Volleyball—the final class of day six for 1G. As I walked through the hallway outside the gymnasium in the John Amos Field House, campers sat on the ground as they rummaged through their backpacks, taking off jewelry, fishing for socks, slipping on kneepads, and lacing up indoor gym shoes. Inside the gym, instructors David Weeks, Josh Sloan and Charles Wittsell moved equipment as they prepared to welcome 1G and 3G to their second instructional class. Today the girls would learn spiking, blocking and court positions.

When the clock struck 3:45 p.m., Weeks swung open the doors. 1G and 3G excitedly entered the gym, and instructors Victoria Terrell and Paris Turgeon led them on several laps around the court to the strains of the Star Wars theme song, leaping up in attempts to high-five the hand of the 6’7” Sloan.

“Are you ready for volleyball?” Weeks asked. As the girls cheered at the top of their lungs, Weeks held his smartphone in the air, measuring their volume and telling them it was “close to a train.”

During stretches, the campers counted to 10, then shouted various volleyball-related trivia: the best sport at pyc (volleyball), Weeks’s favorite volleyball brand (Tachikara) and famous American volleyball players (Misty May, Kerri Walsh and April Ross).

Weeks reviewed the fundamentals covered in the previous class (serving, passing and setting) and the goal of each skill.

“What’s the goal of setting?” he asked.

“To pass the ball to the spiker!” the campers eagerly replied.

“Great! That’s the next skill we’re going to learn,” Weeks said.

But before the girls learned to attack the ball, Weeks asked the age-old, volleyball-specific pyc query: “Are you ready?” The correct answer, which the campers immediately provided in unison, is to rapidly: drop to a squat, bang the floor with both palms, clap twice, thrust out your arms in the ready-to-receive position and shout “Yes, sir!”

Weeks and the other instructors demonstrated the step-by-step process of a spike: “Left-right-left, down low, up high, swing through.” The instructors then ran the girls through a spiking drill. 1G counselor Sherry Beezley received a loud cheer from her campers as she showed the proper form, pounding the volleyball over the net with a solid spike.

Next the girls learned the equal and opposite reaction to spiking: blocking. Running through the blocking drill, 1G and 3G did their best to high-five each other over the 7.125-feet net, shouting “Oh no!”—a challenge for the younger campers who haven’t yet reached 5-feet tall. I laughed as I heard a chorus of disjointed “Oh no’s!” as the pairs girls ran the drill.

After several times through, Weeks moved on to the final skill of the day, using the campers of 1G to demonstrate the six court positions and explained the roles of each player. As I stood on the sidelines with Beezley, she mentioned that the day before, in honor of Kia, 1G’s camper from Scotland, both Weeks and Wittsell had worn kilts—with Wittsell adding a superman cape and sweatband, much to the amusement of her campers.

1G is, in Beezley’s one word, “diverse,” with the most international variety of any of the girls’ dorms, including Americans, two Canadians, a Scot and an Italian. “There are lots of different flavors in their personalities,” assistant counselor Elyssia Lancaster adds.

The instructors lobbed “free balls” over the net as the campers worked to apply what they had learned to bump, set and spike it back across—on pain of five pushups if no one went for the ball, allowing it to fall to the floor.

“Remember, in volleyball, the ball is always mine! Never …?”

The 24 campers promptly responded “Yours!” with an enthusiastic shout, just as I, and many others did when we were campers.

While the first few attempts to put the new skills to practice were rough, the girls were eventually able to get a few rallies going. On one sequence, Tori smoothly bumped the ball to Vienna, who set it to Kia, who put her new spiking technique to practice, with the ball landing just on 3G’s side of the net. The girls moved in to high five each other.

Tori, from Canada, told me she enjoys playing volleyball each year at camp. “I don’t get to play at home,” she said. “Playing against people each year at camp has helped me get better.”

Beezley said the girls were excited to have volleyball two days in a row. “They are really cheerful and happy,” she said. “Makes my job easier—it’s a pleasure.”

As the class ended, Weeks deliberated on the standouts as the charcoal gray-shirted girls of 1G high-fived a mob of 3G girls wearing clover green shirts.

The volleyball instructors led the girls in a dance in a circle to the song “Boogie Shoes,” laughing as they used dance moves modeled after the volleyball skills the girls just learned. Terrell and Turgeon ran around the edge of the circle, pushing into the middle Eleisha (3G) and Jinnie (1G)—the ticket winners for the class.

Before they left, Beezley quickly huddled the girls together for their final cheer of the day: “Oh no! It’s time to go. Thank you volleyball staff and 3G!”

After a full day of four classes, 1G had worked up an appetite for its next activity—dinner.