Though high school sports teams were on summer break, the tennis courts, football fields and gymnasiums of Bellingham’s high schools did not sit empty this summer.
Starting in June, Bellingham Public Schools and the City of Bellingham’s Parks and Recreation Department teamed up to put on 17 youth sports camps for local kids.
The renewed program, hosted in collaboration between the two organizations for the first time since 2019, allowed local children to try new sports with the instruction of high school coaches. With one week of football camp remaining, total registration sat at 591 kids across all camps.
“It’s a safe on-ramp,” said Patrick Ulinski, athletics coordinator for the City of Bellingham. “If you have a kid that doesn’t maybe want to commit to a season of a sport … here’s a great opportunity for them to try and see if they like it.”
Leondre Blackshire, 11, returns a pass from a tennis ball machine during a drill. (Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News) In a collaboration led by Ulinksi and Bellingham Public Schools Director of Athletics and Activities Laurel Peak, both in their first year with the program, the city helped facilitate camp registration, fee collection and T-shirts, while the schools provided the coaches and facilities.
Around 50 campers gathered at the Squalicum High School tennis courts for a tennis camp led by coach Angie Harwood, August 1–4, split into three sessions per age group. The Squalicum tennis coaching staff taught campers the mechanics, rules and gameplay of the sport, with energizing warmups and games sprinkled throughout.
The camp was bigger than just Squalicum, Harwood said. Instead of just reaching out to the high school’s feeder schools, the city’s summer Playbook program allowed for kids from different school clusters — even one from Mount Baker — to attend the camp.
“About two [out of the whole group] are going to be Squalicum students, so we’re training our competition, but that’s all right,” Harwood said. “What we’re doing is trying to get more visibility for the sport and get more participation.”
Mollie Robb, 10, learns to serve. (Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News) At the Squalicum tennis courts, the tennis scoring system was written on the courts in pink sidewalk chalk, a reminder for the beginner campers who had picked up the scoring rules on Wednesday. On Thursday, the campers warmed up hitting against the ball machine, then played matches against one another for the first time.
Graham Slagle, 10, said he had played tennis “here and there” before the camp but improved his volleys and serves this week. His favorite part of the camp was playing frogs and mosquitos, a game where if players hit the ball too far or into the net, they have to scramble around to the other side of the net and try to catch another player’s soaring volley in order to reenter the line.
Tennis camp ended with an enthusiastic game of frogs and mosquitos on Thursday.
Squalicum hosted 10 of the camps, while Sehome put on three and Bellingham High School organized four. The camps included soccer, volleyball, football, tennis, debate, cross country, basketball and baseball, and Peak said she hopes the list continues to grow and diversify in future years.
Campers high-five one another during a warm-up game at the start of the last day of tennis camp. (Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News) “You think about sports camps when you think about summer camps, but I want to make sure if our robotics group wants to run a camp, they have that opportunity,” Peak said. “There’s a real opportunity there for providing youth with activity-type camps, rather than just sports.”
Most of the camps separated different age groups into two- or three-hour time slots, with divisions ranging from third to 12th grade, depending on the camp. The camps cost between $80–125 for three to five days and, in addition to high school coaches, were facilitated by high school athletes who volunteered as mentors.
“If [campers] see themselves as ‘I’m going to be a Squalicum basketball player,’ or ‘I’m going to be a Bellingham volleyball player, I’m going to do debate for the Bellingham school districts’ — when they see themselves connected to those coaches in those programs, even the third- or fourth- or fifth grader can be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I can see myself doing that,’” Peak said. “Then there’s that thread connecting them.”
Looking ahead Peak said, she hopes the program can organize its scholarship funds to reduce costs and make camps more accessible to more kids. She also said spreading the camps more evenly across the city and marketing certain camps that were less attended — such as the softball camp, which was canceled due to low registration numbers — will be a future priority.
