There is a “Zorse” in a German safari park. This 4- legged animal had a zebra for a mother and a horse for a father. “Eclypse” is the only one of it’s kind, with stripes on his head and rump while the rest of his body is white.

3. Horses should drink water when they are thirsty. Horses do Not have to be cooled down to consume water. That is just a myth.

4. The vibrissae are the long whiskers around the horse’s muzzle. They are very sensitive to the touch and help the horse figure how to locate objects they cannot see, such as food.

5. Technically a horse is not called a “horse” until they reach their fifth birthday. Until then they are called fillies or colts.

We welcome the following girls to Horse Lover Camp for 2008:

* denotes new camper

Anne Baldes*

Sarah Beck*

Roberta Blaho

Kayla Broggani*

Amy Burte

Melissa Condon

Emily Coonfare*

Tess Fisher*

Kate Connors

Meridith Foster

Tricia Gerber

Monica Giorgio*

Taylor Hood

Erika Ice*

Emily Jones

Madison Jones*

Sharon Kelly*

Zoe Mack

Megan Mathur

Amelia Murray*

Jessica Pariscoff

Juliana Pawson

Laurie Perrin*

Christina Robb

Ashley Sartoris

Eva Szabados

Lauren Vargo

Many of the girls are signed up for multiple weeks, but there is still room to sign up for Horse Camp.

We would like to officially announce our CIT’s for the summer of 2008. This is an extremely skilled and exciting group of young people and the entire staff is looking forward to working with this group. Each year it seems our decisions get more difficult to make as larger numbers of candidates want to become counselors in training at Falcon. These CIT’s are highly motivated and will be great role models for our campers.  Some of their bios appear in the staff section and we will add more as we get closer to summer.

Jessica Benson

MJ Eckhouse

Jocelyn Fishman

Ali Foti

Isabelle Hammer

Nora Harris

Armand Holmes

Alexandra Houck

Jacob Huerta

Sarah LaCroix

Catherine Longhini

Nic Lux

Chelsea Mihelich

Laura Nice

Hannah Rex

Jennifer Salkin

Kayla Schwieterman

Leah Shefsky

Lizzie Sords

David Stahl

Nate Vance

Taylor Williams

We welcome the following campers for the summer of 2008.          

*denotes new camper