WINDHAM, N.Y. – For the past two weeks, the Adaptive Sports Foundation hosted two Multi-Sport Summer Camps, bringing in a total of 12 participants for two four-day camps filled with fun outdoor activities. The camps took place on August 17-20 and August 24-17.
This was the second year of the organization’s revamped summer camps after a long hiatus. The ASF brought the program back last year due to increased interest in a summer program for people with disabilities that wanted to participate in outdoor sports.
Each camp session had similar schedules, as there were a lot of outdoor activities held at Camp Oh-Neh-Tah and Silver Lake, a morning spent at Christman’s Windham House learning some golf tips, a hiking session and a day at Heidi Ruehlmann’s Alpaca Farm, located in nearby Prattsville, N.Y.
Camp Oh-Neh-Tah provides a great place for all sorts of outdoor activities. The ASF stores its kayaks and paddle boards down by Silver Lake, giving campers the opportunity to pick out a boat and learn proper kayaking techniques out on the water, all with volunteer and lifeguard supervision. When not on the lake, the participants were able to ride some of the ASF’s mountain bikes around the campgrounds, play lawn games like cornhole, or grab a basketball and shoot some hoops.
Christman’s Windham House hosted the program for one morning during each of the sessions, allowing participants to spend some time on its practice green and driving range. This gave the campers an opportunity to learn proper golf skills and techniques.
A new and exciting event the ASF’s Multi-Sport Summer Camp features is a trip to a local alpaca farm. Frank Cabrera, a volunteer regularly seen at the ASF’s Adaptive Skateboard Camp, takes care of a herd of Alpacas owned by Ruehlmann. They allowed the ASF campers to spend a day during each session feeding and interacting with the animals. That entailed the participants holding a piece of fruit or some oats and showing the alpacas, who then would come over and take them right out of their hands. It was a fun and different activity that the campers really seemed to have enjoyed.
The Adaptive Sports Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides profound and life changing experiences for children and adults with physical disabilities, cognitive disabilities and chronic illnesses through outdoor physical activity, education, support and community.