March 1st Update: It's March Madness!

by Ariella Rogge on March 11

Two weeks ago, the Sanborn Western Camps team attended the 2025 American Camp Association’s National Conference in Dallas, TX. It was a great opportunity to gain more knowledge, connect with other like-minded professionals and learn more about the future association’s future trajectory.

We participated in a wide-variety of educational sessions where we learned new (and tried and true) techniques for working with campers and staff, the MESH (Mental Emotional Social Health) benefits of camp and the importance of working as an aligned association to help our local and national legislators advocate for positive summer camp, summer learning and out-of-school-time experiences.

With the new Character at Camp Initiative, the upcoming MESH+ Seal certification process and our goal of continuous growth and improvement, we spent a number of hours last week debriefing the sessions we attended and sharing ideas and concepts to apply our new knowledge to the upcoming summer…and we can’t wait!

With the lengthening days, this time of year is one of our favorites because we really begin to dig into the nitty gritty of preparing for the summer. We are sending a brand-new Coaching Guide for You and Your Camper to the press this week–and it will hit your mailboxes later in the month. We are also gearing up for our Spring High Trails Outdoor Education Center season and are looking forward to kicking off that staff training on March 19th. Our year round team is also renewing their Wilderness First Aid, lifeguarding and CPR certifications over the next couple of months while continuing to finalize hiring of another group of exceptional staff.

And…it’s March Madness.

Whether you fill out your bracket like Big Spring Associate Director Will Coleman (thorough research, Joe Lunardi style) or like High Trails’ Director Krista White (based on mascots, tarot cards and if she has visited that place), we all enjoy a little bit of light fun when it comes to “bracketology.” As we were reviewing our staff, and their individual schools, we realized that–not only will we have (most likely) a staff member from almost every school competing in the NCAA basketball tournament this year…we also have staff members from every corner of the country (and Mexico, Switzerland, Jamaica and Australia) from a rich variety of school types, sizes and renown.

We have representation from the smaller to medium sized liberal arts schools and universities: Bates, Denison, Middlebury, Oberlin, Brandeis, Dickinson, Colorado College, Wake Forest, St. Lawrence; there are big sport schools: Kansas, Kansas State, Penn State, UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, Texas, Florida, Villanova, Colorado, Ohio, Ohio State, Syracuse, Iowa State; schools that are known for outdoor pursuits: Western State, Northern Arizona, Appalachian State, Fort Lewis, Boise State, Arkansas, San Francisco State; plus other schools that are known for business, engineering, nursing, public land management, education, and everything else in between. We will have well over 100 different colleges, universities and undergraduate programs represented by our staff members–which speaks to their diversity of interests, skills and trajectories…and they will bring all of that to camp.

We can’t wait to welcome all of our staff members to this incredible “community of individuals” and look forward to having them share their unique perspectives, experiences, talents, love for the outdoors and enthusiasm for youth development with our campers!

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Ariella Rogge
About Ariella Rogge

Ariella started her career at Sanborn when she was twelve. After five years of camper and five years of Sanborn staff experience, she continued her work with kids in the high school classroom. Ariella and her family returned to Sanborn in 2001 to take on the Program Director role which she held til 2012. She and Elizabeth Marable became co-directors of High Trails in 2013 and then Ariella became the High Trails Director in 2020. In the fall of 2022 she became the Director of Sanborn Western Camps, overseeing the director teams of both Big Spring and High Trails. She lists mountain golf, Gymkhana, climbing mountains and making Pad Thai in the backcountry as some of her favorite activities at camp. Ariella received a B.A. in English from Colorado College and is a certified secondary English educator,an ACCT Level 2 Ropes Course Technician, an ARC lifeguard and NREMT and WEMT. She lives in Florissant in the summer and in Green Mountain Falls during the school year so she can stay involved with the busy lives of her husband, Matt, and two sons, Lairden and Karsten.