Lancers News

05 Sept 07 - Summer Camp - Report

Summer Camp (1st & 2nd Sept) is always an vitally important time of the year as what is achieved there has a big impact on how things go second half of the season. Plus coming just a week before Brass Explosion our next competition you pretty much have everyone back from their summer holiday travels.

The focus was for the camp as well as adding in some new Visual and musical effect enhancements was all about intensively cleaning all areas of the show.

The weekend started bright and early Saturday morning with members arriving with al their stuff that they needed for the weekend, infact i think some had brought their entire wardrobe lol.

It was a bit chaotic that morning as the school has had some major building work going on throughout the summer and it was over running a little in the foyer area where most of the work was focussed, however ths was soon got round and cordoned off for our stay.

Then everyone gathered in one of the classrooms where Corps Director Dave Milton went through the aims and ground rules for the weekend. This was followed by everyone getting to watch a DVD of our last performance of the first half at Barnsley complete on large screen whiteboard with speakers (thanks to our resident IT genius Jay). It gave everyone a chance to see themselves for the first time performing and the areas where we needed to clean up with their own eyes and ears!

From there we were down on the field for the rest of the day kicking off with an hour sectionals working on drill technique followed by warms ups kicking off with our first full run through to blow the cobwebs away.

The remainder of the day was broken down into two haves the first working on part one the second before tea on part two, both were taken apart and rebuilt set by set where necessary the results were just fab and everyone ended the day satisfied on how much better they were.

After taking everything down and back up the school we were all greeted by the smell wafting towards us as the evening BBQ got underway, which signalled the start of the evening activities and chill out.

Two games of football was going on, one down on the school football field were a teams were picked for a game were neither side seemed to have any defence lol, quickly followed by a “Pro Evo challenge” in one of the classrooms on big screen whiteboard which whiled away the hours in between other games.

Elsewhere DVD`s were being watched plus i swear that we saw the Guard dressed up as fairies (strange) and music was being pumped out and a mini disco broke out!

It was not long before everyone was allocated their rooms for sleeping, though judging by some next morning i doubt they got much, due to chattering away most of the night.

Next morning at 7.30am Drum Major Sean O`Neil went round turning on all the lights to wake everyone up and at 8.00am all was outside in the fresh air stretching out and doing star jumps just to make sure everyone was awake.

This was followed by breakfast before setting off back down to the field for day two, which was focussing on cleaning parts three and four. Everything went really well apart from an hour in the afternoon were tiredness was setting in and concentration levels dropped unsurprisingly. Second wind kicked in after that towards the end of the day and all objectives were achieved including some really cool new bits.

The day was rounded off by yet another full run through this time including march on and off with the Drum lines completed cadence.

Everyone can feel extremely proud of their efforts and what we achieved with our 2007 show in preparation for the remainder of the season a real step up where we raised the bar to new height.

From what we hear after everyone got home from camp most literally just flaked out on their beds and didn’t wake up again til next morning.

Corps Director Dave Milton said “It was a great Camp, i just want to say a big thank you to all members, the instructors and the support team for making it so successful, let’s have a great end to the season”