For most families, summer vacation means a camping trip to the mountains or perhaps a week in Florida at the beach or a few days at Disney World.
For the Popp family of Hixson, their family vacation this summer will include world-class whitewater competition in Europe.
Starr and Tom Popp will be taking their four children to Spain and three of their children will be competing against the world's best at the 2010 Wildwater World Championships in Sort, Spain.
Wildwater is a discipline of canoeing and kayaking in which competitors race down whitewater rivers as quickly as possible, without going through gates as in Olympic-style slalom kayaking.
Haley, Bryson and Colton Popp all made the U.S. team in qualifying on the Nantahala River in North Carolina earlier this year, and they will represent the United States against racers from all over the world on the La Noguera Pallaresa river in northwestern Spain.
Haley Popp, 17, is the reigning U.S. junior champion in women's K1, or single kayak, and she competed in the junior wildwater world championships in Switzerland in 2009, where she finished 28th. Haley says she is excited for a chance to compete at the senior level of the sport.
"America is very special in that they let juniors go to its senior events," she said. "Most of the people we will be competing against are 19 years or older."
Colton Popp, who is a student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and younger brother Bryson, a student at Baylor, will compete together in C2, or two-man canoe.
Colton said he and his brother deal with normal sibling frustrations as they work together on the water.
"I feel like Bryson bites his tongue a lot," he said. "He gets the brunt of my frustration for sure."
And there are more Popp paddlers yet to come. Youngest sister Selena isn't old enough to compete in international races yet, but her siblings said she plans join them racing as soon as she can.
The Popp children, who race with the name "Team Popp" on their boats, come by their whitewater skills naturally. Tom Popp was a member of the U.S. team in the late 1970s and the 1980s, racing in one- or two-man canoe catagories.
While the younger Popps have only been racing for the past couple of years, they area all very familiar with whitewater and have spent many hours on the water.
"We've kind of been bred into paddling," Colton said. "I've been going down the Ocoee since I was 2 years old."
With all of the more experienced competition they expect to face in Spain, Haley said she is keeping her expectations low going into her first senior world championships.
"I don't expect to get better than the bottom five," she said. "But next year when I go to my last junior world championships, I should do better."
At 14 years old, Bryson is thrilled to be getting a chance to test himself against the best in the world and plans to use this experience to prepare himself for future success.
"It's very exciting because I'm pretty sure I'm the youngest one to have done this in the world," he said. "I think it will be a great experience, especially for next year when I try for the (U.S.) junior team."