Olympics Spark Spirit at Summer Teen Center

There was a lot of action through the Massapequa School District’s five-week Teen Center program, but no event was more highly anticipated than the blue and gold Olympics on Aug. 1. The middle school-age students split into two teams and competed in physical and mental challenges.

The Teen Center, part of the district’s Summer Recreation camp, took place from July 1 through Aug. 2 at the high school’s Ames Campus. It was open to students entering grades 6-8 and averaged about 80 participants per week. In addition to daily activities such as arts and crafts, movies, games and sports, there were field trips and special events.

The second annual blue and gold Olympics featured four events. For the first hour, students rotated among three stations – relay races, the egg-on-a-spoon race and a Jeopardy-style trivia contest. Then, the entire camp gathered for capture the flag, where all members of the blue and gold teams competed to steal the other’s flag in a best two-out-of-three competition.

Blue and gold Olympics was the creation of college assistant Zayn Goldstein, a 2020 Massapequa High School graduate who has worked with the Teen Center for several years. He noted that the students were randomly assigned to a team and were excited to compete for bragging rights on the second-to-last day of camp.

“When the kids get into it,” he said, “it’s super fun.”