SOUTH PORTLAND – During a brief lull in the hectic rec camp schedule, counselor Keera Allen explained to me why she was planning to offer making paper airplanes as an activity to campers.

“During school they get in trouble for making and flying paper airplanes, so I wanted to have a time when it’s OK to do it,” said Allen, 20, a counselor at South Portland Parks and Recreation Summer Camp at Mahoney Middle School.

“I’m going to have a contest and have them fly their planes down the hallway here to see how far they go.”

But a minute later, when camp director Pete Cekutis began shouting out the next hour’s activity choices to dozens of campers gathered in the main hallway, Allen’s plans changed.

A larger-than-expected group of fifth- and sixth-graders — about 30 — raised their hands to play a game called “pin guard” in the gym. So Cekutis asked Allen if she’d be OK helping run pin guard and doing her airplane class another day.

She said sure, and we were on the way to the gym.

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“This job is all about flexibility,” said Allen, in her third summer as a camp counselor in South Portland.

I learned that quickly.

Instead of getting ready to make paper airplanes, I was now trying to understand the rules of pin guard, a game I had never heard of. Allen tried to explain it to me as we walked, but I didn’t get it. As a counselor, I would have to understand the game well enough to supervise it and explain it to the kids.

“It’s on the basketball court, and there’s a water bottle, and somebody guarding it, and the other players have a ball to try to knock it over,” said Allen. “They can pass, but they can’t run with it. You sort of have to see it.”

When I saw it, I still didn’t understand it. For one thing, there were two balls, so both teams could be on offense at the same time. As soon as the game started, Allen and the other counselor realized 30 kids were too many, so they quickly stopped the game and broke the group into four teams. Again, flexibility came into play.

As counselor John DiBiase was trying to break the group into four teams, several kids were talking and not paying attention. Then the whistle blew.

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“The whistle means silence,” Allen said loudly, though calmly.

I helped officiate the game, watching for kids who took too many steps, fouled or violated the rules in some other way.

At the end of the hour, Allen, the other counselors and I stopped the game and began to shepherd the campers to the other end of the school, where they’d pick their next activity. Just as we were leaving, two boys traded verbal barbs. Before things could escalate, Allen stepped between then. She put an arm around both and coaxed them to sit on a bench with her.

After a few minutes of “talking it out” — which the counselors at South Portland rec camps encourage fighting youngsters to do — the two boys seemed calm enough to move on.

But a few minutes later, in the hallway, one of the boys had a flare-up with another boy. Allen took him aside and let him talk about it. Then she sent him to the camp director.

“It’s a judgment call as to whether they’re calm enough to continue,” said Allen, who is majoring in sociology and business at Keene State College in New Hampshire. “I thought he was, but I think in his state, something just set him off. We try to get them to talk it out, to get them calm.”

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Allen said dealing with these kinds of flare-ups is probably the toughest part of the job.

But then, in a split second, she was changing gears again. As soon as she was done helping the emotional boy calm down, she was greeted by a roomful of campers waiting for her to help them learn how to knit.

The other activities she’d help lead on this particular day included soccer and cake decorating. Talk about flexibility.

Though a lot of the summer camp activities are fun, the responsibilities are serious. Allen and all the other counselors get a three-day training session, which includes a video depicting a drowning. They are also given a thick handbook of rules, including many about personal conduct and the kind of example they set for the kids.

“I tell them if they can’t cut it, I’ve got a stack of applications of other people, so we’ll find someone who can,” said Lisa Thompson, recreation coordinator and the person who hires the counselors.

Even though the standards are higher than a typical summer job, Allen says she would not trade it.

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“For me, I just love being around kids,” she said.

Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:

rrouthier@pressherald.com