Eckerd Academy reverts to all male

The girls were having too much fun — or at least too tempted to have fun.

The same went for the boys.

It was time to separate the two groups at the Eckerd Youth Academy.

The facility aimed to provide the care and attention to troubled youths through wilderness therapy returned to its single-gender roots. The last female resident was transferred last week to a separate all-girls camp in Floral City.

Senior Director Patrick Girdner said the male camp, located at 397 Culbreath Road near Spring Lake, now houses 18 boys ages 12 to 18. Later down the road, he hopes to boost the number of residents to about 60.

"The kids come from various backgrounds that are troubled," he said. "We get them back up educationally and we get them back up with their families … We show them more appropriate coping skills."

Eckerd is going through the renovations in anticipation of the increase.

It was all-male until about 10 years ago, said Girdner.

The issues between the boys and girls hadn't escalated to anything more than teenage flirtations and clandestine interactions, but they seemed to be happening more frequently.

The Hernando County Sheriff's Office also was being called to the facility more often than normal. Girdner attributed that to the tension between the boys and girls.

"I was looking at the types of problems that were happening and I figured we needed to make a change," he said. "I wanted the boys and girls to focus on themselves … When members of the opposite sex are around, that's all you're focused on."

Five weeks ago, there were 20 boys and 10 girls at the camp. The gender separation began Dec. 12, 2011. Once the plans were set in motion, the problems began to subside, said Girdner.

The female facility in Floral City is called Camp E-Nini-Hassee. It is for girls ages 10-18, according to its website.

The boys and girls would see each other in the dining hall. They would see each other during team-building exercises. Sometimes one group of boys would see one group of girls and vice versa as they were walking along the trails. They were supervised, but sometimes the bolder campers would break boundaries.

"When they passed by within 10 feet of each other, sometimes that was all it took to get the hormones working," said Girdner.

Eckerd is located on 800 acres and was founded in 1968. It has helped thousands of boys with diagnoses ranging from attention-deficit disorder to social anxiety, according to its website.

The average stay for a boy at Eckerd is about eight months.

Girdner said he made arrangements to transfer the girls as soon as he saw the warning signs, not until after "things spiraled out of control."

The more often the boys and girls were in proximity to one another, the more often they would show off or test authority. The boys have since become calmer, just as Girdner expected.

"We want to keep the cohesive structure here," he said.