Hello all,
Tonight was fight song. However, before I can even begin to describe to you the emotional roller coaster that was the two hours Camp Seneca Lake spent in the O-Rec, I feel it is best to document the journey that led us to this night and its results.
It begins on the final week of June in 2011. During staff orientation, Program Director Ari Baum sprang onto the staff the concept of Fight Song. As many of you already know, the object of this program was for each village to take popular songs and rewrite them to represent their own village, and then take these songs and compete with the other villages to see who had the best performance. Many staff were skeptical of the idea, but I thought it could become an integral part of the CSL culture. When people asked why, I had a simple answer:
"Fight song worked at my old camp, why not here?"
To briefly summarize, I spent part of my childhood at Crane Lake Camp in the Berkshire Mountains. My favorite camp activity in the three summers I spent there was Fight Song, an age-old tradition that had been continued for generations. During those three summers, I had the privilege of winning my final Fight Song ever as a senior camper in 2008. As one of my favorite memories from the eleven summers I spent at summer camps, I thought it could never be topped.
Fast forward to the final week of June, 2012: the Cayuga staff is sitting in C-3, deciding what songs Cayuga will use for fight song. After several hours, a list that was originally twenty songs long was reduced to the final choice: One Directions' "What Makes You Beautiful." Repetitive yet familiar, this song seemed like the perfect song to teach a bunch of younger boys, most of which had never been to camp and had little to no experience with music. The entire Cayuga staff worked hard, with Isaac Messina, Jarred Masters, and myself taking lead to make sure that we were able to perform to the best of our potential as a village.
And now to the night itself: Cayuga was the fourth village to perform, following a tremendous performance from the Tusccampers, a surprisingly creative performance from the Mohicans, and Seneca, the defending champions, the twenty-seven campers of Cayuga, the seven LIT's who had been helping us since our first rehearsal, and their fourteen staff took the stage. Our walk-in, a rewritten version of the national anthem, was followed by "What Makes You Beautiful," which was performed perfectly. As we sang our walk-out and left the stage, a sense of euphoria overwhelmed us…we actually thought we had a chance of winning. It was a long-shot with the competition, but as Onondaga performed the final fight song, we believed we could do it.
I don't think a single Cayugan, whether staff or camper, will ever forget the suspense that hung over the O-rec as Ari prepared to announce the winner, CAYUGA!
Thanks for reading,
Mike Pascutoi
C3 activity counselor, ropes
