Before the start of his freshman year at St. Mary’s High School in 2008, Lynbrook native John Abbotangelo didn’t know any of his new classmates.
Wanting to shed the nerves that can come with entering the Manhasset Catholic school, the Class of 2012 graduate decided to do what many in his shoes have done in increasing numbers in the last few years: he attended the school’s freshman summer program at Camp Marist in Effingham, N.H.
For one week each August, incoming St. Mary’s freshmen leave their cell phones and home lives behind to bond with their future classmates over kickball games and archery lessons.
Most, including Abootangelo, don’t want to leave.
“After the first camp experience, there’s a feeling of, ‘I don’t want to go home,’” Abbotangelo said. “By the time you go back to school, you already have friends, or if you didn’t make friends you’ve at least established a good dynamic of how social groups and people work at St. Mary’s.”
This year, 111 freshmen attended the camp along with 30 seniors serving as their mentors and counselors and a handful of St. Mary’s teachers and administrators.
“What I’ve heard and experienced in the past is that it presents a bit of a magical time for our incoming freshmen,” said Grace Cavallo, president of St. Mary’s High School. “The days evolve into such a great bond of community that the freshman class blossoms by the first day of school. They are saying hello to each other and build the comradeship that takes three to four weeks in other high schools.”
Incoming freshman Lauren Capobianco said she was nervous about attending St. Mary’s because she had gone to school in Floral Park, where she lives.
But after learning about Camp Marist at one of the school’s open-house information sessions, Capobianco jumped at the chance to meet her classmates and learn from the seniors.
“We heard it’s a great way to make friends so that on the first day of school, you know people,” Capobianco said.
Abbotangelo said he made friends at Camp Marist immediately, even though his parents dropped him off after a family vacation and he didn’t take the bus ride up with the rest of the students.
Though he said he was initially a bit shy, Abbotangelo said the camp’s tight scheduling of activities ensured the students would always be active and interact with each other.
“You’re constantly doing something, and everything is scheduled so you go from one thing to the next, just like a high school schedule,” Abbotangelo said. “To climb trees, you climb this rope, and everybody climbs the rope, and in doing so you get to be more comfortable with each other.”
Interspersed with activities like softball games, swimming and go kart racing, incoming freshmen also ask their senior counselors for advice on what to expect when the first period bell rings in early September, marking the start of their high school careers.
“Now it’s not so scary going into the school year because we have seniors we know,” Capobianco said. “We were able to ask them about the school and the usual things like what teachers are really good and which we should avoid, which classes are easy and which ones are hard, and ways we can plan our schedule so we’re freed up a bit senior year.”
On the last night of the camp, the seniors share their experiences as campers and as freshmen and give gag awards to their freshmen classmates for being the most homesick or the one who made the most friends.
Vincent de Venoge, a St. Mary’s senior who attended camp as a freshman and this year went as a counselor, said was encouraged to attend the camp by his three older sisters, who each went to Camp Marist as freshmen and returned as counselors prior to their senior years.
Though he was nervous about going to camp with kids he had only just met, de Venoge said he had such a positive experience at Camp Marist that he wanted to “pay the experience forward” by welcoming the next generation of St. Mary’s students.
“I take a lot of pride in being a senior leader,” said de Venoge, a Manhasset resident. “Most kids really do want to come back. We get them acclimated with the school’s strong Catholic values, but most importantly we bring them into the St. Mary’s family.”
