Blue Ridge Bubble: How Blue Star held a camp session this year

Lauren and Seth Herschthal, third-generation owners of Blue Star Camps in Hendersonville, N.C., may have 73 years of family summer camp experience to draw on, but even for them, the summer of coronavirus was unprecedented.

Nevertheless, while around 80 percent of sleepaway camps nationally decided to shut down this summer, they assembled their leadership team, consulted with a wide range of medical experts and decided that they would try to move forward with summer camp in some form.

The Jewish camp successfully opened for a four-week “Super Session” and then held a family retreat week.

Seth Herschthal said “we engaged our entire camp community and there was a surprisingly high number of overall families who not only were willing to wait as long as they had to for us to make a final decision, but also expressed a willingness to do what it would take in terms of advanced protocols and procedures, for their children to have some sense of normalcy for some period of time, some way just to be kids as the reality of virtual school and staying at home continued to wear on all of us.”

With seven decades of connections and expertise to draw from, they went through a 10-week process of scenario analysis, financial modeling, pro-forma budgeting, “just trying to figure out the different ways we could operate during the summer.” They consulted with medical experts at places like Emory, the University of North Carolina and Miami, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and the American Camp Association.

“This was difficult, because there was a lot of noise that all of us were navigating through the spring, trying to tune out some of the more emotional based information and stay focused on the facts,” Herschthal said. “It is not to say that Lauren and I weren’t nervous.”

But he said their medical team was confident that, if they could secure robust testing and adequate protective equipment, “we could do it.” As a family-owned camp, it was their call.

Several smaller sessions were discussed. There was also a proposal, if the camp could not open, to make it available as triage space if local hospitals needed additional space from an outbreak, but the hospitals never had a need for extra space.

They decided to open the camp for one four-week Super-Session in the middle of the summer. “The idea was open, create a bubble, close, done,” he said. “Once we did all the work to get the staff and campers into our bubble, nobody left until camp was over.” Those parameters were far more strict than a typical summer.

Normally, the camp has a capacity of 700 campers for each of the two sessions. The Super-Session had 350 campers, half of the usual housing capacity, and because some campers usually come both sessions, only about 25 to 33 percent of the usual number of campers for the summer.

The Herschthals, who have camp-age kids of their own, never left their house in Raleigh until it was time to drive to camp.

Immediately upon arrival, the staff, leadership, kitchen workers — everyone at the camp — used a throat swab test, with the results coming back in 48 to 72 hours. The counselors, who had been asked to do a home quarantine 7 to 14 days before arrival, also were tested when they arrived.

Usually, counselors have a seven-day orientation before camp starts. This year, echoing CDC quarantine guidelines, they had a 14-day “quorientation.” A week after arriving at camp, everyone was tested again, so by the time opening day hit, everyone had at least two negative tests.

Campers were sent a saliva-based test a week before opening day, with the camp and their parents receiving the results at the same time. As with the staff tests, there were no positive tests, and all campers and their families were told to quarantine until camp after taking the test.

On opening day, the campers were assigned a time to arrive by individual car — no group transportation or flights. Opening day was off camp property, about 5 to 7 minutes away, where the families were greeted by medical team members “in full alien-looking PPE.” All families were masked and stayed in their car as a Quidel Sofia test was administered, with results coming back within 15 minutes. At the same time, there was a finger-stick antibody test administered, “just to have extra data for potential contact tracing onsite.”

Once the results showed negative, parents were able to drive to the camp gate, where the campers were dropped off without the family driving into camp. Aside from the staff already there, “no adult set foot on our campus,” Herschthal said.

There were two campers from different families who tested positive at the off-site location. They were re-tested, and both the re-test and antibody test were positive, so they were not able to go to camp. Herschthal said they had been open with all families beforehand that this would be the case for anyone testing positive, and they kept in touch with those families during the session.

He added that this was the reason for having the arrival screenings off-site.

For the first week of camp, all activities were done solely with one’s bunk. The half-filled bunks had eight campers and two counselors. Herschthal said this was “unusual” for a camp that operates under “camper choice” for activities, but necessary. “We had to reinvent our entire daily schedule.” But pandemic or not, looking at everything periodically is “a healthy overall exercise,” though stressful under these circumstances.

After the first week, all campers and staff were tested again, and after everyone tested negative the restrictions loosened somewhat, with units of three cabins able to do activities together. Masks, hand-washing and social distance protocols remained in place through the rest of the session.

“We put a lot of time, energy and resources” into making the camp a safe environment. Hand-washing stations operated by foot pedals proliferated.

Every year, the camp promotes a theme, such as kindness or the environment. This year, mask wearing and hand washing became the themes, including “making a real time ongoing camp style PSA.”
Led by staff modeling, masks became “catchy and cool,” with tie-dyeing masks, sports rivalries on masks. “It became an accessory.”

A concern had been whether the summer would still feel like camp, and Herschthal said once the session started, it did. “Yes, it was different, there were no field trips, our staff days off were on the mountain… The overwhelming feeling during it and after was campers and staff just feeling grateful to be able to have some freedom, be with their friends, be doing stuff, have a break from their parents, their house and their screens.”

After the session, there was a break for a few days as the camp was deep cleaned, then they welcomed 15 to 20 families for Catskills and Camp Blue Star, a four night, five day family retreat at the camp.

Even though there was a session and the retreat, “we’re still operating at a loss for the year,” Herschthal said. But “we’re going to be okay” moving forward. The camp received funding from the Paycheck Protection Program, but because it is not a non-profit, Blue Star has been unable to participate in many of the fundraising programs that have helped other camps cope with the year.

Many “very understanding camp families” rolled over their tuition money to the 2021 season, and for the next several years the heavy investment in capital improvements will be at “a much more modest amount.”

Herschthal said there are a lot of family-owned multi-generational camps in the area, and the pandemic led to a lot of best-practices sharing and new relationships among the camps.

Lessons from this summer can be applied toward next year’s camp experience. “We learned a lot from this past summer,” Herschthal said. Now, they are planning different scenarios for whatever next year will look like — and looking forward to the camp’s 75th anniversary in 2022.