CWA Blog Archive-How To Host A Recreational Paraclimbing Competition

How To Host A Recreational Paraclimbing Competition

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This article documents one gym's journey toward hosting a recreational paraclimbing competition, framed around a real athlete's story and the practical challenges involved. It opens with a milestone: for the first time, the 2023 USA Climbing National Team Trials and Paraclimbing National Championship would be held together, with Paraclimbing Nationals serving as the sole selection event for the series. The human anchor is Ben Hickson, a national paracompetitor from Team Catalyst, whose experience reveals a gap in the pipeline. Nationals was the first competition Ben ever attended. Despite regimented training he felt unprepared, and though he qualified and was invited to compete at Worlds in Salt Lake City, he declined due to a lack of experience and intimidation. That declined opportunity, an athlete good enough for Worlds but too under-prepared by competition experience to go, sparked the author's question: could their home gym, The Crag Nashville, host a recreational paraclimbing competition to better prepare athletes for the national stage. Pursuing the idea surfaced real challenges. The routesetting team raised concerns because they were inexperienced in setting for a paracompetition, which involves multiple categories each with its own considerations: seated, reduced power, upper body amputee, lower body amputee, visually impaired, and youth. To learn, the author connected with Eric Gray, president of Catalyst Adaptive Sports, who pointed to an upcoming recreational paraclimbing competition at Highpoint Riverside in Chattanooga, and the author went to investigate. The throughline is that recreational paraclimbing competitions fill a crucial gap by giving adaptive athletes the lower-stakes competition experience they need before facing national and international stages, preventing the kind of intimidation that made Ben decline Worlds. The article shows both the motivation, athletes need on-ramps, and the practical reality that hosting requires learning to set for diverse paraclimbing categories, offering a model for gyms willing to do that work.

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This article follows one gym's path to hosting a recreational paraclimbing competition, sparked by a national athlete who qualified for Worlds but declined out of intimidation and inexperience. It shows the need for lower-stakes competition on-ramps for adaptive athletes and the practical work of learning to set for paraclimbing's multiple categories.