Buncombe County sheriff’s camp builds trust, leadership for middle schoolers

Middle schoolers in Buncombe County are spending part of summer in a camp that mixes games with a serious goal: building leadership, teamwork and trust with law enforcement. The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office calls the program On Track Leadership Camp, and its pitch is simple but consequential for families watching how young people learn to work with adults in uniform.

What students are doing at On Track

The camp is built around activities that feel familiar to kids, including dodgeball, while steering those moments toward cooperation and confidence. That matters because middle school is often the first stage when students start forming lasting opinions about authority, fairness and who they can turn to when school gets harder.

By placing deputies and students in the same setting before high school begins, the sheriff’s office is trying to make law enforcement look less distant and more personal. The experience is not framed as a lecture on public safety, but as a chance for students to practice leadership in a setting where teamwork is visible and immediate.

The timing also matters. Buncombe County Schools said its second session of the 2026 On Track Leadership Camp kicked off today, showing that this is not a one-off summer experiment. It is a recurring program that has become part of the county’s broader youth calendar.

Why Buncombe County Schools is part of the picture

School involvement gives the camp more weight than a simple agency outreach event. Buncombe County Schools has promoted the program in its own materials, including an article titled BCS Students get SRO Support with summer camp, signaling that the school system sees school resource officer support as part of the summer experience.

That connection changes how the camp should be understood. It is not just the sheriff’s office reaching out to children on its own terms; it is happening inside the larger ecosystem of Buncombe County Schools, where students spend most of the year learning how to navigate classrooms, buses, hallways and rules.

For parents and educators, that is the core question: does a camp like this deepen a student’s sense of safety and trust, or does it mainly polish the image of the agency running it? The answer likely depends on whether the experience feels hands-on and genuine enough to stick with students after summer ends.

How the camp fits the sheriff’s broader outreach

The camp also makes more sense when viewed alongside the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office’s community involvement structure. The office maintains pages for Training and Recruitment, which shows that its public-facing work is not limited to enforcement alone.

Its Training Division is responsible for making sure deputies receive the training required by the North Carolina Sheriff’s Training and Standards Division. That is a reminder that the office is constantly managing standards behind the scenes even as it builds public-facing programs like On Track in front of young residents.

Recruitment is part of that same logic. The sheriff’s office says recruiting qualified applicants to meet agency needs is an important function, and that makes a camp like this look like more than youth programming. It is also a long-view investment in how the agency is seen by the next generation of Buncombe County residents.

That long view is where the trust question becomes central. If middle schoolers leave the camp seeing deputies as coaches, mentors and teammates, the program may help bridge the gap between law enforcement and the communities it serves. If the contact feels staged or purely promotional, families are unlikely to treat it as meaningful relationship-building.

WLOS ABC 13 also highlighted the camp under the headline Buncombe County Sheriff's Office summer camp teaches middle schoolers leadership, trust, underscoring that the program has become visible beyond the sheriff’s own channels. The message of the camp is consistent across those touchpoints: the sheriff’s office wants students to associate law enforcement with guidance, cooperation and trust rather than only discipline or crisis response.

What it means for Buncombe families

For Buncombe County families, the camp sits at the intersection of youth mentorship and public safety. Middle school students are at an age when small experiences can shape how they respond to authority later, especially as they move toward high school and more independence.

That makes the camp more than a summer activity. It is an early attempt to shape how young people understand leadership, teamwork and the role of law enforcement in everyday life. In a county where schools, parents and public safety leaders are all trying to support kids more effectively, that kind of relationship-building may prove as important as any single activity inside the camp itself.