The camps, which range from swimming to football to tennis, bring young athletes from across the country to campus for summer and recruiting opportunities.
Head swimming and diving coach Jim Wilson has been running the Go Green Swim Camp for 20 years.
The campers get to take advantage of equipment available to the Big Green, including a current pool with an underwater camera that analyzes their strokes.
Campers also have opportunities to do other activities over the week-long camp, such as playing games on the Green and seeing "Monsters University" at the Nugget.
Wilson noted that coaching younger athletes requires a different focus from what he usually works on with the Big Green athletes.
"The skill set is the biggest issue," he said. "We're working much more on technique so they're good to go to the next level."
The swim camp coaches include members of the Big Green coaching staff and current athletes who are around for the summer.
"I wish it was all of my freshmen here [coaching]," he said. "It makes them really think and when you teach, you learn so much better in terms of comparing to their own strokes."
Sasha Alcon '15, a member of the women's swim team, helps at the camp between her summer classes and credits the experience of coaching with reinvigorating her love for swimming.
"My favorite part of working at the camp is watching the kids learn and help with their swimming," she said. "It's been so long since I was with them and it's a good reminder of why I started swimming in the first place."
On a different end of the spectrum, the Buddy Teevens Football Camp focuses on preparing athletes for recruitment by New England schools over a week of day-long camps.
Over 400 athletes participated this year, often looking to "make a vacation out of the summer spent traveling to football camps and judging the fit of schools" as a family according to Operations Director Joey McIntyre. A day of camp consisted of a skills combine, positional work and competitions. In addition to on-field action, campers also had the opportunity to hear presentations from the Big Green staff and coaches from the many New England Small College Athletic Conference schools that help out with the camp. McIntyre said the camp serves a dual purpose in getting players associated with different schools and coaches familiar with potential incoming players.
"It's a chance to see the kids in person and see how they take to our coaching," he said. "We ask them to do some different things technique-wise from what they did in high school to get a feel for their personality, if they're coachable and how they respond in a new situation."
In recent years, the Big Green has extended offers to three or four camp participants per year, McIntyre said. He added that many more campers are recruited by the NESCAC schools that have similar academic standards.
The Gold Medal Running Camp is a smaller operation, with roughly 100 runners looking to prepare for college recruitment. Headed by Dartmouth men's track and cross-country coach Barry Harwick and Smith College's head cross-country coach Ellen O'Neil '87, the runners are split according to ability for runs twice a day throughout the six-day camp.
Current Big Green runner Margaret Donovan '15 participated in the camp in high school and remembers it as a first experience of independence on a college campus.
"It was fun to be on your own at the campus," she said. "I'd wanted to go to Dartmouth for years and to be able to be here training was a great way to experience Hanover before I even applied."
The Kinyon Jones Tennis Camp, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, offers five week-long sessions, with about 40 campers each. According to NCAA regulations, camps run by college coaches cannot limit camps by ability, but men's tennis head coach Chris Drake noted that the majority of the kids attending are looking to play at the college level.
Drake agreed with Wilson that coaching younger athletes involves an increased focus on strengthening basic techniques.
"Coaching and teaching are pretty much the same, it's just a matter of the specific that you're working on," he said.
During the summer hockey, baseball, and soccer camps among others will also be held in Hanover, ensuring a constant stream of visiting athletes.
