Hanging Out With Our Teen/CIT Campers in NYC!

On a cold Saturday afternoon in New York City, over 80 of our oldest campers gathered at Ainsworth Park. Every year, we do this reunion with our Teen/CIT campers as a way to get everyone together to reminisce and get excited about the summer!

Many of these 15 and 16 year olds have been coming to camp for 8 or 9 years, starting in bunk one as Freshmen! During the summer our Teen/CIT campers are the role models for our younger kids. They bring the spirit and traditions. They spend a big chunk of their summer working with younger age groups, gaining experience for when they will be counselors. Throughout the days you can hear their cheers and chants throughout the camp, and this trickles down to our younger campers.

With so many options out there for teenagers in the summer, we decided to ask some of our current Teen/CIT campers what keeps them coming back to Tyler Hill year after year.

Perri Cochin will be a Teen camper this summer, and started as a Freshmen. Perri had this to say about camp and why she loves coming back year after year, “Summer after summer, I continue to return back to Tyler Hill even when there are tons of other options out there. I started going to Tyler Hill in 2008 and will return for my eighth summer as a Teen this year. I continue to go back to camp every summer because I have created everlasting friendships and can’t imagine a summer without people I consider family. I spend the entire year talking to my camp friends counting down the days until the summer. Tyler Hill is a huge part of me and there is nowhere better to spend my summers.”

Helaina Feinberg, who started camp in 2008 as a Freshmen camper flew in from Florida just to spend the weekend with her camp friends. When asked why she continues to come back to camp year after year she said, “I continue coming back to Tyler Hill each summer because I love the memories. These are memories that I share with my bestest friends and that I will remember for the rest of my life. I have never experienced any better moments in my life than the times at camp. And I will keep coming back every summer for the rest of my life, no doubt about it.” Helaina will be a CIT camper this summer and she cannot wait to make her final year as a camper the best one yet.

We love our Teen and CIT campers, and love watching them grow up at camp. We can’t wait to see what they will bring to the summer of 2015!