Ambition

"I suppose you've seen a lot of ambitious kids, particularly in the second four. Has this influenced your understanding of ambition? Was it all great, or was there an unsavoury side to it? Do you think ambition to win a competition is similar / different to ambition to be published? Are ambitious kids more attracted to camp?"

Camp does attract the fairly ambitious, but it manifests itself in different ways. Self-motivation is the general vibe, particularly among the older kids who're involved with varsity/junior varsity fun and games. It doesn't really affect the younger kids so much, however they do spend a lot of time running around and doing things - it's only at night that they spend time playing DS or PSP (and even then the games tend to be sports related). When I saw the kids playing with their dads they spent a lot of time throwing/catching baseballs - their coordination and hand/eye coordination is very, very good. Mostly the kids are very able, quite bodily aware and competent, lending themselves to all manner of physical exercise.

In terms of ambition though, and I did have a chat with one of the counselors about this, it's very difficult to actually become a professional sports person in the US, particularly in the most glossy things like football. Having said that their ambitions are adjusted to what they know they can achieve - so most kids try out for sports that they like. The thing I found the most interesting was that there was a wider variety of sports to do/be interested in. Sports get a much wider degree of coverage in the US - Basketball is very aerobic and physically demanding; Football is tactical and physical in bursts; Soccer (or real football) is a bit of a damp squib as far as they're concerned, but they are very good at it because most of the skills they're good at in other sports are transferable; hockey, voleyball, tennis, swimming etc. are all variations. I don't think there's as much enthusiasm for all of the sports in the UK in the same way, or at least not that I've seen. In school it only seemed to be football and rugby that got the attention, but then again our sports department wasn't that big and therein lies the problem. TV and national leagues play a great part in the American attitude towards sport. Basically, there's plenty of support for sporting ambition in the US.

There were several kids there who were hard core all rounders who basically swept certain competitions (prompting the chant "Serrrrrrrr-weep! ". The attitudes of the kids was generally quite supportive to the extent that it draws a lot of overweight but well-adjusted kids who just enjoy being there. In some cases their attitudes were bad but overall it was very encouraging. In terms of The Week however it was as good as it could be considering it was a super intense competition that involved drafting everybody. Is it different from wanting to be published? Yes and no. It's a much more physical and personal ambition as compared to a mental, personality based ambition. None of the kids had actual ambitions of being actual sportsmen. At least I don't they do. They probably do.