Let's be honest about summer camp - it's no picnic.
Well, maybe there's a picnic at some camps. The ones that are still in the woods, by a lake, where the focus is on swimming and communing with nature.
But overall, summer camp has evolved into something decidedly less recreational. It's more like (ugh!) a classroom experience, where college and career preparation are the emphasis, not learning the breaststroke.
Some camps have had to resort to recruiting abroad to keep enrollment up, due, in part, to still-rough economic times. Costs for insurance and other operating essentials keep climbing. So do the demands of parents, who want the most for their dollars - and their ambitious offspring.
Or is it the parents who are ambitious? No matter.
Though it all sounds as appealing as a tarantula to an arachnophobe, Justin Lavner sees operating a summer camp as a small-business opportunity he hopes to build into a big one.
"I've always been a high achiever," said the 29-year-old owner of Lavner Camps & Programs of Bala Cynwyd, who barely looks older than a high school student but has the business confidence of a Trump.
Raised in Lower Gwynedd by a lawyer father and an educator mother, Lavner claims he was "born an entrepreneur."
He also was born with a talent involving a racket and a hollow, fabric-covered rubber ball.
"I dreamed of being a professional tennis player who actually made money on the tour," Lavner said in an interview at the Cynwyd Club, a private tennis and squash club now doubling as his company's home base.
He was off to a good start, reaching No. 2 status in singles, No. 1 in doubles, while playing for the University of Pennsylvania's varsity squad from 2002 to 2005. But a foot injury scuttled his plans to go pro.
So Lavner enrolled in law school at Villanova University, only to conclude during an internship at a local firm that "law was a bit dry. It wasn't exciting for me."
But poker was.
"I started doing extremely well online and in Atlantic City," he said, refusing to disclose his winnings.
Guilt over parental disappointment and a resolution of his foot problem led him to teaching tennis instead. He took a year off from law school to devote himself to his Lavner Tennis Academy, developing a client base of 100 within a year, he said.
