Mon, 06/20/2022 - 10:45am

Emma Ranzetta, News Intern

Boothbay Region YMCA Senior Program Director Erin Gray. File photo

Camp Knickerbocker opens June 27 and has been busy since last season getting ready for the coming year. There are many new additions this year, such as magic camp, outdoor cooking camp, science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) specialty camp, and sewing camp. By adding all of these, Senior Program Director Erin Gray hopes to attract more campers. Gray has been going to summer camps since she was little. She started working at Camp Pondicherry when she was older. She said she is very passionate about having children all come to a safe place in the summer.

Camp counselors this season include Kimisha Dennis of Jamaica, Louise Gasparelo Barbosa and Yuri Santos Barletta, both from Brazil. They all came to Maine this summer to be camp counselors. Santos Barletta said big cities are too big and overwhelming for him and he wanted to find a smaller, more rural camp, so he chose Camp Knickerbocker this summer. Dennis wanted to gain the experience of being a camp counselor this summer and she is very excited to see what it is all about. Gasparelo has always loved being around kids and she wanted to work at a summer camp where everyone is friendly and kind; Camp Knickerbocker is exactly what she was looking for and she is very happy to be working there.

Due to the pandemic in 2020, Camp Knickerbocker only had 100 campers. In 2021, it had 150 and this year the numbers are around 190 to 195.

An event the camp started during the pandemic continues: A virtual meet and greet gives campers a chance to meet program leaders before camp starts. The counselors said they find this incredibly beneficial to help get to know one another. The international employees even created their own group chat to get to know one another before camp starts, since they all come from different parts of the world.

To see about signing up for camp, email egray@brymca.org or visit brymca.org