Friends and families play tournaments and pickup games of soccer at the MVP Sports Center at 4600 Park Avenue. (Photo: Emily Kestel)
By Steve Dinnen
You could block, bump, dig and kill a volleyball for an hour or so at Y camp this summer. Or you could do it all day long at a Drake University summer camp devoted solely to volleyball.
The state and the country are filled with specialty camps where kids and teens can dive a into a sport, a foreign language, a STEM subject or the natural world. Few are as all-encompassing as those old-fashioned scouting and Y camps, but they’re ideal for kids who want to develop their talents in a chosen field.
Michigan’s Interlochen Arts Camp stands out with its one- to six-week programs that focus on dance, film, theater, creative writing and the visual arts. In northern Minnesota, the Concordia Language Villages offer one-, two- and four-week immersion programs in more than a dozen languages, and participants can earn a year of high school language credit. National Computer Camps in Georgia and Connecticut lead campers through courses on game design, CSS, Python, AI, OpenGL and other topics their parents may not quite grasp.
Many of these specialty camps, especially those that focus on sports, are shorter. Like Drake, Grand View University offers several summer volleyball programs for students in elementary, middle and high school. Some are single-day events; others span multiple days.
Volleyball is a big draw, with programs at Iowa State University and Des Moines Area Community College. And there’s soccer, too, with options that include back-to-back weeks of training in Altoona managed by European teams Real Madrid and English standout Arsenal. Day camp fees range from $475 to $500.
And if your kids would rather root for all these budding athletes and achievers, they can sign up for a cheerleading camp June 23-25 at Iowa State. Go team! Go scientists! Go multilingual dancing cellists! Go!
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