SUMMER OF FUN

Camp Scully, run by Catholic Charities, has been a seasonal staple for local families since 1920

Camp counselor Victoria Rucker (l.) assists camper Brooklyn Barnes with her life vest on Aug. 4 at Camp Scully in Wynantskill. (Cindy Schultz photo for The Evangelist) (Courtesy photo of Cindy Schultz)

The acorn delivery came around mid-morning.

A camper runs across the upper field of Camp Scully, carrying with her a small handful of acorns collected from a nearby patch of trees. She runs over to Diane McNamara, camp director, and, with no explanation needed, hands her one of her findings. 

“Plant these in your yard!” she instructs before running back to her group, indicating the acorn hunt (and delivery) is still afoot. 

All around the upper field, dozens of children are locked into their own summer camp experiences. A counselor shouts calls from behind home plate as children round the bases of a kickball field, and kids cheer from excitement along the fencing of a Gaga pit (a summer camp staple that can best be described as a dodgeball game on steroids). 

The entire field is swirling with laughter and screams, and McNamara wouldn’t want it any other way.

“We have a schedule that we follow, but these kids, all they want to do is come, run around, get dirty and come home tired, and that’s exactly what they do here,” she said. “We feed them, they run around, and they hand us acorns from the woods.”

Camp Scully is a co-ed, day and overnight summer camp run by Catholic Charities. Located on Snyder’s Lake in Wynantskill, the 33-acre camp welcomes around 1,500 children every year. More than just a place to send their kids, Camp Scully is a favorite part of the annual summer routine for countless local families.

“A lot of these kids that are in my resident camp, their parents went here,” said McNamara. “This camp means so much to people in this county.”

Campers play a game of Gaga inside of an enclosed space constructed for the sport on Aug. 4 at Camp Scully in Wynantskill. (Cindy Schultz photo for The Evangelist)

Families can qualify for up to two free weeks of overnight camp, helping eliminate barriers for families who otherwise might not be able to send their kids to camp. 

The camp runs from June through August, with one-week stays offered from Sunday through Friday for overnight campers, and Monday through Friday for day camp. Each week is a different camp, and each camp week is a different theme — opening week was “Tropical Paradise,” teaching tropical traditions like Hawaiian dancing and beach luaus, while the second-to-last week will be “Mardi Gras/Carnival,” filled with southern traditions, gumbo and building a float for their parade. 

Melody Minnicks, a student at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, attended the camp since she was 8 years old, and has been a counselor for two summers. 

“It’s very nostalgic,” she said. “It’s a small camp, it’s not a super big place here, so every year I come back and there are people from years prior. So there’s a community here and once you come back and once you make connections here, it’s like you can’t not come back in the summer. I love all my friends here and all the kids too. The kids come back for years and years and you just literally get to watch them grow up because they’re also local.”

Of the 37 camp counselors Camp Sully employs, 14 are international. The camp began working with agencies that connect predominantly college students abroad with summer work opportunities in the U.S. through the J-1 Visa (BridgeUSA) program. The connection allows campers to learn about different cultures and customs, and this year, the camp welcomed counselors from Spain, Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Colombia and England. 

Marcos Turro, camp counselor and college student in Valencia, Spain, heard about Camp Scully last year. Turro had experience working at summer camps in his home country before, but the length was only 10-15 days. He started searching for camps with a longer duration and landed on Camp Scully.

After working at the camp last summer, he had to come back again.

“It’s a smaller camp, so that means you connect with all the kids, you know all the kids,” he said. “I know in other camps, they’re huge. You know kids, but you don’t know their names; you just remember their faces or things that they used to do. But everyone (here) has stories about all counselors, memories from other years. I feel like it makes you more engaged to this camp.”

Campers launch their kayaks onto Snyder’s Lake on Aug. 4 at Camp Scully in Wynantskill. (Cindy Schultz photo for The Evangelist)

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In 1920, Father Joseph Scully, then director of Albany Catholic Charities, founded the “Catholic Children’s Vacation Villa” on the Hoy property on New Scotland Avenue in Albany. 

The original aim of the camp was to provide a stimulating environment and good food for children in the Diocese who were physically underweight. Eligibility for the summer camp was based on each child’s physical needs, and was determined by nurses at the Diocese’s Catholic schools. In 1925, of the 525 children attending camp, 424 were underweight, with some children weighing as little as 15-20 lbs. Over the course of their stay, 420 kids were able to increase their weight to a healthier percentile.

The camp relocated to Crooked Lake in 1927 — which offered a more rural setting and open space for campers — and remained there for seven years. In 1934, the camp moved again to Aries Lake (now called Snyder’s Lake) and has remained there ever since. In 1944, the camp was renamed “Camp Scully” in honor of its founder.  

A $20,000 bequest allowed the camp to add a large dormitory, a recreation hall, a dining room, a washroom, a beach house, and a director’s cottage to the property. New buildings and cabins have been added to the property, but a few of the original buildings are still in use today. An old chapel in the upper field, originally built in 1939, still serves as part of the camp, used during rainy days or for movie nights. 

Evalynn Perreault, 10, lies in her lower bunk bed and writes in a journal on Aug. 4 at Camp Scully in Wynantskill. (Cindy Schultz photo for The Evangelist)

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Over a century later, the main parts of the camp are about the same: kids come to run around, have fun and go to bed exhausted. And like any summer camp, there is no shortage of activities to fill the day. It’s easy to see why kids are running through the property, grabbing the arm of their friend as they sprint in a new direction; there’s so much to do, but only so much time to do it.

The camp offers swimming, hiking, kayaking, basketball and volleyball. In the lower fields sits an arts and crafts shed and a cabin library, which offers kids a chance to relax and get out of the sun. In the upper area of the camp is a challenge course, a small theater stage, an archery range and a slingshot area, where dozens of empty Goya chickpea bags can be seen scattered on the ground, the remains of a successful slingshot morning.

“Us and Goya are tight,” McNamara said, making a note to bring up more chickpea bags to the area. 

Originally from Denver, Colo., McNamara took over as camp director in 2025. 

Growing up, summer camp and going outside were second nature to her. Even after a long career in theater, that love for the outdoors never swayed. McNamara worked for 15 years on Broadway as a stage manager, and 13 years as production stage manager for Macy’s, where she was responsible for casting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Even today, McNamara helps book all the celebrities for the Tournament of Roses/Rose Parade.)

“My whole life I did summer camp and large events and celebrities,” she said. “I joke and say I’m really good at bossing large groups of people around.”

McNamara was living in New York City when she came across the opening at Camp Scully. After she came up to visit, she “fell in love with the space.”

“It’s like a parade,” McNamara said about running the camp. “It’s working all year for the 10 weeks that this is, and then you start again.”

“I feel so blessed just to be the keeper of this place,” she added. “I feel like I’ve been granted this opportunity to take care of this beautiful, little fun place for however long I’m here, and I feel so lucky. There’s so much history, there are so many people around Rensselaer County that have gone through here and have a connection to the place, and it’s well known in the circles it should be well known in, so I just feel really lucky to be a part of it.”