Fourteen students from the Verde Valley and Sedona attended the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards camp at the Pinerock Camp and Retreat Center in Prescott over Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. weekend.

Twelve of the 14 students were from Sedona Red Rock High School and presented their takeaways and memories at the Sedona Performing Arts Center on Thursday, Feb. 5, to parents, teachers and Rotarians from all four clubs in the region.

For one of the games Sedona Red Rock High School junior Micah Brewer played while he attended the retreat in Prescott, he wasn’t allowed to speak English.

The students had to sort through cards to find the right color and add up their cards to equal 112 without showing anyone.

“We did that by saying the first letter of the color followed by our initials,” Brewer said. “So ‘wa, ma ba ma ba ma’ for number three, white three. Yes, it’s as chaotic as it sounds.”

It helped find creative ways to be communicative and get to know his group members better.

“Everyone on the bus got broken up into different teams, which are represented by the exchange students and their countries, that’s why Samuel [Callau-Knigge, SRRHS’ exchange student], was Team Norway,” SRRHS junior Keldon Cain said.

Cain said that was his favorite part, spending time with some older friends, like Callau-Knigge, and make some new ones from other regions and other countries.

“Most people that go to RYLA are sophomores,” junior Melle Glatt said. “I had gotten the invitation as a sophomore, but I decided — during my sophomore year — I was too scared to do it.”

Glatt said the part of the camp with the most impact for her was the Goliath Wall. She said she’s scared of a lot of things the rest of the camper struggled with in the beginning: Spending time with complete strangers and heights, which she knew there would be plenty of, since the camp had obstacle courses and zip lines.

“We were all kind of nervous around each other, we didn’t really know what to say to each other at first and they explained, ‘OK, it’s a 10-foot wall, all 12 of you have to get over the wall … I thought, ‘I’m pretty tall, I can just move to the back and wait for the activity to be over, maybeI could find a way out of this.’”

Glatt said the two German exchange students, Chris and Bo, told everyone they’d carry people over the wall.

“The mentor that had explained the game to us was like ‘OK, Chris and Bo, why don’t you pick someone to go first?’” Glatt said, “and I was like ‘they’re never going to pick me, I mean, I’m pretty tall, they don’t want to put me all the way over there,’ and the very first person that was picked was me.”

When she got up over the wall she said she thought, “‘you know what? Maybe this isn’t so bad.’”

“I think that really impacted the way I thought the whole weekend,” Glatt said. “I wanted to push myself to do things I was scared of, and I think this activity really helped me do it.”

SRRHS junior Fernando Quisumbing attended the RYLA camp last year, and he said it helped him learn to be himself.

“I feel like RYLA came at a point in my life where I’ve been wearing all these different hats when I engage with people,” Quisumbing said. “All of them are a part of myself, but it’s only showing people certain pieces. RYLA was my first experience of ‘I’m just going to pull all those into one and be this for the weekend,’ and it was spectacular.”

He went back this year, not as a delegate or camper, but as a junior counselor.

“It was an extraordinary opportunity to take the role and responsibility of guiding all of these really new students who have no idea what the experience is,” Quisumbing said.

He said he definitely had no idea what it was going to be like in his first year, but he’s glad he went.

At least three other students who were delegates this year want to apply to be a junior counselor next year.

“Being a junior counselor has that curtain pulled back from what your experience as a delegate is,” Quisumbing said, adding the RYLA camp has a Disneyland feel to it.

Sister Cities International Youth Leadership Summit

The district rotary clubs awarded Quisumbing a $1,995 scholarship for the Sister Cities International Youth Leadership Summit that happens over the summer at American University in Washington, D.C.

The summit is a nationwide program that selects one student from each state to learn leadership skills and hear from U.S. government and United Nations officials on what it means to be a citizen-diplomat.

The Arizona state delegate will be chosen between the different Sister Cities nominations throughout the state. Last year, Sedona’s nominee, Khrystian Cordova, was chosen to represent Arizona at the national summit.

The state delegate hasn’t been chosen yet, but if Quisumbing is chosen, the Rotary Club will cover the summit cost and the Sedona Sister Cities Association will cover airfare.