Week 8: ATL/Saint Simon's Island

SSI High Ropes Course

Beach Challenge

AHA Softball Showdown

I have become negligent in my weekly updates. I took the 20th-26th off work in order to chaperon American Heritage Academy's Cross Country's annual training trip to Epworth by the Sea on Saint Simon's Island, GA. I was able to fly into Atlanta the night of the 19th (after rerouting myself about 3 times due to booked flights) and spent the next day with the Gerbers clan. Jill and Cliff left for Japan on the 25th, so Sunday was my last day on the continental US with my sister and brother-in-law for the next three years.

I left the morning of the 21st for the running camp. A little background on AHA:

AHA is a very small private school (k-12) in Canton, GA. My former softball coach at Lassiter, Coach Rein, transferred from LHS to AHA about 6 years ago in order to take over their athletic program and become their head basketball and cross country coach. The XC team contains both middle and high school students, and the camp is limited to the first 15 students that register, so I was helping coach students as young as 12 and as old as 17.

I've participated in AHAXC programs since my senior year of high school, and I've helped chaperon this trip for the past three summers. I absolutely love the students at AHA and the camp is a blast. It's been really fun to watch some of these students grow up and start college. The structure of the camp is very different than my LHSXC training trips from back in the dark ages when I was in high school. Rather than focusing our week on logging an insane amount of mileage, AHAXC uses the camp to encourage teambuilding. We ran once or twice a day, and spent our free time playing ultimate frisbee, kickball, going to the beach, etc. We also spent a day doing a low/high ropes course. Overall, it was really nice to replace a week's worth of airport labor with a week devoted to running.