Along with fun camp activities like dodgeball, slip-and-slide kickball, treehouse building and filmmaking, the Rockville Catholic Summer Program at St. Patrick’s Parish in Rockville, Maryland is also centered on fostering the faith of its campers and especially its counselors and volunteers. The teens and young adults serving there begin their days by attending morning Mass together, and after a morning full of camp activities, they conclude their days with a theology talk and by praying silently during Eucharistic Adoration in the church every weekday afternoon.
“Associating faith and fun was eye-opening to me. Here I realized they can go hand-in-hand,” said Timothy Ouyang, who is 19 and has served as a counselor at the camp for three years.
On Aug. 5 during the last week at the camp for this summer, he was among counselors, parents and staff members who reflected on the program’s impact. The Rockville Catholic Summer Program, which marked its 10th anniversary this year, is a joint program of St. Patrick Parish and St. Raphael Parish.
Ouyang, a St. Raphael’s parishioner, graduated from Wootten High School in Rockville and is studying economics and finance at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina. The Catholic camp, he said, “brought intent to my faith life… it really opened up my eyes to what the Catholic faith can be.”
After an opening prayer, the camp’s morning show that day included a skit about saints whose lives were changed by believing and following Jesus and who were even willing to die for their faith. Moments later, Ouyang and a group of the male counselors lost a spirited lip-synch battle to a group of the girl counselors, and after being sprayed with shaving cream, he told the campers about the importance of losing with humility.
During a break, he could be seen running around St. Patrick’s playground, playing tag with some young campers. The counselor hopes youth attending the camp leave feeling “grateful to their parents for giving them opportunities, and grateful to God for His love.”
His camp experience, he said, has inspired him to seek fellowship with Catholic friends and to attend a Catholic college, and underscored the importance of being “a Catholic man of virtue.”
New camp survives and thrives
Before beginning the Rockville Catholic Summer Program a decade ago, the directors – Mike and Annie McHugh – visited the St. John’s Summer Program at St. John Francis Regis Parish in Hollywood in Southern Maryland. The McHughs, a married couple with seven children, have made youth ministry their life’s work. Mike McHugh serves as the director of youth ministry at St. Patrick’s, and Annie McHugh serves in that role at St. Raphael’s.
At St. John’s, they conferred with Rich Olon, that parish’s youth minister and director of religious education who leads the summer program there. He emphasized how a Catholic summer program can deepen the faith of the young adults and teens serving the campers there.
“It’s amazing to see the way it’s impacted their lives,” Annie McHugh said. “…They’re serving every day, and they’re not just serving, they’re praying, and they’re not just praying, they’re in community with one another. It’s total human formation for these young people.”
That formation spills out into the young campers, she added. “They think these guys (the counselors and volunteers) are so cool, and they see them pray, and they have fun.”
Mike McHugh agreed, saying, “We want the campers to look up to their counselors, (these) teenagers, and to see that it’s cool to be holy… They get to see big kids still enjoying what it means to be a kid.”
He also noted how the camp provides teens with good jobs for the summer, and “this camp empowers young people to step into leadership roles,” as they plan activities.
In the Rockville camp’s first summer in 2016, the McHughs then had three young children, ages 3, 2 and 1. “I remember praying at the first camp Mass that summer, ‘Lord, just let us survive,’” Annie McHugh said, adding that she came to believe, “If it’s God’s will, it’s not just going to survive, it’s going to thrive.”
Now 10 years later, “It has surpassed anything we could imagine,” Mike McHugh said, comparing the program to the parable of the mustard seed.
That first summer, the Rockville Catholic Summer Program had 16 counselors. This summer, the camp had 55 counselors as paid staff, from rising high school juniors through graduating college seniors, along with 120 teen volunteers, including rising eighth graders and high school students. An average of about 225 campers attended the program each week this summer, some for all seven weeks that it was in session. Mike McHugh said that in its decade of operation, the camp has served about 14,000 campers and has been assisted by more than 950 volunteers.
The counselors wear light blue polo shirts with an orange logo showing the camp’s mascot Oscar the Octopus holding a soccer ball, paint brush, laboratory beaker and cross in its arms, symbolizing the camp’s sports, arts and crafts, science and religious activities. Volunteers wear similar T-shirts.
Noting a special aspect of their youth ministry work, Mike McHugh said, “We get to see kids grow up… We really get to walk with these kids, through high school and college, and into their vocations.”
The couple has seen many of the youth they served at their parishes and at the camp go on to get married, and some former camp counselors have entered the seminary or religious life. Father Benedict Radich, now a parochial vicar at St. Mary’s Parish in Landover Hills, Maryland, served as a counselor during the Rockville camp’s first two summers.
Simon Capion, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Washington, was among the counselors working with campers at a LEGO masters activity at the Rockville Catholic Summer Program in early August. He and 14-year-old volunteer Daniel Rottkamp of St. Bernadette’s Parish in Silver Spring built a LEGO church scene that included an altar, an organ, figures in pews and other figures receiving Communion.
“This camp is so important for me. It gives me an opportunity to live out my faith and help other people live out their faith in a genuine way in the summer,” said Capion, who turns 20 in September. He served as a counselor there for the past three years after volunteering there for two years. “I was able to grow in my faith here, and it allowed me to discern my call to the priesthood.”
The seminarian said it’s a special experience to talk about the faith with young people and also have fun with them in activities like water balloon fights and riding on a zip line.
He hopes that youth leave the camp each summer “with a greater appreciation of God as part of their everyday lives.”
Sister Mary Sophia Morrison is one of the former counselors at the Rockville camp who entered religious life. The member of St. John Neumann Parish in Gaithersburg made her first profession of vows with the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia Congregation in Nashville in 2025. Three of her brothers serve as priests for the Archdiocese of Washington. Father James Morrison is the pastor at Our Lady Queen of the Americas Parish in Washington, D.C.; Father Nicholas Morrison is the pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in Washington; and Father Danny Morrison is a parochial vicar at the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Maryland.
Her brother, Thomas Morrison, who is 21, was a counselor at the camp this summer, his fifth serving there. The rising senior at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio is majoring in clinical psychology there.
Praising the environment at the Rockville Catholic Summer Program, Thomas Morrison said, “It’s a great place for relationships with kids, counselors, and most importantly, with Jesus. It fosters those relationships.”
Morrison, who plans to get a master’s degree in counseling and specialize in family and marriage therapy, said he has seen the importance of the campers being able to talk with the counselors, and for the counselors to listen to them.
Each camper has a story, “and each kid deserves the same amount of attention and love,” he said.
A community of faith and friends
Bridget Welch, another counselor who is a parishioner of St. John Neumann Parish, designed and did most of the painting of the backdrop for the stage at St. Patrick’s parish center, which illustrates the camp’s theme for this summer, “Blasting to holiness.” The backdrop shows a rocket ship blasting from the Earth, with a quote from Psalm 19, “The heavens declare the glory of God.”
Now in her second year as a counselor there after being a camp volunteer for three years, Welch said she loves working with the kids, and she appreciates how counselors attend daily Mass, listen to theology talks and pray at Adoration.
“I’m always renewed spiritually in the summer, and ready to go into the school year,” said Welch, who is 17 and homeschooled.
Praising the community of counselors and volunteers there, she said, “It makes it easier to be Catholic in formative years… It means a lot to have great Catholic friends, and build each other up.”
Welch hopes that campers learn “that Catholicism can be fun, (that) it’s a way of life and enjoyable, and it’s not just a set of rules we have to be obedient to.”
Those points were echoed by fellow camp counselor Robert Sicora, an 18-year-old St. Raphael’s parishioner who graduated from The Heights School in Potomac this spring and will be attending the University of Navarra in Spain this fall.
The Rockville program offers teens “a great friends group,” said Sicora, who was in his second year as a counselor there after serving for one year as a volunteer and after being a camper there for five summers. A key thing he learned there, he said, is how “to pray well,” and being consistent with prayer. He hopes to continue going to daily Mass in college.
Sicora – who was helping campers with the LEGO activity – said a key goal of the camp is “to share the joy of the Christian life with the kids. Here it’s our mission to communicate that being a Catholic, being a Christian can be a lot of fun.”
In a nearby classroom at the St. Patrick’s parish center, younger children in a “Holy Heroes” activity were learning the story of St. George and the dragon, and afterward they stepped into the hallway and were able to wield soft foam pool noodles against a volunteer wearing a dragon costume.
Camp counselor Tessa Rottkamp, a 17-year-old homeschooled student from St. Bernadette Parish, also emphasized the program’s community. “It’s so rare to have a place where you are surrounded by people of faith, and just working alongside all my friends.”
Now in her fifth year there after earlier serving as a volunteer and participating as a camper, Tessa Rottkamp – who was helping at a jewelry making activity – said it’s fun to hang out with the children.
“Whenever they have questions about the faith, they want to learn more, and being able to teach them, it’s just a joy,” said the teen, adding she tries to be “a witness of someone who loves Christ and can be so joyful.”
Fellow counselor John Cahalane, an 18-year-old graduate of Quince Orchard High School who will be studying bioengineering at the University of Maryland, first attended the program as a camper 10 years ago, and he served as a counselor for three years, a volunteer for three years, and as a camper for three years.
“I probably wouldn’t be practicing my faith or care about it if it wasn’t for this camp,” he said.
He was leading campers in a filmmaking activity. The children had split into groups, with one group making a short musical film and another making a thriller. At the end of the week, they viewed their films on a big screen while eating popcorn and snacks.
When he started volunteering there, the daily rhythm of Mass, theology talks and Adoration “opened a window for me and helped me realize the importance of the faith,” he said, adding “I also made very good friends and developed deep relationships that made that made me feel part of this community and made me come back.”
The program “helped me navigate the secular world and remain faithful,” said Cahalane.
That afternoon, Father Gerard Gayou, a parochial vicar at St. John Neumann Parish, gave a theology talk to the counselors, emphasizing that Christ’s resurrection and the promise of eternal life offers hope when people face death, and also offers people grace when they confront challenges and transitions in life.
Parents’ perspective
All seven of Mary and Dave Singleton’s children have attended the Rockville Catholic Summer Program, including their youngest, a 4-year-old who started going there this summer.
“It’s like a rite of passage for my family to come here,” said Mary Singleton after dropping off her children there.
The St. Raphael’s parishioner, who homeschools her children, said they look forward to the camp every summer. “It’s a beautiful way for the older kids to be immersed in their faith while also serving the community. The younger kids have a great time and learn about their faith as well.”
Reflecting on the camp’s impact on her children, she said, “I hope they look back on it as something that helped them grow closer to Jesus and make space for prayer, and they have happy memories.”
At the morning drop-off, Lori McGovern, a St. Patrick’s parishioner, also praised the camp. She and her husband Timothy have 10 children, and eight of them have participated in the program as counselors, volunteers or campers.
“Overall, it’s been a huge blessing and gift for my kids as far as forming friendships with other children and families and deepening their relationship with Christ,” she said.
McGovern especially appreciates how her children have formed “really solid friendships” there.
“You can’t put a value on it. It gives them this community where they feel supported in their faith and values. They don’t feel alone,” she said, adding, “It gives them the courage to go outside our faith community and the bubble of their family life, to talk about what’s important to them and their love of God, and just have that confidence to share their faith with others.”
Annie and Mike McHugh, as the camp’s directors and as parents themselves, appreciate how the teen and young adult counselors and volunteers are role models for the young campers.
“My children, they look up to these wonderful young people, and they see the best of what a teenager can be, not what the world says about being a teenager,” Annie McHugh said.
Her husband echoed that point, saying, “You want your kids to grow up and love Jesus. The best thing is to surround them with young adults who can show them what it means to be a Catholic man or woman.”
Anniversary painting by teen
Just before the Rockville Catholic Summer Program began this summer, counselor Genevieve Creitz – a 17-year-old member of St. Mary’s Parish in Rockville who is homeschooled – was asked to do a painting for the camp’s 10th anniversary. She is interested in studying sacred art and iconography in college.
“We need more beauty in the world, and I’m determined to bring that,” she said. Noting the impact of the camp on her life, she said, “I feel I get closer to Christ every summer.”
Her acrylic painting titled “Let the Little Children Come to Me,” reflecting the Gospel passage from Matthew 19:14, Mark 10:14 and Luke 18:16, shows the Rockville camp’s counselors and volunteers in their blue shirts walking with their campers toward Jesus.
Creitz said her painting reflects the goal of the camp, “to bring everyone closer to Christ, the counselors and the campers with us, getting closer to heaven, and for people to realize that’s what this camp is all about.”
Editor’s note: Report highlights Catholic summer camps
After he began serving as the archbishop of Washington in 2025, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy held consultations with parish lay leaders throughout the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. Their insights and input from local priests led to six goals for pastoral action in the archdiocese over the next five years, including the goal to “reverse the avalanche of young people leaving the Church.”
To address that goal, the Cardinal’s Youth and Young Adult Ministry Task Force has issued a report that will be summarized in the Catholic Standard’s newspaper and website in September.
In a section on local youth and young adult programs that work, the report highlighted Catholic summer camps, noting that “the last 10 years have seen a huge increase in Catholic summer camps throughout the archdiocese.” The report said the two most prolific local Catholic summer camps are at two Maryland parishes – St. John’s Summer Program based out of St. John Francis Regis Parish in Hollywood and the Rockville Catholic Summer Program based out of St. Patrick’s in Rockville.
“While ostensibly for young kids, the camps in reality attract and evangelize the high school age workers. A camp worker not only gets a good paying job for the summer and learns to take care of small kids, but also is required to attend daily Mass, daily Holy Hour, and weekly theological talks while at the same time being members of a joyful, authentic community,” the report said.
