Talk to Phil Burke for more than five minutes about the best way to mold the lives of young kids, and you start to doubt that his last name really isn’t “O’Sopher.”
As in “Phil O’Sopher.”
On top of being the director of tennis programs at the St. Andrews Parks & Playground facility on Playground Road, Burke is also the co-director of its summer camp programs, along with Jodi heath Collins-Grey.
For years, Burke has been cooking up different way to help “nurture the whole child,” and help them “navigate their life paths.” A decade ago, Burke, a former college tennis player, noticed kids in camp were more interested in playing Nintendo than they were in playing doubles.
So a couple years ago he and his younger brother, Brian, a former professional tennis player who now runs St. Andrews Family Fitness Plus off of Sam Rittenberg Boulevard, cooked up “half-and-half” camp. Videodrones would be allowed to play the latest videogames in a darkened, air-conditioned room. For four hours! Then they were brought back out into the sunlight and run like dogs for four hours. (Half-and-half, get it?)
Well, Phil Burke is at it again with two new camp offerings this summer:  Doin’ the Charleston and Super Powers Camp.
Teaming with a child psychologist on the latter, Burke has laid out a series of self-esteem building and self-defining activities aimed at helping kids 8-12 years old reach their full potentials. And they’re going to get it done in a weeklong, half-day camp.
Doin’ the Charleston, Burke hopes, will provide kids 10-14 with a current and historic perspective as to what makes their hometown special and relevant. Community pride and understanding, he says, will help craft more complete individuals.
Tours of downtown, visits to local museums, carriage tours, trips to Charles Towne Landing – you name it, kids attending this all-day weeklong camp will get aq crash course in what it means to be a Charlestonian, past and present.
The facility still offers up a slew of traditional, low-priced summer camp options, like fishing, tennis and golf. But it has also in recent years added in options like “fashionista” camp, and geocaching, where kids find their way through a citywide maze with nothing but a GPS and a series of map coordinates.
 
If you’d like to learn how to enroll your little “individuals,” contact St. Andrews at (843) 763-4360, or check out their camp guide at www.standrewsparks.com.

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