Category:Camp Olympic, Allentown, Pennsylvania

Camp Olympic was a private sports camp, located in Lower Macungie Township, just to the southwest of Allentown.

It was created by Lee Coker in 1961, on 40 acres of the land which was formerly the Hess-Lehigh Farms. It was part of the youth sports and physical fitness initiative, championed by President Kennedy in the early 1960s. Coker was a athlete at Allentown High School and was the head coach of the 1946 Muhlenburg College basketball team which played in the NIT. Coker witnessed the success of a sports camp in New York State and brought the idea to Allentown. He negotiated a 25-year lease for the land in 1960, and the camp opened the next summer. Camp Olympic charged a nominal fee for boys and girls, initially from ages 6 to 16 for physical education and sports. Although the camp was focused primarily on basketball, it also offered canoeing, swimming, baseball, arts and crafts which would operate in the summers for two-week periods.

Coker had many friends in the high school and local college sporting fraternity, and would recruit local athletes as summer counselors, as well as high school and college coaches in the area as instructors. He also would contract for former professional athletes to work at the camp as special instructors in their specialties, such as basketball, baseball, football and competitive wrestling. In 1964, the camp added a wrestling program. A toddler program, for boys and girls from 3 to 6 was also added to introduce them to the world of physical fitness.

Terry German took over ownership in 1983 upon Lee Coker's retirement. German was a camp counselor at Camp Olympic from 1963-1976, and became director in 1976. He was also a former head basketball coach at Parkland and Dieruff High Schools. In June 1984, Camp Olympic was severely damaged by a flood, rendering many of its facilities unusable. The flooding was caused by the suburban development in the area, which caused changes in drainage, also the land on which the camp was built was in a flood plain, the development exacerbating the amount of flooding in the camp. In the mid-1980s German began to open the camp to non-sports activities, such as art shows and other community events such as reunions and an annual Oktoberfest as well as a special Olympics.

In 2005, the facility was again sold to Bob Zecky after German's retirement. Zecky was a physical education teacher at Trexler Middle School, and had played basketball for German at Dieruff in the early 1980s. Zecky operated Camp Olympic until the end of the 2007 season, then sold the facility in December 2007 to Lower Macungie Township.

Today, much of the land that Lee Coker leased is now part of the suburban sprawl of Allentown, however the core area of the camp remains, as it lies in a food plain of the Little Lehigh creek and will never be developed. The former Camp Olympic is now a public park, known as Camp Olympic Park. Although the swimming pool today is now a parking lot, most of the camp's facilities remain and are open to the public. Some of Hess's farm, including a farmhouse and large barn, remain today. Lee Coker passed in 2010.