Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep. # 83 Why Woodmont Camp is Your Child’s Best Summer Experience
Discover the magic of summer at Woodmont Family Day Camp! We unpack the extraordinary philosophy that sets this camp apart—an environment where kindness, confidence, and respect blossom in youth. With a legacy dating back over 80 years, Woodmont stands out for its immersive experience, rich history, and dedicated staff who foster an enriching environment for children aged 3 to 15.
Join the conversation as we explore what a typical day looks like for a camper, from swimming and sports to creative arts, all designed for various age groups. The flexible schedule allows kids to balance camp life with family activities, enabling them to engage fully with their peers. Unique to Woodmont is the technology-free policy, where children leave behind distractions to form lasting connections and explore their surroundings freely.
This episode serves as a resource for parents eager to find the right summer camp for their children, highlighting the need for early planning and open communication with camp directors. With enrollment options ranging from three to eight weeks and a spirit of community, Woodmont is ready for your child’s best summer yet! Don’t miss out—connect with us for more information on enrolling your child and experience the joy that awaits!
Woodmont Day Camp
Sam Borek
420 Phillips Hill Rd New City, NY 10956
(845) 638-0700
info@woodmontdaycamp.com
woodmontdaycamp.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Hey, welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast brought to you by the Bergen Neighbors Media Group. I am your host, doug Drohan, and you know it's cold out right now. I mean, we had a little taste of a little tease of spring, a little bit of summer, like Saturday morning it was warm enough, where I actually I coach rec baseball and I said to some of the kids who are going to be on the team hey, let's go out and do some baseball practice this afternoon at three o'clock and then by three thirty it was like 40 degrees and the wind was howling and the clouds rolling in. So you wouldn't really think of normally. I mean, actually you do have to, if you're a parent Think about summer camp.
Speaker 2:But you know we're just turned the calendar into March and it's time for really. You know, if you have not decided what you're going to do with your son or daughter for camp, now's the time to think about it. So it's a perfect opportunity to introduce Sam Borek. He is the co-owner of Woodmont Camp. I guess we Woodmont Family Day Camp, based in New City, new York. Sam, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much. Happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's funny because you know, normally before I had a kid, you didn't think in January, february about summer camp, but this is the time where you really have to, you know, apply right.
Speaker 3:A hundred percent. You know, the number one question we get as camp owners and directors for my wife and I is well, camp's only two months, what do you do the rest of the year? And then we try to explain that while it's only a two month operation, it takes 10 months to get it ready.
Speaker 3:Hiring staff and working on our program and meeting families. We're always thinking camp and parents now, as the sun's shining and summer is rapidly approaching for sure are starting to reach out more and more as some of our groups start to fill up.
Speaker 2:Tell us the history of Woodmont. Was it initially like a sleepover camp, or has it always been a day camp?
Speaker 3:So it's always been a day camp. It's been in existence for 80 plus years. We're only the third owners on the property. It started in the early 1900s as a Boy Scout camp. And then Bea Drexler um purchased it. She ran it for 20 something years. Um sold it to hervin ruth levitsky. They ran a scotland hills which was a a child care and then took it over, and at that time it was called candy mountain my wife and I.
Speaker 3:I was working full-time at a sleepway camp in maine and my wife was running a day camp in in central in Manhattan. And we met and got married and wanted to run a camp together.
Speaker 1:So we met the owners at Candy Mountain.
Speaker 3:We worked with them for a year. They retired and then it became Woodmont.
Speaker 2:Candy.
Speaker 3:Mountain was a great name if you're three or four years old. Not as great if you're nine or ten. And their logo had big candy canes on it. It was almost like Candyland.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's. The first thought that came to my head was Candyland. It's more preschool kind of.
Speaker 3:So as we took over, we changed the name to Windmine.
Speaker 2:So what are the age ranges of the campers?
Speaker 3:We start as young as three, even younger. You know we had some two and a half last year as long as they're potty trained, and we go all the way up to 15. So it's a pretty wide range and everything is very age appropriate. So what a three-year-old is doing is very different than what an eight-year-old is doing, which is very different than what a 12-year-old is doing.
Speaker 2:Right, right. And then do you have like, do you find that a lot of kids who came that were there as campers are now working as camp counselors?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's pretty unbelievable. You know this is our 19th summer running camp. So we've had more and more which is amazing Campers who grew up at camp, maybe went away to sleepaway camp or, you know, or grew up. They're now returning as counselors and they're some of our best. You know many many parents will ask you know how old are your staff? And I kind of rephrase it to say you know how experienced are they, because some of our best counselors are 17, 18, 19.
Speaker 3:They grew up at camp, who know our philosophy, who understand how camp works, and they're sometimes better than 25 and 30 year olds that you know are teachers but have never been to camp and some of those skills don't translate, so it's been an incredible experience for my wife and I to see some of those young kids that we knew at five.
Speaker 2:You know that are back.
Speaker 3:Our amazing staff.
Speaker 2:So what is your philosophy? You mentioned that. What is the philosophy of Woodmont?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know our core values permeate throughout all of camp and those are kindness, confidence and respect. And those are big words and we don't take them lightly. And you know what we tell parents is. You know, as a parent, you want your child to learn to swim, you want them to play sports, you want them to do cool stuff like zip lines and archery but more importantly, you want them to be good people.
Speaker 3:And for me to call you and say, hey, Doug, your son scored the winning goal, that's great. But if I call you and say, Doug, your son was so kind today to another child. The other child was struggling and he really went out of his way as a parent, you kind of beam with pride when you hear that. And so our philosophy is one that we want to work on the whole child and find what makes them tick as an individual and allow them to kind of grow and flourish over the summer.
Speaker 2:That's great. Now, you know you mentioned the camp has all different activities for different age groups. But the cool thing about it is if anyone goes on to woodmontdaycampcom, uh, you can check out the map and it kind of looks like almost you're going to disney world because there's, like you know, this um anywhere from, like eagle's nest and I guess that's where you do like the bouldering and and maybe the zip lining over there or ninja warrior stuff which you know all like. Uh, you know nine, ten year olds, a lot of them love that stuff. Um, that you know all like. You know nine, 10 year olds, a lot of them love that stuff that you know, down to your traditional things like a pool and swimming. But you guys even have like a stream and a lake and like, tell me about the like the map, like about the whole. You know, I guess we can call it the whole camp.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's pretty amazing. It's 50 acres, so to come and be able to do this in kind of a suburb when you drive by you see our sign, and then there's a big hill and you drive up and you don't realize that there's kind of this whole oasis beyond there.
Speaker 3:So we have six heated swimming pools, we have baseball, we have basketball, we have soccer, traditional sports, and then we have zip lines and go karts, we have an animal farm, we have a lake where we do fishing and boating and the surroundings are just beautiful. You know, when you come up and you're here on the property, you feel like you're out in the country and you're 20 minutes from you know, from door to door from my house in Hallworth. You know it takes me 22 minutes to get here.
Speaker 2:Wow, now I'd imagine you know, 90 years ago, 80 years ago, going up to New City, if you lived in New York City it was like going to the country, and maybe it still is really, if you live in Manhattan and I lived in the city for a long time and you know Central Park is nice. But you know, sometimes you crave just some fresh air and some nature. I guess you know from New York City, you're talking less than an hour, but it feels like you're. You know from New York City, you're talking less than an hour, but it feels like you're, you know, upstate New York.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I tell the story. 20 years ago in Sex and the City, Sarah Jessica Parker.
Speaker 2:I was suffering, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she was suffering and suffering right. I know it makes it seem like she took like a train to a bus, to a plane, and it's, it's 10 minutes, you know, from from New City.
Speaker 2:I mean sheern's, right over the Malwa border, and you know from, you know Bergen County. I mean it's not that far. So we do get a lot of families from Manhattan.
Speaker 3:you know, and you're right, it's about a 45 minute trip from the Upper West Side and for them to come up here. You know, they may as well be in the Berkshires, because when they come up to tour you know, they're out in the country. They don't realize that people live you know in the area and that it's close by. But you're right, you do feel like you're kind of out in this hidden oasis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how do students or the campers get to your camp?
Speaker 3:We do door-to-door busing. So we have buses all over Bergen County. We pick up at the door and drop off. So we have buses all over Bergen County, we pick up at the door and drop off. And it's amazing because you know many of our towns in Bergen County there are no buses to school. So for those kids, you know, to come to camp, the bus ride is like you know, half of their joy.
Speaker 3:The bus comes, picks them up. There's a professional driver, there's one of our staff who's on the bus as a bus counselor. So you know they're playing music. They're playing games.
Speaker 1:They're doing activities.
Speaker 3:So we say the camp day really starts at pickup, so we don't use the big buses. You know, like the 55 passengers the small little yellow vans, they call them, that are like 16 to 18 passengers air conditioned and we do door to door.
Speaker 2:Nice, so they come to your door or you have to meet in a certain bus. Stop, yeah, pick up at everyone's door.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so if you're in, harrington park or you know, we have one bus that picks up like harrington park in northvale, one that picks up in hallworth and closter, one that picks up in tenement.
Speaker 2:So yeah, right up 303 and and, uh yeah yeah, or the palisades, right right yeah, because we get permits to be on the on the parkway um so it's a really easy bus ride, you know, to get to it nice. So what's the experience? Like? Like what would a 10 year old experience? So they get picked up like 8, 30 in the morning and like what's what's a day in the life, to quote, um, you know, john lennon yeah, so they'll get picked up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, anywhere between like 8 and 8, 8, 25, depending on where you are in the bus route. They get to camp at nine, they leave at four. They're home typically about quarter to five. So it's a. It's a full, full day and they're going to experience everything at camp, so they're going to swim twice every day. Once will be an instructional swim, so no one complains about swimming in cold pools.
Speaker 3:There's something active every day baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, gymnastics. Something in the arts every day ceramics, cooking, music, theater, yoga. Something unique every day fishing, go-karts, rock climbing, zip-climbing, archery. And then again, as you get older, you get to kind of choose more of what you want to focus on. Right right, If you love sports, you know we were talking baseball earlier that you could choose to do another hour of sports every day. So as you grow, the program kind of grows with you, so you get to elect to do more of your own.
Speaker 2:And when does camp start and end?
Speaker 3:The Monday right after after school's end. And then it's an eight-week program, so we go until August 21st, and you could do anywhere from three through eight weeks.
Speaker 2:That was my next question. Do you have to do the whole?
Speaker 3:No, you don't. Years ago, when we first started, it was kind of set in stone either four weeks or eight weeks, nothing in between. And now we find that parents want flexibility.
Speaker 2:They want to travel for a week or two.
Speaker 3:Baseball you may have a tournament for a week or two. You want to skip, so you can choose. Three is the minimum you can do, anywhere in between three through eight, so you have a ton of flexibility.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of baseball, you know, in today's day and age, a lot of kids, especially by the time they're 10, 11, or in some cases when they're eight, right, they start to play club baseball. Did you find like it was a challenge to keep those kids in camp that start to get into sports, whether it's lacrosse or soccer or baseball? Yeah, or is there a way they can do both?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a way to do it, and that's why we've offered the flexible program. They can do both. Yeah, there's a way to do it, and that's why we've offered the flexible program. You know my sons, who are now 16 and 18, and grew up at camp. They were huge athletes and baseball players, and you know they kind of did a little bit of both, so they'd come to camp for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 3:They would do some tournaments, you know, and back. So there is that flexibility and the nice thing I think about camp and a camp like ours for the diehard athlete there that just want to do baseball, then Woodmont's not the right place.
Speaker 1:Right, you should go to a baseball camp.
Speaker 3:This kind of gives you a break to be able to kind of find the joy in camp again in sports, where you're going to go to baseball. We're not competitive. We want you to learn, we want you to grow, we want you to get better and kind of take a deep breath and then when you want to get intense, you know, go to tournaments and go play and go to a one-week baseball camp, but when you're here kind of revert back to being a kid, you know take a deep breath.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, run around and swim and play sports and rock climb and do those things and you know, we're finding more and more kids are focusing on you know one sport younger and younger Right, younger right, and it's not great.
Speaker 2:No, you know you want them to kind of be a kid, you know, just enjoy being outside and playing and being with their friends and and then, sir, go to you know diamond nation and go to cooperstown and go to all those tournaments, but kind of enjoy your time, you know, throughout the summer as well yeah, I just had a discussion with a friend of mine whose son is 14 and she's like oh, by the time your son is 12, he's gonna have to choose one sport to spend like no wholeheartedly you know, and that's how kids get injured, because they, especially if it's baseball and you're just throwing you around, it's just not.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean people. You know you look at athletes today. They, they lettered in other sports. You know I could have played baseball or football, or you know I was really good, so yeah.
Speaker 3:The best college coaches, Mike Krzyzewski and Urban Meyer and all those guys say that their best players were multi-sport athletes. Because their bodies get a break. You know you play soccer, you're using your legs. You play baseball, you're using your upper body.
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 3:Basketball. It's so much better to do a little bit of everything. And then at some point you may want to focus, but you know to spread yourself out.
Speaker 2:It would certainly matter yeah, yeah, and then you know, going back to your camp. So, like you said, you have so many different things you do. Uh, that also mentally. It's nice not to be so focused on one thing and it's like no, I want to do some go-karts or I want to do some zip lining or I want to, you know, go fishing. And then I'm sure you guys have like a lot of camp things with the I do you break it up? People have like different, you know camp groups, like you know different names yeah, they're with, so everyone's with their, their age-appropriate group, uh yeah the other great thing about camp, which I know you're gonna appreciate, as we're doing, you know a podcast.
Speaker 3:There's no electronics, so, no, no cell phones. No video games. No, no tvs. And that includes our adults, so our counselors don't ever have a cell phone on them. They're they're fully engaged with kids and the kids don't have phones on them. So it's such a unique environment. Now you know where to be technology free um and it's hard for the adults to kind of take a break and by the end of the summer, they're all thanking us for making them put their phone down.
Speaker 1:Cause we're all addicted.
Speaker 3:You know, we all are on it and the joy of leaving, walking out of the office in the morning and leaving my phone at my desk. It's such a freeing feeling and to see people talking to each other is unbelievable. In our 19 years we're up to 15 weddings of people who met at camp. Oh really, and I totally attribute it to being technology free.
Speaker 2:You know they're actually talking. They're not you know they're not staring at a phone. That's a good point.
Speaker 3:They're going to get to know one another and we have three or four, you know, kind of in the pipeline coming up.
Speaker 2:So it's a pretty good.
Speaker 3:you know, are they in the pipeline coming up, so it's a pretty pretty pretty good.
Speaker 2:uh, you know are they getting married at the camp too?
Speaker 3:So we've done some engagement parties at camp. They haven't none of them actually gotten married at camp yet, but we one is talking about it coming up, so they're, they're. They're not official yet, but uh, we're talking about it for sure.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about you and and, uh, and your wife. I mean you guys have been in the camp industry, I guess your whole career pretty much. Yeah. What is it about owning a camp and running a camp that you love? Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's a great question. At this point in my life I can't imagine doing anything else. I went to law school. I'm actually an attorney by education.
Speaker 3:I never practiced. Right out of law school I went to work full time at the sleepaway camp. So my entire career is running camps. So I kind of joke that I'm not really qualified for anything else right now. But the joy that we get from talking to parents and working with young adults counselors, 17 to 25 years old, and then kids it just keeps us so young of always being around people who are happy a 17 year old, you know. We tell everyone if you're the difference at camp is, if you're not smiling.
Speaker 3:You're an outlier and people come up to you and ask if you're okay, versus walking around the street where you know kind of everyone looks grumpy uh camp is the opposite you know, it's a place where you can just be joyful and happy and feel kind of.
Speaker 2:You know that spirit of togetherness yeah, and there there are a number of different camp choices in rockland county for people in bergen county yeah so what is it? Um, do you think that's different? Like what's your unique selling point? If you had to describe it that well, that way, yeah, the families that choose woodmont are choosing it for multiple reasons.
Speaker 3:One um numbers of campers. Wise, we're one of the smallest in the area, so we have a huge space, but we purposely keep our population lower. My wife and I know every camper, we know every staff member, we have a relationship with everyone on the property.
Speaker 3:And that's just a unique feeling, you know, to be able to feel like you're in this, like little bubble. You just can't get it at big camp, you know the way I describe it is the other camps in the area. I went to university of Florida, my stepbrother went to Emory, so the other camps in the area are more like university of Florida right Like if I was a thousand kids and that worked for me, and Emory, my stepbrother, had 20. So at one one you know you real, everyone knows you.
Speaker 3:You know whether you're at the lake, and Dawn, who runs our lake, she knows the kids. Joe, who runs athletics, knows the kids. Our administrators know every child, so if you call and say how was Joey today, Then they're going to say oh great, he had pizza for lunch. I saw him at swim. They're going to know your child, and so the families that choose Woodmont like that feeling of kind, of this warm nurturing place.
Speaker 2:That's great. That's great. You know, I, I didn't grow up going to camp. I went to basketball camp a couple of summers, day camp when I was like 12, 11 and 12. That was the only time I ever did a camp. But I'm, you know, I'm from Long Island. I come from an era where that wasn't as big a thing. Long Island, I come from an era where that wasn't as big a thing. But you know, I see, like you know, since I've met you, but I've been on your website and talked to a few people in the area that kids have gone to it and they absolutely love it. You know, it's just like you know, and I see why they want to go back year after year because, as you said, as you you grow, as you get older, the experience changes.
Speaker 2:You know the things you can you have, I guess, what you call um electives, right, you can choose different things that you want to do and and focus on, and, uh, it's great and you know it's funny because new city yeah, to your point, it's not that far away from here absolutely, it's literally 20 from harry park.
Speaker 3:Even closer, right from hall, it's 22 minutes. And you're right. You know what they say. Now is camp is the old community. You know where you and I used to grow up and just go to the street and play outside. Kids aren't around, you know so they don't do it. So camp is now the community you know, where you can feel like a kid again and just kind of roam and play and and be untethered. You know you're not happening around the neighborhoods anymore. So camps are now the new neighborhoods.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the other thing is a lot of parents you know the dual working families, so they can't like, okay, what are you doing this summer? I can't pick you up and drop you off for a three hour camp or this, and that I've got meetings. I got to go into the city. So it also provides, you know, that kind of peace of mind for the parent that their, their child is going to be, uh, taken care of and it's going to be enriching.
Speaker 3:That's right, it's, it's a necessary daycare option and and that's why we do eight weeks and that's why it's a full day. Right, the camp day is night before so for working parents to pick up at 8 15 and drop off at 4.45. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's great. I mean I'm looking. You know, I was like man, I got to come up here and check this out and come up with Come on up anytime.
Speaker 3:Anytime I do a tour, the parents say how do we come? Right, Get me up there.
Speaker 2:Do you ever have a parent day where they come and watch, like put on a play or some kind of theatrical event, or no, put on a play or some kind of theatrical event or no?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we do a big event in May for all of our enrolled families, so they can come up and see the kids participate and, believe it or not. We do a lot of corporate events. Parents will come and say how did we come? And then they'll bring their company and we'll do weddings, we do bar mitzvahs, we do team building activities. A school from Manhattan brought up 100 teachers and we ran a whole day for them of team building and professional development.
Speaker 3:So we try to utilize the amazing property we have in any ways we can.
Speaker 2:So is it too late to enroll for this summer? Do you still have openings?
Speaker 3:We do Our travel program for our teens, our 13, 14, 15 year olds. That's totally sold out, but other groups still do have space, so people should definitely reach out. They can call me, they can email, they can go on our website, but definitely now is the time to be thinking about it.
Speaker 2:So let's go through all that again. So it's woodmont W-O-O-D-M-O-N-T daycamp. com.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Phone number is 845-638-0700.
Speaker 3:And email is really easy. It's Sam@ WoodmontDayCamp. com.
Speaker 2:That's great, and you know we'll mention that you are a Bergen County guy. I don't know if we were born in Bergen County as well.
Speaker 3:No, no, I was born, I grew up in Florida, but we moved to college OK exactly. We moved to Haworth when my oldest son started kindergarten, so he was turning five.
Speaker 2:Why did you move to New Jersey? Was it your wife?
Speaker 3:No, so we wanted to be near camp. We didn't necessarily want to live so close to camp, we wanted a little bit of a bummer. So we just looked around all around Bergen County, we found a house we loved in Hallworth. We knew some families from Wood know who lived in the area. My older son, you know went, went to hall road public school and then nvd. My younger self is sophomore at nvd now and we couldn't be happier. Great community, great schools, um just amazing place to raise a family nice, nice.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, sam, thank you, uh, so much for sharing this is. This is great and, uh, like I said, like I said, it's March 3rd, now's the time. If anybody's interested in booking a summer camp for their kid, now's the time to reach out. For sure, thanks for joining the show. You and I will be right back.
Speaker 3:Sounds great.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.