The highlight, and story of the week was our presidential election and the riveting drama that preceded it heading into election day Thursday. Five candidates (Veer, Thomas, Shaan, Geula, and Yair) vied for office this year, and each chose their own various strategies to secure the mandate from the camper/coach electorate.
Veer, Shaan, and Yair focused on criticizing the ideas of the other candidates during the presentation portion of their campaign, even though Veer did promise to throw the coaches a party if elected. Geula, who had run unsuccessfully last year, decided to rehash the very same platform and positions as her bid last year focusing more on her responsibility and recognizability as a candidate everyone would already know and trust (sort of like Richard Nixon going for it again the same way in 1968 after losing to Kennedy in 1960). Thomas (not the same Thomas that beat Geula last year…a different Thomas) on the other hand chose the oldest and seemingly most reliable of all strategies however: he promised to bribe everybody with snacks, and jolly ranchers so long as they voted for him.
On election day the atmosphere was electric, as all the campers wondered who would come out on top this year. Geula rehashed the exact same speech as last year’s losing effort, finishing it off with her epic catch phrase “Who wants Unity? Then JOIN MY COMMUNITY!” even if the crowd reaction was not as exhilarating as years past. Thomas, in response to the question of what his party, and position would be simply replied “Chicken” to the raucous delight of his backers, with the other three candidates largely coming up with equally uninspired responses.
When the votes had been counted, despite a single write in for little Colin from Fort Lee, (who wasn’t even in the running) Geula was the only candidate to score in double digits getting ten out of a possible 26 votes to win the presidency. Geula had tapped into the AARP coaches vote, as the three oldest coaches in the camp probably put her over the top (Thomas had scored seven votes, and so it seems the votes of the senior citizen voting bloc gave Geula the edge).
In other news, there was no rated tournament section this year as the three highest rated campers (Eli, Max, and Mike) played a different coach in a simul this week. The contest was pretty tight all week with the lead changing going from Eli, to Max and back again with regard to most moves played in total. On the last day Eli played a disastrous game allowing Max a chance to win if he could notch a forty-move game which he ultimately did winning the simul section.
In the tournament groups Geula won the highest unrated group, while Shaan took first over Elisha, and Colin in the middle group, and Elan finished first in the youngest tournament group.
The best students for the week were Max in Slava’s group, Leonard, and Shaan in Ivette’s group, Elan in Ethan’s group, Elisha in Yaakov’s group, and Veer in Juno’s group.
Eli, Yair, and Armaan won for problem solving, while in the Fischer Random event Milena took first in the lower group, and Leonard took first in the higher group.
In sports the winners were Colin in the youngest group, Max in the second youngest, Michael in the third youngest, and Elisha in the fourth youngest (i.e. oldest) group.
Eli was the dodgeball winner for the week, punctuating his victory with a beautiful hat trick (knocking down all three back cones to win the game and score extra points) in the final game on Friday.
The relay race winning team was “It’s raining, it’s pouring, Slava is boring” which was headed by Max, and included Eli, Veer, Nuha, and Milena.
Aarman, and Dexter were Larisa’s choice for art, while Milena was Yaakov’s choice for music.
We also had a dress as your favorite chess piece contest on Wednesday, and the winner was Geula for her costume of the “Black King” (Geula proclaimed “I am the Black King, fear me I am the most powerful…ah the queen…run” and ran away which was actually pretty funny).
Finally, on Friday we had our traditional blitz-bughouse team event in two sections and in the younger group Elan and Dexter reigned supreme in a very close tie-break, while in the older group it was Max and Will Kwak who took first place. 
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