At just 12 years old, student Jack Fielding ‘25 would begin working at a summer camp for children for five years. Over the course of those five years, Fielding became inspired to create and organize his own summer camp and in June of 2023, his dream became a reality with the development of The WS (Western Springs) Kids Camp. 

“I learned a lot on how to run a camp while working [at different summer camps], but I thought there were missing spots in the community where [a camp could] foster both sports, crafts, activities, and games,” Fielding said. “[So] I got some of my friends, cousins, and siblings together, and we started the WS Kids Camp.”

As a sophomore, Fielding began learning how to develop his own website for the camp, as well as marketing the camp and finding children from around the community who would be interested in signing up, all while balancing schoolwork, extracurricular activities, and sports. 

The following year, his junior year, he focused on making the website more professional and gathered other students to work as counselors at the camp. The counselors included Aiden Hahn ‘25, Nora Hare ‘25, Gio Paul ‘25, Ray Waliewski ‘25, and Jessica Sloan ‘25. 

“I spent most of my time going door to door, talking to parents, trying to have them get their kids to come,” Fielding said. “I put fliers around all of Western Springs and La Grange, and at the end, we had a successful running camp.”

The camp was held at Laidlaw Park in Western Springs and ran for a total of five weeks out of the summer, each with two-hour sessions, Fielding said. Each session would run from 8-10, 10:30-12:30, and 1-3 with 30-minute rotations where each kid could decide whether to do a craft, sports, or free time. The camp began the summer with 35 kids but grew to over 60 kids per day with ages ranging from 4-11. 

“Our camp was very popular, especially in Western Springs,” Fielding said. “We even had kids from other camps leaving that camp that they had already paid for to come to our camp. The people we hired as counselors had been in camps before and knew how to work with kids. I think that separates us from other camps because the counselors were able to have a better connection with the kids.”

The counselors had the task of supervising each of the 30-minute rotations, where they had free time to play on the playground, play different sports like soccer, kickball, and  Gaga ball, and did crafts, counselor and student Sloan said. Counselors also assured that every camper felt safe, included, and engaged throughout each activity. 

“I had a really positive experience as a counselor,” Sloan said. “Usually, we would split into a younger age group and an older group, and I was in charge of the older kids [who were mostly 6-9]. I liked when we split up because I got to develop closer relationships with the kids in my group since many came back week after week. My favorite memory of camp was on water days when the campers got to throw water balloons at the counselors at the end of each session. Water days were a great way for everyone to cool off and all the kids got very excited for these days.”

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The camp was even featured on news channels Fox32 and WGN Chicago to discuss the camp’s development and how it was run, Fielding said.

“My favorite memory [of camp] was probably when the news channels somehow picked up on our camp, and they emailed me out of nowhere [asking] to do an interview,” Fielding said. “They basically spent the whole day with us filming, and once they produced it on TV, we had about 150 people on the website at once.”