We are reminded that change is good – it means growth, renewal, and at least for me, a chance to have an unscripted adventure in my otherwise hyper organized life.
There were many changes this year – a change in venue, in the enlarged coaching staff, the combination of summer and training camp running simultaneously, to name a few. I miss the 3x a day hummus from Manof, but love the extensive field space and pool at Kfar Silver. Really can’t beat strolling over to your very own pool on these hot afternoons!
UP is a camp that thinks on its feet, comfortable with the idea that the greatest opportunities for discovery and growth are found in the tiny cracks in between the best laid plans, and so revisions to the schedules are constantly streaming out of the printer. We invent games, we improvise, we maintain a constant state of flux such that change is welcomed with a laugh and the repeated mantra that “change is good!” As a coach, your voice matters, and the capacity you have to truly be an integral piece of the puzzle is unparalleled to anywhere else I’ve volunteered.
Nowhere is this inherent flexibility more evident than the decision to take twenty-something coaches to Beit Sahour (a community in the West Bank) to run a day camp designed for the players that weren’t able to cross the border and come to Kfar Silver the week before. In typical UP fashion, we were prepared with crafts, cheers, flags, energy, and of course, plenty of cones for the fun Ultimate drills and scrimmages on the hot asphalt at the local YMCA. This one day camp, put together in response to heightened security and closed borders, took no convincing to recruit coaches, only a charter bus to bring us all over. Even though a good number of the players were in their second day of fasting for Ramadan they still showed up in force, and we utilized all we had (including good shade!) to put on a day of smiles and Ultimate.
If you’ve been to UP, you know all this already. If you’ve considered UP but didn’t know how to connect or if you’d fit in, or if you have to be able to roll your “r” sounds (I promise I’m practicing Ragheb and Raghad!) then let me offer this advice: Change is good. It’s good for the camp, it’s good for the region and it’s oh so good for your soul. Whatever is holding you back, doesn’t matter, so take a risk, step outside your box and you might just like what happens next…
Here’s my point with all this talk about change: We need change as individuals as much as the energy for change is needed from each of us to drive the mission of this amazing organization. I’m on a plane now, taxiing out to the runway in Philadelphia and when I land again in San Francisco, I’ll be back to my hyper-scripted life…but now more than ever that script includes the capacity to generate strength from change, so that I can in turn put out into the world a UP energy even more powerful. If we all seek out this adventure, and truly believe that change is good, is there really anything that we can’t accomplish?
Let’s find out 🙂