This spring, while in Florida, we prayed about what God would want in a wakeboarding camp. From those prayers, AWAKIN was born. AWAKIN is a three day, day-camp carefully constructed to create an atmosphere for campers to grow their passion for wakeboarding/wakesurfing with top notch instruction, gain a greater understanding of their purpose with faith based messages and influences, and to seek their full potential. It’s our mission to help AWAKIN those things in our campers.
The very first AWAKIN was held on June 4-6 at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. Our goal was create quality over quantity, so we limited the amount of campers able to attend to create a small, elite feel. We wanted campers to be able to build community and comrade, so they were each divided into ride groups based on skill level. Throughout camp, camper’s rode with their ride groups, completed team-building activities with their group, and on the last day, competed as a team in our AWAKIN Personal Best Contest.
We were so blessed to have Josh Burton and Mark Heger, from WakeWell, travel from Texas to be a part of camp. At the end of each day, Mark spoke on purpose, passion, and potential. We invited parents and families to join us each evening. This was one of our favorite parts of camp, really bringing everyone together and experience the word together.
We were also so pumped to have guest coach, Timmy Burnier, visit all the way from Chicago. Timmy is a formed coach of Kirby’s School of Wake and an accomplished wake athlete on boat and cable. Coach Timmy now runs his own wake school, Wake Stone, in Chicago.
AWAKIN was a huge success. Campers were able to wakeboard on beautiful days with glassy water on our beautiful fleet of Malibu and Axis boats provided by Iguana Boat Sales and Stateamind Watersports. Iguana also provided use of their extremely cool Party Barge to allow the kids to have their swim breaks and lunch breaks without returning to shore. The party barge is available to rent, so be sure to check them out at www.iguanawatersports.com.
At the end of camp, we honor one camper with the prestigious Pass the Handle Award. This award goes to the camper who demonstrated the best leadership skills and exhibited an attitude of positivity and encouragement to other campers. This year, the recipient was Brayden Tarble. We also tallied up points earned by the ride groups in their team building activities and in the Personal Best Contest and honored the highest scoring Ride Group for their ability to work together, encourage one another, and accomplish their personal best as a group on the water.
