2008 Youth Regionals
Over the past couple of days I have had the opportunity to help out at the 2008 Youth Regionals climbing competition over at The Edge Climbing Center. Most people, myself included, do not realize the amount of work that goes into putting on an event like this. For those of you that aren’t up on the whole competitive climbing scene, here’s a brief overview on how the comp goes down.
Since this is a regional competition, it was spread out over two days. Normal competitions are usually a day or even just half a day, Nationals is usually 3 days, and continentals/worlds/other are more than 3 days long.
On Friday, the first day of the competition it was registration and Qualifier 1. Most people will assume that all that matters is being the fastest person up the wall. This is not the case, with the exception of speed climbing competitions. Each category will have a climb designated for them, that is set with their climbing abilities in mind. (Competition climbing in Canada is still a growing sport, so at this point everybody knows everybody.) Each hand hold on this climb is given a numbered point value, and a designation after the number.
If I just brushed hold number 23 with my finger tips before falling, I would be scored as 23-. If I was on hold number 23 solidly, I’d be scored 23. If I was on 23 trying to move to 24, I would get a 23+. These numbers are all entered into a spreadsheet and magically come out with a ranking for each climber.
After the first climb has been completed, we used Friday night to strip all of the routes off the walls and put up all new ones. (I was feeling quite ill on Friday night and couldn’t stick around to help out, Sorry Andrew!) Bright and early on Saturday morning is qualifying round 2. It works exactly like Q1 did, and again, at the end of the round, we emptied out all of the climbers and spectators once again to change the routes.
Next would be Semi-Finals, which work a little bit differently than finals. Before anyone is let into the gym, the competitors were let into an isolation room so that they could not see the climbs, and could not see any other people climb them. They are brought out for a 5 min preview where they can look at but can not touch the climb. After the preview, they are put back into isolation to wait for their turn to climb, and do any warm-ups, snacking, chatting with competitors, planning their climb, etc. Competition climbing is a very friendly sport in which all the climbers are willing to help each other out, offer tips and advice, and hang out!
Once the semi-finals have run, only a top percentage (based on original numbers in category) remain. And, as you may have guessed, we now do exactly the same thing for Finals.
Even if it does not sound like a lot of work, the number of hours that go into a competition of this scale, or any competition for that matter, are un-countable! I’d like to send a shout out to the crew at the Edge, and all of their volunteers to say that they did an awesome job on yet another awesome competition! See you all at Nationals!
P.S. I will link to a photo gallery shortly, once I get it online.