Hundreds of young people are swapping classrooms and screens for sports fields, climbing walls, mountain bikes and kī-o-rahi as a month-long programme aims to make outdoor experiences more accessible to Auckland students.
While thousands of young athletes compete at the Zespri AIMS Games this week, schools across the wider Auckland region are taking part in four consecutive weeks of subsidised Sports Camps at The Y Camp Adair.
Now in their fifth year, the camps are deliberately designed to be about much more than finding the best athlete.
The focus is participation, confidence, teamwork, belonging and giving young people opportunities they might otherwise miss because of cost, time or confidence.
BREAKING DOWN THE BARRIERS TO SPORT
The Y delivers the camps in partnership with principal partner Grassroots Trust, substantially subsidising attendance to make the programme more affordable for schools and whānau.
The Y Chief Executive Rebecca Russell says real-life experiences are becoming increasingly important for young people, providing opportunities to connect with others, challenge themselves and discover abilities they may not have realised they possessed.
Active NZ research has identified time, cost and confidence among the biggest barriers preventing people from participating in physical activity.
Sports Camps have been designed specifically to tackle those barriers.
Rather than requiring young people to already be accomplished athletes, schools can select students according to who they believe will benefit most from participating.
That creates opportunities for rangatahi who might never normally make a representative sports team or travel to a major tournament.
FROM KĪ-O-RAHI TO MOUNTAIN BIKING
This year’s September camps run across four weeks from 31 August until 25 September.
Students can participate in traditional sporting codes including basketball, netball, rugby and football, alongside a much broader range of activities.
Those include kī-o-rahi, lacrosse, mountain biking, archery, climbing and Camp Adair’s confidence course.
The variety gives rangatahi an opportunity to discover sports and activities they may never previously have experienced.
And there are signs that approach is working.
Of students who attended Sports Camps earlier this year, 94 percent said they had experienced a new sport they wanted to try again.
FAIR PLAY MATTERS MORE THAN WINNING
Competition remains part of the camp experience, but winning is deliberately not the only measure of success.
One of the programme’s most celebrated prizes is the Fair Play Cup, recognising teamwork, encouragement and respect rather than simply sporting results.
Sports Camps were established at Camp Adair in 2022 as a lower-cost alternative to traditional school sporting competitions.
They have since evolved into a broader youth-development programme where sport becomes the vehicle for building resilience, friendships and self-belief.
For some students, simply leaving home, staying at camp and attempting something unfamiliar can represent an achievement every bit as significant as winning a match.
KEEPING SCHOOL CAMP WITHIN REACH
Affordability has become an increasingly important issue as household budgets remain under pressure and schools face their own financial constraints.
Participating schools undertake fundraising, while support from Grassroots Trust and other partners enables The Y to substantially reduce the cost of attending.
Russell says a family’s financial circumstances should not determine whether a young person gets access to an experience capable of making a difference in their life.
It is also about preserving something generations of New Zealanders have experienced — school camp.
For more than a century, Camp Adair has provided young people with opportunities to get outdoors, challenge themselves and build connections away from their everyday environment.
SPORT, MUSIC, FASHION — SAME KAUPAPA
The programme forms part of a much wider push by The Y to provide young people with practical experiences across sport, creativity, music and the arts.
The organisation recently delivered Walk the Line at New Zealand Fashion Week, giving 78 young people an opportunity to participate in a professional fashion event.
Later this month, its New Found Sound initiative will provide aspiring young musicians with opportunities to perform and develop their talents.
Both programmes operate through The Y’s Raise Up youth-development programme.
Although a mountain bike trail, fashion runway and music stage may appear worlds apart, the underlying kaupapa is similar — creating somewhere for young people to belong, something meaningful to work towards and an opportunity to imagine what their future could look like.
MORE THAN 100 YEARS OF CAMP ADAIR
Camp Adair has been part of the lives of New Zealand rangatahi since 1913.
Formerly known as YMCA Camp Adair, the facility covers around 100 acres on the edge of the Hunua Ranges and is one of the country’s oldest and largest outdoor camps.
The Y also operates 10 facilities across Auckland and Hamilton, with membership at its community fitness centres increasing by 25 percent during the past two years.
As a charity, surplus revenue is reinvested into community initiatives including youth development, environmental education and Camp Adair experiences.
That means adults heading to a Y fitness centre are indirectly helping another generation of young people climb a wall, kick a ball, ride a trail or discover a sport for the first time.
And with 94 percent of participating students saying they found something new they wanted to try again, the biggest victory at Sports Camp may not be recorded on any scoreboard.
It is a rangatahi heading home more confident than when they arrived — and discovering there is something out there for them.
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