What goes to New Braunfels on Friday, stays in New Braunfels for three days, then leaves on Monday? The answer is none other than the RYLA camp chiefs and campers piling in the John Newcombe Tennis Ranch, prepared and eager for a long weekend of leadership building, surprise activities and team bonding.

Fredericksburg High School senior, Cooper McDonald, doubled as a second-time RYLA attender and a team leader this winter. After his second year at this leadership camp, McDonald concludes that this Rotary Club-sponsored event has changed his life for the better.

“RYLA stands for the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards camp,” McDonald said. “It’s a camp that, with different activities, helps try to inspire a future generation of leaders,”

McDonald attended this youth leadership camp two years in a row. Once in the winter of his junior year, and the second in the winter of his senior year.

“I went last year as an attendee. We arrived Friday evening and left midday Monday,” McDonald said. “This year I got to go back as a team leader. We got there Friday morning to help set up, and left after the campers left because we had to help clean up.”

McDonald liked getting to see both the camper and leader perspective of the camp. Both years offered very different but equally advantageous experiences. His team leader year, he got to see a new side of the camp.

“It was different because I got to see everything behind the scenes,” McDonald said. “I got to know all the work that went into putting the camp together, instead of just going.”

As a camper and the next year as a leader, McDonald got to participate in many different team-building and self-finding activities. These activities served different purposes and helped the campers, as well as the leaders, strengthen what they felt could be their personal weaknesses.

“We take these personality tests to try to figure out what traits we’re stronger in and what traits were weaker in,” McDonald said. “There was a part of another activity where you write down your strengths and weaknesses and keep your weakness close to you so you could see it more often and be reminded to work on it.”

McDonald heard about RYLA from his older brother, Drew McDonald. When the opportunity presented itself, McDonald didn’t want to miss it.

“I decided to go last year because my brother had gone, and he told me it was a really fun experience,” McDonald said. “The team leaders were really nice when I went, so I wanted to go again so I could inspire the younger people.”

McDonald wants to spread the word to every junior and senior about the valuable life lessons he learned at this camp. He wants to encourage people to go, even if they are on the fence.

“I would say that you are going to meet so many new friends and make so many lifelong memories that it’s totally worth going,” McDonald said. “Even if you think you’re going to be being pushed out of your comfort zone, which you will, it will be worth it.”

RYLA has had an overall positive impact on McDonald’s life. He enjoyed strengthening his leadership skills, working on functioning better in a group, and learning more about himself. McDonald is eager to take these experiences out into the real world and apply them to his everyday life.

“Apart from meeting so many different people that you can learn a lot from, it’s really changed my outlook on working in groups,” McDonald said. “I find myself being able to function better in groups, even with people I don’t know, than before I went. It really changed my life.”