NACCAP '09

Since about 1991, NACCAP has been a big part of my professional--and even personal--life. NACCAP stands for the North American Coalition of Christian Admissions Professionals. I've missed only two NACCAP conferences in the last fifteen years or so.

This year's conference was held in early June on the campus of Cedarville University, which was kind of cool since that's where Jordan will be for college in the fall. They repainted "the rock" for our week on campus . . . Of course, one of the best things about NACCAP is reconnecting with old friends. As the conference has gotten bigger and some of my friends have stopped attending regularly, this has gotten harder to do, but I can always count on getting together with Dan Crabtree, my friend from Wheaton Academy outside of Chicago. Dan and I first met at NACCAP, where my first words to him were "You don't have a clue what it's like in the real world." The next year, at Messiah College, we had a couple of long conversations and have been friends ever since. Here's a photo of Dan just before the "NACCAP Games," an annual highlight of the conference . . .

Here is LaVaughn Ricci, one of Cedarville's admissions counselors, trying to explain one of the games while James Townsend from LeTourneau University does nothing to help . . .

Most of the game were fairly low-key this year, but this next one was kind of brutal. It started with two team members running to midcourt, putting their heads on the end of a baseball bat and spinning themselves around it. Then they had to wheelbarrow their way to a little plastic wading pool filled with water and apples. The "wheelbarrow" had to get an apple in his mouth and then get pushed over to a bucket where the apple was deposited. And then two more people repeated the process. It was pretty tough. I kept waiting for someone to get seriously hurt or have a heart attack but all injuries seemed to be minor . . .

Here are Lindsey Clark, from my office, and Andre Stephens from Biola University cheering on their team in the wheelbarrow race. Lindsey had a good excuse not to take part, she was about seven months pregnant at that point in June. And Andre was just smart to somehow squirm out of doing it . . .

Here, Dan and I are strategizing about how to do our part of a relay race that involved having our ankles tied together, putting on a sports coat and then waddling our way along to the next stop, where a bottle of soda water had to be consumed . . .

At the far left of this picture is Alex, one of my admissions counselors at Lincoln Christian, trying to catch balls launched from a slingshot . . .