![]() This is one of the paradoxes of team competition. In both of those contests, my excitement and my motivation to compete rose in proportion to the size of the team I was on, despite the fact that team size was precisely what made my own contribution so much less likely to matter. I also remember the magical feeling, after what seemed like an endless and titanic effort, when the rope began to edge slowly but decisively in our direction. I can still picture the anchor of my team during one of those summers, a stout boy with a low center of gravity from the oldest age group, wrapping himself with the far end of our rope, his face red from the strain. We lined up alongside a massive rope stretched across the field and pulled with all our collective might. ![]() ![]() The finale, a tug-of-war, relied less on an umpire’s subjective assessment. The first competition required us to shout self-congratulatory cheers the victory was awarded to the team that impressed the judges as louder and, thus, more spirited. Despite knowing these divisions were both temporary and arbitrary, I engaged in the competition with the utmost seriousness-in relay races, basketball games, and whatever else was on the packed schedule.Īt day’s close, two climactic showdowns involved the whole camp, each team gathered on opposite sides of a ball field. For one entire day, half of my bunkmates and possibly one or both of my brothers would become the sworn opposition. ![]() The campers were divided randomly in half for a wide-ranging competition between teams defined around no common identity, status, experience, or prior allegiance-just pure partisan competition. My most vivid memories of my early years at sleepaway camp, when I was 10 and 11, focus on the bizarre institution of color war. ![]()
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