Into Place: Preseason Team Building and Leadership Training Camp

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Into Place is a five-day leadership and team building training camp for athletes and teams. Hosted at the rustic Job’s Pond camp in Vermont’s magical Northeast Kingdom, this program offers practical and immersive leadership training, including various leadership frameworks; concrete strategies for goal setting, personal accountability, and effective communication; and human performance work with sponsored ultra runner and poet Ian Ramsey. The program will also afford opportunities for athletes and teams to practice their emerging leadership skills by participating in a trail building environmental service project with the Green Mountain Club. And finally, the program will allow plenty of time for the athletes to train on the world class local mountain trails and class IV dirt roads for which Vermont is renowned. We’ll carve time to connect deeply to this place through classic Vermont fun like swimming in Lake Willoughby, canoeing on the CT River, sitting around the campfire in the evening, and stargazing the Kingdom’s dark skies. Runners will emerge with a strong training foundation and deep bonds to each other that will fuel a cohesive and successful season ahead!

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Into Place: Orientation

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Into Place is a three-day guided orientation for school affinity groups. By creating a sense of welcoming and community; by sharing the story of northwestern Connecticut’s bioregion; and by giving students powerful firsthand encounters with their new home, this program will nurture a sense of belonging in students that will ground them as they navigate their careers on campus.

The program is designed to be gentle and welcoming in terms of the rigor of the outdoor experiences it affords–activities like team building exercises, fireside conversations, flatwater paddling, and hiking will help students make connections and gain trust. In this way, students will enter their careers with an emerging sense of place, equipping them with the awareness of how they fit within that story, and with the confidence to move forward with empathy, confidence, and kindness.

Into Place is grounded in the practices of joy and connection–to place, to each other, and to community. In the end, students will begin to learn the story of this new place, creating a trove of positive new memories that will help it become their home.