Lifelong Memories With Lasallian Leaders

CB students embark on a week-long summer journey to enhance leadership skills and learn more about the LaSallian way of life.

On Sunday July 13th, 2014, 15 of my senior classmates and I piled into cramped vans to head to the St. Mary’s College campus in Moraga, California for a week we would not soon forget. We were lucky enough to have three great educators from CB to accompany us on this journey: Ms.Stephanie Roybal, Mr. Paul Havey, and Mr.Thomas Guro.

Lasallian Student Leadership Camp, or LSL for short, is a camp designed for Lasallian high schoolers around the nation to, according to the camps website, “become principled and mission-centered leaders for Lasallian schools”.

What we as students gained through attending this camp stretches far beyond our leadership skills to bring back to our respective schools. We gained friendships and memories that will last a lifetime, as well as different perspectives from high school students around the nation.

Ms. Roybal, who has chaperoned on this trip for four years, says her favorite aspect of the camp is “getting to see students realize that the Lasallian mission is bigger then just their schools”.

Jesica Busey, a senior at De La Salle High School in Yakima, Washington, described her favorite part of her week at St.Marys as “branching out and meeting new people.”

Jesica went on to say that LSL also made her own schools LSL group more tight-knit.

“Before I went I barely knew or hung out with any of them, and now they are some of my closest friends,” she explains enthusiastically.

Cali Edgar, a junior at Mullen High School, a Lasallian school located in Denver Colorado, had similar feelings as Jesica.

“The best part were the people and I made some amazing friends who I miss so much,” she says.

AnnaMarie Carmazzi (’15) states LSL gave her “A clearer meaning of what it meant to be a Lasallian student.”

“The experience was more fun than I could ever have pictured,” she says.

A large chunk of the week was divided into working with a committee consisting of students from all the different schools. Some of the committees included the Olympic, Rally, Prayer and Faith, and Broadcast Journalism committees, amongst many others.

Despite all the committee’s planning enjoyable activities for students to partake in, Jesica, Cali, and AnnaMarie all revealed their favorite activity of the week was the dance that took place on the night before we all departed.

Jesica said it best when she explained the end of the week dance made it seem like “we had all known each other our whole lives.”

Jesica, my co-Student Council Secretary Madison Winn (’15) and I were all lucky enough to be on the dance planning committee. Joining us in our committee were around a dozen talented students including Patrick Stewart from St.Paul’s High School in Covington, Louisiana.

Patrick surprisingly explained his favorite committee memory as “when all of our decorations fell down an hour before the dance.”

“It was awesome how we all worked hard together to make do with what we had,” he said, a common theme explored on this week-long excursion.

Once Friday morning came, Lasallian Student Leadership Camp had came to a close. From sad goodbyes and  “I’ll see you somedays”, the week had ended. It took me a few somber days for me to realize it, but one corny Dr. Seuss quote can sum up my complete emotions regarding this entertaining week.

“Don’t be sad because it is over. Smile because it happened.”