Summer Camp Guide 2024
Sunshine Beach Volleyball Camps: For the Love of the Sport Summer is coming. For young volleyball athletes, that means registration for the Sunshine Westside Beach Camp and South Bay Beach camp is in full swing. From beginning to expert, a summer of focused volleyball instruction on the beach in smaller teams ensures players get more contacts per hour, learn how to communicate and work better on a team, and continue their love for the sport over the summer months. “There’s more to volleyball than playing inside. Although it’s the same sport, it’s different in how we train, and overall, learning to play outdoors rounds out our players’ skills and teaches them work ethic, focus and determination, all while having fun with their friends and teammates” said Kyle Weindel, associate club director. Beach camp coaches teach beginning to expert players from ages 8-16, grouped by age and ability, ensuring that everyone is receiving appropriate instruction. Beginners are taught the basic fundamentals needed to have fun playing, and advanced players learn skills to fine-tune their game, such as ball control, reading opponents movements, doubles strategy and serving. Both beginners and advanced players are welcome at the Sunshine beach camps because the community and fellowship of the program is unmatched, Weindel said. “The most important part of the camp is having fun. We want every player to have individualized attention from the coaches,
so there’s a lot of interaction, a lot of fun. We’re in the business of providing opportunities for young girls and want to provide as many opportunities to play this game as we can,” Weindel said. “Volleyball is a loved sport, and during the summer, our methods of teaching and drills are engaging, effective and fun for girls of all ages.” Sunshine Beach Camp is an extension of Sunshine Volleyball Club’s successful indoor program, a program that has instilled the love of volleyball in girls since 1998. Over the last three years, both indoor and outdoor volleyball programs have seen growth. “Sunshine has doubled in size and we’re up over 600 players and over 50 teams on the indoor side. We’re really looking forward to expanding our beach camps as well that regularly see 300 to 500 kids per summer,” Weindel said. Sunshine comprises top-tier coaches dedicated to the sport year-round. Chris Flood, the current beach director, has coached on an Olympic level and assists volleyball at Pepperdine, another one is the head coach of the ninth-ranked California Golden Bears. Many coaches are also players, including one on the fourthranked beach volleyball team at UCLA and another one on the seventh-ranked team at Stanford, and several who play professionally in Italy and Germany and U.S. national indoor teams.
Joining a summer team for the love of the sport is a valuable experience for time management, goal setting and training ahead of the school year. “Athletes have a reputation of knowing how to work hard, how to manage their time between friends, family, school, athletics and training, there’s not a lot of time. But they do it because they love the sport and the values it instills in them,” Weindel added. Westside Beach Camp is in session from June 10 through Aug. 16 at Will Rogers State Beach. South Bay Beach Camp runs
from June 17 through Aug. 9. Players can enroll by the week or by the day. Daily registration ranges from $65 to $80 per day, weekly registration ranges $265 to $330, depending on location. To learn more about Sunshine Westside Beach Camp visit, https:// sunshinevolleyballclub.com/programs/ beach-camp/westside/. Information on South Bay Beach Camp can be found here: https://sunshinevolleyballclub.com/ programs/beach-camp/south-bay/.
For those campers who want to continue building robots throughout the year, eventually, they can join robotics competition teams and use other complex systems and strategies for competition. “These competitions inspire children to learn more and foster organization in a student-centered program. We are both coaches and mentors, teaching them basic
things, but ultimately, having the student decide, what do I want to do? What strategies do I want to play? Students are always the center of the activity — during the school year and during summer camps,” Jiang said. To learn more about Rolling Robots and find a camp location near you, visit RollingRobots.com.
Rolling Robots Camp is a ‘Tech Genius Program’ Roll out the .. robots. An afterschool learning center for robotics and STEM is hosting weekly camps this summer designed to encourage open creativity, deep exploration and project-based learning. Rolling Robots, founded by aerospace engineers Bing Jiang and Dr. George Kirkman, is home to several world-class competition teams from Los Angeles, which continue to win numerous top awards at the VEX Robotics World Championship. “I believe every kid is a genius to begin with. And as we equip and train them with more technical tools, and they achieve success along the way through designing robots, coding, practicing teamwork and experience defeat, but getting back up, which puts them on the path to become a true tech genius,” said Jiang. During weekly summer camps, kids ages 5 to 15 are welcome to explore Rolling Robots’ camps in a non-competition format, designed to spark a budding interest in
robotics and STEM. Participants, divided into age groups, learn technical tools, the engineering process and creative thinking through hands-on work. Camps start as early as June 3rd in multiple cities in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura Counties. Sessions run one week at a time, Monday through Friday, morning and afternoon, or full day camps are available. “For younger age groups, it’s best for them to do half days, but for older kids, we designed the camps with different topics for a full day experience,” Jiang said. Junior robot builders and little engineers build take-home robots each day of camp and learn about different engineering professions. For ages 7-8, campers learn about Lego coding and robot building. Campers ages 8-12 and higher learn VEX IQ robot build and code, as well as C++ coding for VEX robots and Minecraft and Roblox game design, depending on the chosen camp.