Back in 2007, the programming staff here at Camp Seneca Lake decided to bring a Mass Program like program into the August session. Instead of four teams like mass program, it would be a head to head competition spanning over 2 days. Red vs Blue, that was it. Color War was never intended to last this long and the longevity of the program is very surprising.  The competition was pretty simple in Color War 1, everyone would be painted either Red or Blue and throw water balloons at each other. Since then Color War has gotten more complex as programming receives experience from one Color War to the next.

Now in 2019, we are about to begin our journey through Color War 13. Some aspects of the program have remained constant for a few years including Clash, LTP and Signatures. Color War has its own set of terms you may need to know in order to understand the program, I’ll try and cover most of them later in the Blog. For some campers, this program is why they come to Camp Seneca Lake. This program is by far the largest signature program of the summer and everyone here knows it. The idea of winning Color War makes people push themselves to their absolute limit for their team. Everyone who participates has an opportunity to show camp what they have to offer in both athletic, creative and artistic aspects.

On Tuesday this week, Color War will break to Tusc in the midafternoon. Traditionally the program break includes Tusc in some form and they are told the day of the break in order to insure they don’t leak any information. On Tuesday night around 8:40 PM Tusc along with all the color war captains will break color war to the entire camp. The following 48 hours after the break is full of stress, fun and several other things. On Thursday night the winner of Color War 13 will be revealed.

Before Color War 13 starts we need to explain some of the terms that will be used in the program this year. Color War 13 is broken down into 5 pillars:

Clash- This year Clash is the competitions that happen at the same time with different villages competing in each one. There are 5 clash events including Tug of War, Overtake, Scatterga, pinball and Crossfire. Each round of Clash a different group will do a different event. The groups are Cayuga/Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca, Tusc and Staff.

Signatures- These are the events that the entire team faces off agaist the other team. Signtaures include all of camp and will be explained more in further blogs. This year we have Turf War, Face off, Ring of Fire and the Labyrinth with a mystery one not being revealed to either team.

The Puzzle- This years LTP (Or Long Term Project) is dubbed the puzzle. It consists of 13 pieces that will be placed throughout the program and be designed by both staff and campers. The finished puzzle will be hung up in the new wing after the conclusion of the program.

Medleys- Known as Breakout events in years past, the Medleys are events were campers are assigned to an event and then they compete to win the most events in that Medley round. This year there are 6 rounds of Medleys including all campers in the program.

The Show- Finally, the show is a performance that is presented on the last day of the program. This year teams will have to build their show around the question of how their team got to this place. Each show performance is about 8-12 minutes long and will be shown infront of the entire camp Thursday night at the O-rec.

For Color War 13 all coverage on Instagram and this blog will be done by myself along with Lexi Brog and Liat Weiss by my side. There will be 3 total blogs, including this one, going up over the course of the program that will describe the events of each day and the prospective of each day.  

I am very excited for this years Color War and I can’t wait for it to begin. As always god bless America and God bless Camp Seneca Lake.

Best,
Luxemblog Generation 2