Pioneer Athletic Super Summer Camp

Our little boy has been going to PASS camp at DU since 2013 and we love it!!! I’ve recommended the camp to over a dozen families and they’ve had great experiences as well. Our little guy can’t wait for PASS camp, and he goes to DU for school days off as well. He always springs out of bed early on those days and strives to earn the «Best Sportsmanship» awards. He comes home with lots of new friends and exhausted from a full and fun day. We also receive offers for babysitters, which is another great bonus of meeting these great college kids in the area! The coaches and staff feel like family at this point. When the DU lacrosse team won the national championship, Coach Hannah saw our little boy at the rally and offered to introduce him to all the star players and sent me the pictures. This camp is reasonably priced, with great hours of operation for working parents. Nick does a great job with administrative items and goes above and beyond to make things easy for the parents. We LOVE the DU PASS camp!!!

Kids version of sports hunger games!
Upon arrival you walk into a giant gym with hundreds of kids and maybe twenty balls. Hence the nick name of ”HUNGER games”. It was like kids going into survival mode and losing all humanity to hang on to the few balls that were available. I asked 3 kids to share with my son (5years old). All said no in a very day care attitude. There was no organization and no counselor to help and more importantly no more balls to play with. Pass camp might as well place one basketball in the middle of a court, blew a whistle and send all 80 five years old after the one ball.
It is a very long day, once again catering to the day care client. I gave it two stars as the game plan of activities looks good on paper but the execution is horrible.
It truly is just college kids running a day care with little to no experience of teaching sports.
DU needs to split camp into two. Day care and then a true sports camp where they have their college athletes or coaches run the class.
Really is a shame as it is a great campus with great resources. The advertising and marketing is very misleading.

My 6-​year old son attended all 12-​weeks of PASS Camp last summer, and he had an INCREDIBLE time! The kids spend all day playing sports! I knew I’d made the right choice when my extremely rambunctious kid was passed out asleep in the car at 5:30 when I picked him up… exhausted.
It’s a really good system, they place the kids on teams within their own age group, who play a variety of sports together all morning. In the afternoon, then the kids break out into their individual «majors», Lacrosse, Soccer, Martial Arts, etc. and then they have open play time in the gym the rest of the afternoon. The camp is coached by DU students who have enough energy to keep up with the kids.
We had a few problems over the summer, naturally. But it was all handled very nicely. In particular, the camp director, Nick Pangia was super involved with every incident and was great about returning my emails and phone calls.
The one regret I had was enrolling my son in the camp all 12 weeks. Toward the end, the little guy was just too exhausted. This summer we’ll do a slightly lighter schedule.

DU PASS camp is the most poorly run camp I’ve ever experienced. And that is saying a lot given how many camps my boys have done. As another reviewer mentioned, they look great on paper. Wonderful facilities and programs. In practice it is all a sham. They have 1 counselor per 15 kids which is already pushing it. However, in practice, two counselors with 30 kids operate together, and they never have more than one of those counselors working at a time. So you end up with one counselor and 30 kids. My children had 2 days of having tennis as a specialty and did absolutely nothing the 1^st lesson. I watched the 2^nd one. The kids sat in the hot sun while one counselor played by himself while the other counselor spent 25 minutes putting lotion on 30 kids. Then he sat there while the other counselor handed out balls to each child. At the very end of the second lesson, one counselor lined up 30 kids on one court and the children were all allowed to bounce the ball for 2 min. with their racquet. No instruction, of course. Two days of lessons. That was it. The same occurred for wall climbing, kickball, etc. The kids did nothing but sit around. Two sessions at the wall climbing and neither of my kids ever got to climb. They just sat there for 2 hours not talking or moving. Another parent had their child tell them that a kid was acting up in their class, so the one counselor put all 30 in time out for the entire afternoon! We did the unthinkable and pulled our kids out mid-​week. Misery on us, but who would ever make their kids stay in that? Low level day care is better.

Summer time… no school… uh oh… what to do with the little people in the house during the day? Well, I found myself in that situation last summer. Having recently moved to the area, most of the camps were full. Then I heard about the DU PASS camp. And it had room! But wait. On paper, this could and SHOULD be a great summer camp. But, it’s not.
On the DU campus, the facilities that the kids have access to are great. The activities, on paper, are great. The hours that kids can be there are really long if you need them (7AM to 6PM I think). The price is right in line with other camps in the area.
I think it’s a combination of poor management and maybe a lack of proper supervision of the kids? The start and the end of the day are very chaotic, with kids of ALL ages together in the massive gym. This is where I think a lot of the problems stem from…5 year olds and 11 year olds playing sports together in a very lightly supervised situation is a recipe for trouble. And it appears that there is a lot of it. This is from personal experience and from speaking to several other parental units.
And some other minor details: check in and check out isn’t too painful. Counselors range from pretty good to generally uninterested. I can’t help but think that most of the college age guys that are working there are just doing it for beer money. I may be generalizing it, but it seemed that most of the male counselors just weren’t into their jobs or, more importantly, the kids. The do have a lunch option available, but it is $ 10 a day! That’s pretty damn obnoxious of you ask me.
If it wasn’t for the nice facilities, this camp would be getting one star. There are better options for your kids in the area. Good luck!