The athletic fields at Rider University were awash in a sea of maroon-and-white T-shirts — the shared colors of the Abrams Day Camp/Teen Travel Camp of the Jewish Community Center of the Delaware Valley and the Lawrenceville campus where they have found a new home.

"Machane Abrams" — "Camp Abrams," declared the T-shirts. "Making Memories Last a Lifetime."

"It's nice to see the T-shirts and to know that the Abrams name is still going on," said Nati Kushner of Monroe Township as she watched dozens of campers gather together on the fields. "It's an absolutely terrific feeling to see all the Jewish kids come together."

Kushner, a representative of the Lawrenceville-based Abrams Foundation, a benefactor of the JCC camps, was among a group that recently gathered at Rider to greet university president Mordechai "Mort" Rozanski and to celebrate the successful new shidduch, or match, between campus and camp.

Also on hand were Drew Staffenberg, interim executive director of the JCC and executive director of the Jewish Community Campus Development Council, and Mort Cohen, a member of both the JCC board and the advisory board of the university's business school.

Cohen explained that when the JCC closed its aging facility in Ewing last year and lost the use of its campgrounds there, he reached out to find another venue for the JCC camps.

"My first choice, of course, was here," he said. "I e-mailed Mort, and he got back to me that day and the rest is history."

The transition to the Rider campus has been going "flawlessly," Cohen added.

"Now, we have over 300 kids here, and it's beautiful," he said. "I kvell over this. It's Jewish kids being with Jewish kids. It's just beautiful."

Rozanski, a native of Poland who is the son of Holocaust survivors, also affirmed the success of the relationship.

"It's the first time we've hosted a JCC camp, and it's going wonderfully," he said. "It's a terrific camp, and they're enjoying all the facilities here."

Rozanski said the JCC camps would be housed at Rider for two or three summers. The timing depends upon the community's progress in completing the new $28.5 million Jewish Community Campus of Princeton Mercer Bucks now being planned on an 80-acre property bordering Clarksville-Grovers Mills Road in the Princeton Junction section of West Windsor Township. The target date for the opening of the camp and the community campus is spring of 2009.

As the JCC campers settle in at Rider this summer, they are part of a multicultural campus community that includes some 1,000 students from Italy, Spain, Turkey, and China, as well as youngsters attending soccer and computer camps at the university, according to Rozanski.

"It's a terrific opportunity for people to meet and interact," he said. "The notion is we are a year-round community involved in education, and education doesn't occur only in the classroom."

Assistant camp director Ron Schwartz said the Rider location makes it convenient for campers from all over Mercer and Lower Bucks counties to come together to interact and to develop their Jewish identities.

"It's a very positive experience," Schwartz said. "It allows us to broaden what we can offer the campers on a daily basis."

Staffenberg noted that 95 percent of this summer's campers are Jewish, and 44 percent are from families who are new to the JCC.

"I am thrilled," he said. "I come out here every day, and every day it's a 'Wow!'

"Seven months ago, we weren't going to have camp, and now we're looking at 300 kids," Staffenberg said. "It's new kids and new families. It's what we are all about — Jewish continuity and the Jewish future."