I am Third!

When I taught in the classroom one summer I took a class at the Lutheran High School. It was called IMPACT and it met for a couple of weeks in June after school got out. It was strange to be "back in the classroom" at my high school, especially because some of the leaders of IMPACT were my high school teachers. When we had breaks during IMPACT, I saw the elementary age boys having basketball camp. It seemed to be a well organized camp. I never imagined some day my boys would attend that basketball camp.

I am on e-mail lists for news from my high school and college. I noticed my high school was advertising their summer camps. I wondered if time wise it would work for the boys to attend a camp while we were in Fort Wayne. It did almost work, they did have to miss the last couple of days of camp. Lamb 1 was very interested in basketball camp so I planned to sign him up. It was expensive so I planned to just sign up Lamb 1. Lamb 2 was also interested so I tried to talk him into tennis camp because it was cheaper. But Lamb 2 also wanted to attend BB camp. I couldn't believe I was writing a check for that much money for two Lambs to attend a camp, but as Lamb 2 said, we might not ever be in Fort Wayne at the right time for them to attend basketball camp again. Lamb 3 was not old enough for the camp and he didn't want to attend any way. It was good for the drive to IN to have basketball camp to look forward to.

The leader of the camp was the CLHS basketball coach and he had several high school and college boys and coaches from other Lutheran elementary schools helping him. I had Coach Reinking's son in my first grade class. Jacob is now in college. Jacob also helped with the camp.

They divided the boys up by grade level. Lamb 2's group went over to the nearby elementary school most of the days to have more room to play games. I never went over there, I just picked them up at CLHS. On the last day Ram and Lamb 3 went over to see if they could see them. They were practicing dribbling then so that is the only picture of Lamb 2 at basketball camp that I have.

Lamb 3 is the same age as Jacob was when I had him in class.

Lamb 2, Jacob, and Lamb 1
Lamb 1 was not in Jacob's group but he practiced in the same gym as Jacob's group so he worked with him more than Lamb 2 did.

Each morning began with a devotion. The theme of the camp was "I am Third!" and that was on their t-shirts. The theme is that you need to place God first, others second, and yourself third in life.

A few of the days I took my camera along and arrived early before camp was done for the day. I got several good photos of Lamb 1 playing. It made me so happy to hear the rest of Lamb 1's team cheering for him and encouraging him during the game. The boys really did practice "I am Third" during the games.

We had planned to leave early in the morning on the second Wednesday of camp which meant they would miss the last three days of camp. They were having such a good time that we decided we could let them stay for Wednesday. I thought with the time change we would be fine to arrive at our destination on Wednesday. I will blog about what happened on Wednesday in another post. I don't regret letting them stay for another day of camp. I feel bad they had to miss the last two days of camp but we needed to start driving home. They are already begging to go to basketball camp at CLHS next summer.

My dad went and picked up their certificates and ribbons on the last day of camp since we couldn't be there. We liked seeing the coaches comments about our Lambs on the back of the certificates. Both Lambs really improved their basketball skills during camp. Lamb 1 would like to play basketball this fall.