CWA Blog Archive-Crafting Comps Step By Step Guide For Climbing Gyms

Crafting Comps Step By Step Guide For Climbing Gyms

Pdf Summary

Head routesetter Jesse Safford offers a step-by-step guide to planning a citizen's competition, aimed at gyms of any size dreaming bigger with their events. As the industry has grown, the competition landscape has transformed, and while some newer gyms are built to host large events, smaller gyms find ways to create finals space or bring in guest setters to elevate their comps. The guide organizes planning around a clear sequence of checkpoints: deciding who you want to participate, inventorying your resources, picking your scoring system, communicating expectations to your setting team, readying the gym for participants, and hosting the event itself. The foundational step is defining your audience. Deciding as a staff who the event is for gives the whole competition direction. A comp for a gym with a large youth team carries a different tone than one for mostly casual climbers, and if you're chasing publicity and out-of-town competitors, the setting and advertising become critical in a way they wouldn't for a low-key member event. That single decision, who is this for, cascades into every other choice. The rest of the framework flows from matching resources and format to that audience: taking honest stock of what you have, choosing a scoring system that fits the event's scale and goals, and getting your setting team aligned on expectations well before comp day. Preparing the gym for participants and executing a smooth event round out the checklist. Written for program managers, coaches, and senior managers with competition duties, the guide's value is turning a daunting undertaking into an ordered series of answerable questions. Safford's throughline is that a great competition starts not with setting but with clarity about who it's meant to serve.

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Head setter Jesse Safford's step-by-step guide to hosting a citizen's competition. The framework runs through defined checkpoints, but the foundational one is deciding who the event is for, since that single choice shapes tone, setting, scoring, and marketing. Great comps start with audience clarity, not with the setting.