Like a good portion of America, I will be watching the BCS championship tonight though I am not sure why. We have seen Alabama and Louisana State University play already and that was a low scoring boring game. I felt the same way last year when UW played Nebraska in the Holiday bowl, but that wasn't for the national title......and we won. I guess if I had any inkling of support for any one of those two teams playing tonight it might make it that more interesting. However, I am no fan of the SEC, so I am already starting with a deficit. I will be drawn to watch it simply because it is the national title game and if it is exciting, then great; if it was like last time, I won't make it through the second quarter.
Now take that in contrast to a scout that comes to Camp Parsons year after year. Many scoutmasters have told me "we like to take the boys to a rotation of four camps so that they get a sampling of what is out there and don't get bored." There is truth to that, then again I think it is more for the adults than it is for the scouts (my personal opinion). Despite that opinion however, there is some validity to this. A scout can go to a camp and think that it is "awesome". Then they go to another camp and think that is "awesome". If left to their own devices, they probably would stay at the first place and never leave as they have nothing to compare it to. I know that scouts love to come to Camp Parsons, you see it in their faces and hear it in their voices. I think the majority of adults who bring their troops back to our camp do so partly for that reason and partly for the fact that they know the program we run and can count on it to give their scouts a great week of camp. When you go to another camp, you are going for the experience and the location, the leadership at those camps are the "wild card" that can make or break that troop's experience. Sure the scouts will have a good time, but the scoutmaster may be miserable having to deal with the staff leadership.
We have offered a consistent program as well as consistent leadership throughout the years, yet for the life of me I cannot tell that one year is the same as others. Oh sure, I have a hard time keeping the staff straight but there are so many that return and cross over from season to season I forget the specific years when they worked. The program however has never been the "same". The structure might be the same, the schedule might be the same, but what is brought to the stage is always.....always different. It could be a staff personality, a special skit(s), a song, a play a combination of many things.....but at the end of the day, no one season is the same as the other. Heck, each week is different from the others. Every time I think that I have an idea how things are going to go, it is different. This is not in a bad way, just a way that was not what I thought it was going to be. Last year for example, we ended our staff training week with a staff that seemed to have the experience and a presence of a staff that had worked together for an entire summer already......even though the majority were first year staff members.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and hoping to get a different result. I believe it is the talent, brilliance and energy of our staff that result in a different experience week after week and summer after summer even though we work from the same platform. Some people would say that this is the result of our experience. Well it is true, experience is a wonderful thing......it enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
I don't care about the national title tonight, I do care about a good game. I hope that some folks don't care about having to feel that they need to move around to different camps, I just hope they care about the program it offers their scouts. Of course, the two can be the same.....then again, that is always a gamble.