Alice Yoo ‘27 and Annie Wu ‘27
Nov 1, 2024
This year, Mercersburg’s Outdoor Education Program has created an opportunity for students to participate in competitive climbing events. Over the Long Fall Weekend, a couple of climbers traveled to Virginia to compete in the USA Climbing Youth Series as part of a series of qualifiers. Climbers must compete in a minimum of four events in order to qualify for regionals.
While Mercersburg’s climbers have consistently trained during PGA time like other sports, they have not always had the chance to showcase their abilities in competition. Head instructor Pete Gunkelman said, “We have some students in climbing who actually selected Mercersburg Academy because of our climbing program and they had competed prior to arriving here.” Gunkelman continued, “Usually, we have one or two that are curious about it, but we had seven who are interested in competing as climbers, and so we decided to try to arrange for some transportation.”
Students have been training diligently for competitions. Sean Flaherty ‘26 explained, “So for competitions, there are many ways you can train. The main part of it is just climbing; outdoor climbing, indoor climbing, doing pull-ups, hang board workouts–there are so many ways you can train for. But the main way is just climbing.” Assistant instructor Brooks Binau added, “Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday is mostly at the barn, where we're climbing inside and learning different techniques for outdoor climbing, or setting up anchors, or lead belay techniques. It’s more like a classroom-type of instruction and practicing on the wall. And then on Wednesdays, we do an afternoon outdoor trip, and on Saturdays, we do a whole day outdoor trip.”
The program has increased its intensity to match climbers’ enthusiasm. Annie Wu ’27 said, “I think compared to last year we definitely went through the contents faster; fall term just feels a little bit faster. We [also] kind of play less ultimate frisbee compared to last year where we spent a lot of Wednesdays [playing] on the football field. We're more into climbing now and football has their practice there, so we can't use that place anymore. But this year we went to outdoor places more and explored some new places, like Reed’s Creek. We also tried more things: many people this year have done their first lead climb, first try to climb, or first lead belaying. People are definitely trying more new stuff.”
Maybe because of the changes to the program, the students’ passion for climbing remains unwavering. Wu said, “We had one day to learn how to set routes, and then we also learned a lot of rescue stuff–like hall systems–which is really fun.” Flaherty commented, “Honestly, I just want to have fun with climbing. There's only so much you can do in the barn, and there's not a lot of climbing in Pennsylvania. Otherwise, I would be on the west coast. But I really just started to compete because I love climbing a lot and it didn't really matter where I placed because I just wanted to have fun.”
Echoing Flaherty, Alex Eissenstat ‘25 said, “I mostly just want to have fun with it. I know that the routes that they set for the competitions tend to have a lot of fine, really technical moves, and I'm excited to see how far I can get!”
For the rest of the season, the program will continue to send Blue Storm climbers to compete in various regional climbing competitions.