August 16: Annual Color Wars
We woke up to the best day of camp (well at least for some of us). Each year, Thomas and Noble come to Ashmere on Saturday between Week 1 and Week 2 to lead us all in an epic competition. This year they decided to split up cabins, pairings, and even a relationship (sorry Rachel and Myles BH) across 4 teams, to compete for the ultimate bragging rights.
The first challenge was to decorate your team’s flag, which would remain with your team throughout the competition. This challenge, like every other, was graded on a rubric of accuracy, team spirit, and (most importantly) inclusion. This fostered teams to ensure every member of the team was actively participating and encouraged out-of-the-box thinking.
The morning challenges had us answering trivia-style questions about fellow community members, competing in a blown-up shuffleboard game, creating a silly dating profile for a team member, and a matching lego challenge where we were reliant upon our team’s description to blindly re-create their legos.
In the afternoon we went down to the lake and created large “boats” using inflatable rafts, rope, duct tape and truly anything you could find on the beach. Each team went twice, and the goal was not speed, rather consistency! Your two times were subtracted from each other (absolute value style). One team managed to get a 1-second difference between their two trials, the rest weren’t so lucky!
We had a wonderful BBQ-style dinner on the patio, and enjoyed golden hour, that Leif so kindly pointed out to us all. We made sure to observe the gorgeous sunset without looking directly into the sun, don’t worry!
We wrapped up our day by the campfire for a very long-winded explanation of how each team did in each challenge. Special shoutout to Shorepoint (dare I say the underdogs) for winning the cabin inspection, the cabin’s first time in Ashmere history! Love you Shorepoint! Finally, after an in-depth review of the day, the GREEN TEAM was announced as the winners of the 2025 Ashmere Color War. But everyone excelled in team spirit and inclusion, and we are so proud of the entire community!
