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Rhino Lacrosse Camp: Bend, Day 2

Bend is making out to be one of the most fun camps we’ve been able to attend. I think it’s a mixture of the coaches being so well taken care of (a HUGE thank you goes out to everyone making our stay in Bend a spectacular one) and the campers coming out every day ready to play that has made the first two days feel like a great success.

Get ready for some celebrations!

Today was especially fun because we held the world famous Rhino Lacrosse Goal Celebration Contest for each group of the campers. We saw some new and creative ideas, but even better than that, we had quite the interesting interview session and halftime performance by some of the other campers during the contest.

Day 2 always seems to be just a tad bit harder for the campers. I think this is mainly because they get pushed a lot harder than they initially expected and come back a little bit tired and sore from the first day. It is always great to see them make the changes necessary to get better. One of the questions RP always asks the campers is, “why are you here?” Among others, the main answer is always, “to get better.”

Thanks to this challenge, most of the campers are always pushing themselves more and more throughout the week to get better and improve their skills. My favorite part is when you see a camper do something that he hasn’t before. New checks, dodges, defensive styles or even just being louder in communicating and calling out ground balls. There is truly a small transformation from Day 1 to Day 4 of Camp.

Even with this transformation beginning at camp, four days doesn’t cut it. It wouldn’t for anyone and RP and the gang know that. Each and everyday, I overhear all of the coaches relaying messages of working outside of camp and the importance of improving your skills on your own all summer long.

One of the coaches that has been with the camp tour since Boise is Coach Ben Gaebel. I introduced him to you earlier with a short video of his 18 save MVP performance in the 2006 NCAA D3 Championship game. Now I finally got the opportunity to steal him away from coaching for a couple of minutes to pick his brain and do a short interview. Check it out!

Instead of my normal pics from the day’s happenings, I decided to indulge everyone on a little prank executed by the man himself, Ryan Powell. When I first jumped on the Rhino Camps Tour, one of the other coaches informed me that RP was quite the prankster and LOVED to pull pranks on the other coaches throughout our travels. Today we had a really fun one with the campers and one of our other coaches, Nate Fritts (the guy who warned me about RP, actually).

Make sure to come back tomorrow to check out how Day 3 went! The improvement is already starting to show, but it is only going to get better for the campers if they keep up the hard work.