The five days at Camp SOAR (Special Olympics Athletic Retreat) in Charlotte are a mixture of service and charity, of joy and transformation, available to anyone who answers the call. (Photos provided by Al Tinson)CHARLOTTE — The spirit and enthusiasm were as high as the outdoor temperatures as Camp SOAR (Special Olympics Athletic Retreat) returned for its 21st year June 13-17 at Charlotte’s Levine Jewish Community Center.
Since 2000, the camp has provided campers with special needs a conventional summer camp experience, offering attendees a week of sports and activities – tennis, soccer, bocce, boxing, arts and crafts, Bingo and Zumba – culminating in a joyous dance party with everyone of every age returning on the last day of camp.
“For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, we were back in full operation,” said Camp SOAR’s founder and director, Bob Bowler.
Key to the program’s success is what Bowler unofficially refers to as the “buddy” relationship between the campers and the volunteers. “The campers look forward to meeting up with old friends and making new ones, and, due to the limitations caused by the pandemic, the excitement level was really high this year in anticipation of being back,” he added.
This year nearly 300 campers and more than 400 volunteers took part. The majority of volunteers were first-timers, such as Charlotte Catholic High School students Mary Katherine Burke and Olivia Roberson.
Burke reflected, “This camp gives people an insight of what it’s like to live with adverse abilities, allowing us to see each other as brothers and sisters created the same.” Roberson echoed this sense of community, praising the camp atmosphere for being “so welcoming and treating everyone like family.”
Both young women came away passionate about revitalizing CCHS’s bond with Camp SOAR. Doing so, they hope, will provide a forum to share and reflect on the great time they had at camp, to work on projects during the school year benefiting individuals with intellectual disabilities and, most importantly, to recruit students to volunteer for next year’s 22nd season.
Long-time camp volunteer and 2018 CCHS graduate Alexi Strouse joins the CCHS science department this fall. At both CCHS and Camp SOAR, Strouse declared, “Everyone becomes one family.”
Strouse knows the SOAR experience “opens kids’ eyes” to the world of people with intellectual and sometimes physical disabilities, an essential take-away since it “takes us out of our comfort zone to build the character of family at Catholic.”
For Jeremy Kuhn, a veteran English teacher at CCHS, a 1990 graduate and the school’s volunteer coordinator for this season, Camp SOAR speaks to the school’s best traditions. “Our relationship with Camp SOAR is a joyous expression of CCHS’s charism of mercy, which is grounded in the life-affirming vitality of service,” said Kuhn.
“And this joy stems from the Church’s call to community, itself grounded in the Gospel’s call to see each other as sisters and brothers equal in the eyes of God.”
Ultimately, the five days at Camp SOAR are a mixture of service and charity, of joy and transformation, available to anyone who answers the call. “A week at SOAR is worth a lifetime of love that will leave you changed forever,” Burke affirmed. “Inclusivity is within everyone’s ability.”
— Al Tinson and Jeremy Kuhn, Special to the Catholic News Herald
