STORY BY Linda L. Esterson
On a typical summer morning, 15-year-old Lauren Roche rolls out of bed at around 8, awakened by music coming from speakers nearby.
It may seem an ungodly hour for a typical teenager, but Roche welcomes the wake-up call she shares with 13 
other girls her age, who all sleep on cots in a bunkhouse at Camp Louise in Washington County’s Catoctin Mountains. Still clad in her pajamas – a perk the older campers enjoy – she joins her “sisters” at the bottom of the hill by the flagpole for the Pledge of Allegiance before heading into the dining hall for a buffet breakfast of pancakes and fruit.
The sun is shining, the air is pleasantly cool and she can smell the freshness of the mountains. It’s a beautiful start to a day filled with activities from sports to arts and crafts to dance, and Roche will spend the day with bunkmates and other campers – all girls.
Last summer was Roche’s seventh at the camp. Now a 10th grader at Glenelg High School, she says she treasures her three weeks away from the family, the neighborhood, and – for the most part – boys. Other than the scheduled weekly events like dances and amusement park trips with the all-boys Camp Airy, located 15 minutes away in Thurmont, the girls enjoy their time sans testosterone.
“We can act crazy, do anything, roll out of bed and not care because the boys are not around,” says Roche. “We build a sisterhood that we probably wouldn’t build if guys were around.”
The single-sex camp experience gives girls the opportunity to relax while developing close bonds with other girls, she says. “I call camp my fake life,” Roche says. “It’s a different world. You live with girls in the bunk for three weeks. They are like your sisters … You can be yourself around them.”
All-girls camps, according to the American Camp Association (ACA), build girls’ self-esteem and leadership capabilities. “Research has shown that a single-sex camp session for girls contributes to campers’ sense of empowerment and increases perceived competence, independence and esteem,” says Peg Smith, CEO of the ACA. Such camps challenge gender stereotypes, she adds. The ACA counts 2,700 accredited camps as members, and of those, nearly half are single gender: 459 are camps for boys, 667 for girls.
Along with the confidence building, the girls-only camp experience provides models in the counselors – mostly college students who give the girls tips about life and guide them on the uneasy path called adolescence.
Ken Roche, Lauren’s father is a big fan of his daughter’s time at camp. The girls “bounce ideas off of each other in absence of parents, and they’re more inclined to be less inhibited in the absence of the boys,” he says. “It leads to greater independence.”
Thirteen-year-old Marissa Steinberg of Ellicott City has spent five summers at Camp Louise. She enjoys the freedom of expression of a girls-only environment and admits she has grown to be more independent as a result.
Cleaning her room and taking care of herself are just a few of the steps she’s taken at home after camp. “The actions carry over and I continue to practice them at home,” she says.
Alicia Berlin, director of Camp Louise, says the girls relax without the stress of boys. “They walk around camp holding hands, singing and trying new activities,” she says. “They are willing to take a risk being silly and try new things without the boys being there.”
Girls are often hard on each other when social situations call for impressing boys, Berlin notes. “When you take them out, it’s just different.”
In
The Summer Camp Handbook, authors Jon Malinowski and Christopher Thurber explain that the single-sex camp environment offers fewer romantic distractions and makes it easier for everyone to focus on the goals of the camp.
“There tends to be less showing off, reduced self-consciousness and fewer broken hearts,” they write. “At a single-sex camp, children support each other and bond together in ways that reinforce the best parts about being a girl or the best parts about being a boy.”
According to the Girls Only Program in San Diego, Calif., “Education that attends to the specific needs of girls in a girls-only space can be powerful: single gender groups can function as safe spaces where girls feel they can say what they feel and what they want without judgment and where they can share life experiences with peers who have similar experiences.” Research from Girls Inc., the Girls Only umbrella organization, concludes, “Girls’ communities offer girls the opportunity to say what they really feel, to be listened to, to try new things and to be leaders.”
Leadership development is the aim for Journey, a one-week summer camp at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. About 25 Howard County girls attend Journey, sponsored by the Women’s Giving Circle of Howard County and presented by the Maryland Leadership Workshop.
According to Marcy Leonard, one of the camp’s coordinators, Journey was developed in 2006 to help young women develop leadership skills. The girls attend up to 10 classroom workshops that include such content as communication skills, self-awareness, diversity and group dynamics. Sessions are geared toward helping girls build successful relationships, understand power relationships and deal with the pressures they face today. Each camper also meets individually with staff members to discuss her leadership development goals.
The Journey experience includes a daylong trip to Echo Hill Outdoor School in Worton, Md., for outdoor education and team-building activities. During “Question Night,” when all the girls are encouraged to open up about things they normally didn’t discuss, it’s not uncommon for participants to shed empathetic tears. One girl recalled that her group went through three boxes of tissues. The culmination of the week is a ceremony and tea honoring four Howard County women for their community contributions.
Karen Lightfield says Journey mentors helped her daughter Alayna, 13, to “look inside herself to make decisions, not what everyone else is doing and not about what is cool.”
The girls learn about group dynamics with strong leaders and to listen and share ideas as well as compromise, explains Karen, who noticed a difference upon her daughter’s return. “I felt she was already a leader, but I could see her opening up to other girls her age.”
Lightfield was also impressed by the girls’ poise during the awards event at summers end. “I noticed it most when they had the tea for the women they were honoring,” she recalls. “The girls were poised and were able to show they were grown up, something you don’t always see in 13-year-olds.”
Jillian Hagerty, 14, a student at Hammond High School in Columbia, says her Journey experience has helped her to be more outgoing. “I answer questions even if I might be wrong, and I’ve gained more confidence in not caring about what other people say.”
If the current participants are any indication, all-girls camps are here to stay. The Journey camp has been full each of its six years, and 91-year-old Camp Louise continues to maintain waiting lists for many of its sessions.
