One of the great things about working in Company Two this last summer was having the “Superman Returns” film out in the theaters during camp. It certainly meant we had a lot of Superman stuff to have fun with all summer, and it also made it seem like perhaps the planets were aligning a bit for Naval 2.

This summer though Company Three will be the unit with a movie.

“300″ directed by Zach Snyder (of the great “Dawn of the Dead” remake) is another retelleing of the Battle of Thermopylae, when 5,000 Greeks, led by King Leonides and 300 of his Spartans stood their ground in the face of a 300,000-strong Persian invasion force…and held them off. It’s about as “badass” as any story you’ll find in a history book.

The film is an adaptation of Frank Miller’s excellent, painted graphic novel “300″ (should be required reading for all N3ers) and was produced with his involvement a la 2005’s “Sin City.”

The trailer is online, and it looks spectacular. Check it out here. Could this be a good omen for Spartan Three’s summer 2007 chances?

Discussion: “What do you think of the trailer?”

Links:

Check out the “300″ Novel on Amazon.com

Official “300″ Web Page with Production Videos/Blog

“300″ on the Internet Movie Database

Battle of Thermopylae on Wikipiedia

Naval Three Culver-pedia page

Naval Three Message Board

With yesterday’s softball and basketball games, week two of athletic competition officially began on the boys side at Culver Summer Camps. Time to look back at the first week of camp for super 2.

Tuesday June 27: Last second Heroics lift two over band

Last Tuesday night Company Two’s basketball team took the court for the first time against the Naval Band in one of the more memorable CSS basketball games I’ve ever seen. The Band squad, coached by Mr. Dees and friends, ran a crack zone defense and showed some fairly ill ball-handling skills. They went up early but Company Two, led by Second Classman S. Meeker’s perimiter shooting and some timely free throws held it nearly even at the half.

The second half saw the lead change hands a few times which really worked the cheering sections of both the naval band and company two into a frenzy. Band had their drum line pounding away from the sidelines while Company Two busted out the old Atlanta Braves-style Tomahawk cheer to preserve their voices.

Naval Two’s coach, Mr. Monahan called a timeout with 20 seconds left on the clock and his team down by two points. Things looked more than a little grim as Company Two started up the Tomahawk Chop. On the next play however naval 2 inbounded the ball to Meeker, who managed to evade some tricky defenders, find a spot just outside the 3-point line, and drain a so-ugly-it-was-beautiful shot to put super 2 ahead by one as the game clock ran down. Phew. Company 2 rushed the court and shook hands with the Orange Crush. It was a nice way to start off the summer (though I wouldn’t have minded a slightly less stressful outcome). …Read the rest of this entry…

As I write, the intrepid midshipmen of Naval 2 are preparing for their first official Personal Inspection of the summer.  From the company office I hear the smacking of shoes, the clang of broomsticks, and above all, the sound of people telling eachother what to do in order to get the barracks clean.  It’s a great sound.

Following this 8:10 PI Naval 2 will head off to their first classes of the summer, sailing, waterskiing, basketball, math, english, all sorts of things.  Then we have lunch, another inspection, more classes, and some sports time in the afternoon.

The most important news is that company 2 survived the first weekend of camp in good shape.  We’re still all present and accounted for.  This is my third summer with the unit and every time someone comes down with an unreconcilable case of the “homesick blues” and has had to go home.  Not this time though.  We’ve had a few guys show some signs of missing home but getting them involved in activities and introducing them to other guys has helped immeasurably.

Our first drill took place a few days ago, and as expected it looked rough.  It will take a few times before people get in step and figure out how to march.  Luckily, we have a few times to give before first parade Tuesday evening.  People seem willing to learn however, which is good.  And our first class is starting to wake up and realize that they are in charge. Which is very good.

We’re having another drill tonight after dinner and then our first company meeting.  At the meeting we’re mostly going to go over the basic rules of camp, but we’ll also throw in a few fun curveballs to shake things up.

It’s PI TIME!

Hey there everyone! Sorry for the slowness on the updates, things have been hectic this week during staff training and its thrown me out of my “rhythm” for updating.

Staff training has been going on all week and this morning, campers will start officially registering for Culver Summer Camps 2006. Very exciting. Here are some fun facts I’ve heard this week:

• After a thorough search, Company One gained a Sr. Counselor on Thursday, Mr. Karamon, perhaps known by some as the Assistant Military Activities coordinator from summer 2005.
• Enrollment is way up this summer with approx. 1352 campers attending. Last summer involved roughly 1298 campers.
• 38% of this year’s Culver Summer Campers hail from outside the United States down from 40% last summer.  There are 26 internationals on staff this year.
• Aviation A and B have been combined this summer into one unit, “Aviation” and will join the Troop in all athletic competitions to compete against the naval companies as the “Air-Cav.” Aviation contains around 40 campers this year and Troop is up over 60 this summer (!) which means this new unit could be quite a force.
• The main upper camp SOP has seen substantial revision this summer as predicted on this very site. The TUXIS program has indeed been tied into rank for all upper campers. In order to gain any sort of rank promotion at the end of the summer, a camper must have earned his or her Tuxis.
• The Tuxis banner is also making a return to Upper Camp, going to the boys and girls units who showed the most participation in Tuxis each week.
• The girls are adding two new naval events to their competition each week, a wherry race (single pull) and a kayak race (double sprint). As these two “events” have long been a part of the Great Race it seemed only sensible to have the ladies race them throughout the summer to build of more experience.
• Boys intramural sailing will now include a 420 class sailing race on Tuesday’s.

Those are some of the interesting changes/developments we’ve been hearing about this week. We’ll keep you posted as things develop. Stay tuned. Our first camper just turned up in Naval 2!

Discuss

Just got off the phone with Mr. Knight a few minutes ago and Awesome One still needs a head counselor for this summer.  Are there any college graduates out there who would be interested?

I’ve been hearing various things that sounded promising and was scratching my head as to how this opening could still be there but apparently there have been a few people who have backed out even after signing contracts, which is unfortunate and understandably frustrating for Culver.

Anyway, the job would pay around $3000, staff training starts this Sunday the 18th of June but at this point I think Culver would be somewhat flexible with start time if there’s someone who’d be a good fit who is seriously interested.

So let’s put our heads together on this one.  Are there any brothers, friends, colleagues, alumni, parents, who might be interested in doing something like this during the summer?

If so have them call Culver at 1 574 842 7000 and ask for Coleman Knight.

Any takers from among the Go Culver community?  From our rabid alumni base?

The Tuxis Program has long been a crucial part of Culver Summer Camps, providing every Culver Upper Camper the opportunity to earn a medal to wear with his or her dress A by completing a series of merit-badge style accomplishments as set forth by their Culver Summer Camps Tuxis Director. Third classmen may earn their bronze tuxis medal, second classmen have their silver to work towards, while first classmen set their sights on the gold tuxis. Each of these medals is progressively more difficult to earn with the understanding that moving up in rank at Culver means you have to perform at a higher level.

But how hard is it to earn you Tuxis medal? And how have the Tuxis standards fared over the years? Should there be more testing involved? less testing? more sports? less? What about those pesky Tuxis essays people work on, or their Tuxis collages.

I’m curious to hear what you think about the general level of challenge to the TUXIS program. In fact I’m starting a new poll on the front page about it, so weigh in with a vote there and your comments in the thread in Main Guard.

Finally to adress the questions about changing Tuxis standards I present to you an honest goodness 1920 Silver Tuxis Sheet that I tracked down using our new Ebay section just last week. What do you think of the point requirements? Any of them stand out? Let’s take a look…

…Read the rest of this entry…

Here’s another profile from the Naval Band, the inestimable Mr. Drake:

Position: Naval Band, Asst. Counselor
College/Winter Employment: Wabash College
Home Town: Evansville, IN
Nickname/s: No nicknames (at least, none suitable for the childrens, heh)
Favorite Quote: “Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment. Mastering others
requires force; Mastering the self needs strength.” -Lao Tzu Last Good Book You Read: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Favorite Culver Dance Song: “Saturday Night” by Whigfield Favorite Shack Snack: Cherry Slushies
Favorite Spot on Campus: The end of the Naval Pier, at sundown
Best Part of Working at Culver: Watching as the fearful third classmen turn into the new leaders of the unit.

If you will be working at Culver this summer in ANY capacity and would like to have your profile included on the site Contact Me.

As summer 2006 approaches, I’ll be posting up quickie profiles of some of the staff who’ll be working at camp this year. If you’re going to be working at Culver this summer and would like to be included among these profiles left me know.

As our first, I thought we’d go with this summer (and last summer’s) Sr. Counselor of the Naval Band, Mr. Dees.

Position: Naval Band-Head Counselor
College/Winter Employment: Arizona State University- bartender/bar manager
Home Town: Culver, IN
Nickname/s: n/a
Favorite Quote: “stop looking for meaningful quotes and get out there and just do it”-me
Last Good Book You Read: “The Last Templar” by Raymond Khoury
Favorite Culver Dance Song: don’t remember…i do recall them being less than stellar
Favorite Shack Snack: BLT pizza
Favorite Spot on Campus: the water to the right of the naval pier, about waist deep.-comm ‘97, E ‘97, comm ‘05…some good memories there
Best Part of Working at Culver: Seeing a somewhat introverted youth evolve into a confident leader who can take the initiative and see tasks through to completion. I also enjoy seeing the guys that i went to camp with coming back year after year to impart the same wisdom that we were given.

If you will be working at Culver this summer in ANY capacity and would like to have your profile included on the site Contact Me.

Update on the band instruments:  A recent e-mails suggested that those of you interested in snagging your old Bass Drum might want to keep your eyes on the Culver.org auction page (which I’ll be writing about in more detail next week).

Read and Respond in Original Band Forum Discussion

The following was just posted over in the Naval Band forum today courtesy of Stan Mefford, 1974 naval band graduate and Culver Academy Summer Trustee:

"The Naval Band is getting an entire new drumline and some much needed brass. The drumline consists of top of the line Yamaha equipment. In addition to the drums, the Naval Band just received some marching baritones and tubas. This new equipment is available for the 2006 Naval Band as a result of efforts by the CSSAA board and Naval Band alumni giving. Enjoy all of the new equipment!"

Check out the thread over on the CulverTalk forums here and leave your thoughts. This is wonderful news! I leave it to Mr. Dees and the other counselors to explain the significance of the new acquisitions. To read up on other announcements Culver has made regarding this coming summer check out our Summer 2006 Preview series of articles. It’s exciting to hear all this good news.

Discuss in: Naval Band Forum 

Last Wednesday I and all other returning Sr. Counselors received a letter from Tony Mayfield, Director of Culver Summer Schools and Camps, that included several really exciting announcements for this upcoming summer 2006. I’ve written them up along with my thoughts and will be sharing them here on GoCulver.com piece by piece each day all week long.

Today we’ll be looking at developments for the Naval School, on Wednesday we’ll be looking at the latest word on the Aviation Program for this summer, on Thursday stop by to get a glance at rumored changes to the Tuxis Program along with some historical context and suggestions for a few extremely important things Culver should address in the program, and finally on Friday we’ll be running through the rest of Mr. Mayfield’s announcements including news of some big changes for Woodcraft and course offerings.

If this doesn’t get you pumped up for this summer I don’t know what will.

Let’s jump right in to looking at what’s in store for the Naval Program this summer! When you’re done head on over to the CulverTalk discussion thread for this series of articles to post your thoughts on the announcements. Some of them should get people talking.

Click to read Summer 2006 Preview Part 1: the Naval Program

1. A reminder about the new videos available in the Super Two and Force Four forums they give a nice snapshot of summer 2005 and might get some of you excited for 2006.

2. If anyone has any of their old unit pictures and access to a scanner, let me know. We’re trying to compile unit pictures in our photo gallery.

3. Finally a fun post from the Alumni forum:

From GoCulver.com member higginbotham79, both a grad and former Tac officer of Naval 2:

“Okay I am going back a few years on this one when I was a tac officer for Co. 2. Some of you guys may remember this one:

It was homecoming weekend summer of 1982 and a company out of Chicago was filming a recruiting movie for Culver and would be filming on campus all week. Well, all of us tacs from all the companies went to the uniform shop where they were getting rid of some old army dress khakis that they used to wear for the various tac officers. We decided to get outiftted and wear them for the homecoming parade when we would be on the reviewing line grading each of the companies as they passed in review.

We were all decked out in these and we had each company commander wear “putts” or the white leggings that the midshipmen used to wear prior to 1979 when they used to march with M1 rifles. Also my brother was regimental adjutant that make and he was instructed when he was giving the daily report where you yelled out the OC and OD etc. In the old days they used to say”by order of the commandant” now it is “by order of the camp director”. The counselors involved were Brad Larson from Band, Hector Gonzalez from co 1, myself from Co 2, John Sbarbaro from co 3, mike uram from Co 4 and Stan Evans from Aviation.

So my brother does his thing with order of the commandant and there were some loud cheers from the crowd, the band steps off for pass in review and here come all the companies in putts and the tac officers all dressed out in officer uniforms on the reviewing line and Col Fred Lane who was the director of the school at that time almost had a stoke right there! Remember the film crew got all this on tape.

Col Lane didnt even wait until later to discipline us-he called us in that same evening and gave us an phonograph chewing that would rival General Patton. I remember Colonel Al Cornett who was in charge of military at that time winked at us all and stated that he didnt see anything wrong with it.

Needless to say when final rank was announced my brother got ensign in a company instead of Adjutant and the film crew had to come back the next week and shoot the whole sequence again! I feel horrible about this to this day but I wish you guys could have seen the look on Colonel Lane’s face!”

And there you have it. Enjoy the forums and send me feedback on the new site layout. Have a good weekend everyone!