National Camping School Changes for Shooting Sports and Aquatics in 2016

Exciting updates are coming in 2016 for BSA camp programs, including new activities and changes to shooting sports and aquatics programs.

New shooting sports activities will be offered such as sporting arrows, chalk balls, cowboy action, and more. Aquatics programs will also be seeing changes due to new Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommendations.

The program updates necessitate National Camping Schools (NCS) to provide training for camp instructors on the specified changes, and must be administered within the established 6-day training period.

Shooting Sports

To make the most of the training period, all NCS attendees must be certified NRA rifle and shotgun instructors and must provide proof of current certification upon beginning NCS training.

The NRA has teamed up with BSA to offer training courses in each area to ensure that certification is available to all camp instructors. Certification will require 3-day participation (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and should be scheduled between March 1 and May 1, 2016.

For more information on certification schedules and locations, reference the 2016 NCS Brochure.

Aquatics

Pending changes to the government-regulated CDC Model Aquatic Health Code (MAHC) could affect council-operated swimming programs, including summer camps.

In an effort to meet the new guidelines, aquatics training will begin on the Thursday evening of resident camp schools.

The MAHC guideline recommendations, such as those listed blow, are expected to be adopted quickly from state to state.

• Current lifeguard certification by approved agency
• Current CPR at professional level
• Polarized sunglasses
• UV protection
• Communication systems

An outline of the updates can be found on the Aquatics ERM Summit 2015 presentation.

Teams responsible for camping programs should be informed of all changes in preparation for the shooting sports and aquatics sections at National Camping Schools in 2016.

The BSA Shooting Sports Team and Aquatics Task Force work diligently to anticipate trends and stay current with regulations and standards, so be sure to reference the 2016 National Camping Schools Memo for more details on these updates.