Camp Green Lane 100th Summer Blog Post, July 6th

We goof around a lot here at camp.

But there’s also plenty of good, clean competition, too.

I spent a lot of time out on the Hockey Rink the past few days for our annual July 4 ball hockey tournament, and again today for a Leagues game overtime. Both games were fierce. All the boys playing really wanted to win.

There were even some tears and slumped shoulders among the losing teams. It mattered.

It’s good when things matter here at camp.

The July 4 Hockey Tournament, now in its 6th year, has grown into something special. An Independence Day tradition, we decorate the rink with red, white and blue signs and the boys are split into evenly matched teams. They play a single-elimination bracket tournament, first to 5, have to win by 2.

The stakes are high. The winning team gets their names written on our Stanley Cup, a trash can with a silver bowl affixed atop rows of names of previous winners. They also get to drink cold Gatorade out of the Cup when they win, so the boys give it their all.

The cool thing about hockey is it’s a team game where everybody plays an important role, and it’s a sport where heart and hustle always trumps skill. Weather suspended play on July 4 and we had to stretch the tournament over multiple days, inside the Dome and outside, too. The length of this year’s tournament, and the added elements increased the drama.

The Rink is one of the most picturesque places in camp. On a nice day, it’s all blue skies, rolling hills and the lake in the distance. But inside those wooden boards, the boys waged war this weekend. I saw campers find new roles as dependable goalies, rabid defenders and goal-scoring forces in front of the net.

The Final was mostly made up of younger boys. The Mets are the youngest Senior Boys cabin, but 5 of the final 6 campers left in the tournament were mighty Mets. It was such a joy to watch Leo, Sean and Sam go the distance and play so, so hard. You should have seen them breaking up plays and competing with everything they had.

In the end, Tristan O’Malley, Caleb Mann and Archer Haberman hoisted the most famous trophy in CGL sports as 2026 July 4 Hockey Tournament winners.

They drank from it first, and then another CGL tradition, the runners-up drink next, and then a line of 40 of us sip together. In those final moments, you see older boys return to the rink to see who the new winners are. This year, I saw a boy crying after the loss, but his counselor was right there to pick him up and tell him how proud he was of the way he played.

Then they both sipped from the Cup and it was on to swim. Magic.

We goof around a lot here at camp.

But some of the most incredible moments happen when we play for real.

Or a trophy made out of a trash can.

—Uncle Evan