By Tara Lanahan
There are many football players at South. There are also many baseball, basketball and lacrosse players.
There are fewer competitive rock climbers, though they do represent a growing demographic.
“Climbing is a very personal sport,” senior Jake Scherlis said. “It is more about pushing yourself further and achieving your own goals rather than competing against others.”
Scherlis has only been climbing for a couple of months.
This increase in rock climbing is not only taking place in Newton; as of February 2013, climbing is being considered as a sport in the Olympic Games that will take place in 2020.
In 2010, a study by The Outdoor Foundation found after surveying over 40,000 Americans older than six years old that climbing attracted the fifth highest number of new participants out of all recreational activities.
The relatively new sport, following kayaking and triathlon’s, interests 2.7% of Americans.
Senior Ohad Levy-Or believes that climbing offers a great workout and increases strength significantly; though, after a year of experience, Levy-Or has realized that being fit is only one side of the road to grow better in the sport.
“Rock climbing is a very demanding sport, requiring almost all your muscles, especially on harder routes,” Levy-Or said. “But strength isn’t everything; a huge part about being a good climber is technique.”
Nicki Oppenheim, a junior, has been part of a rock climbing team for four years, practicing four times a week and participating in various competitions. Over the years, she grew stronger, to the point where she occasionally conditions by doing 100 push-ups.
Oppenheim once passed by a Marine set-up, where they were challenging people to do pull-ups, offering T shirts for anyone who did more than ten. Oppenheim did 32.
“It’s a lot of concentration and effort,” Oppenheim said. “But it’s not really that competing is the biggest thing. It’s kind of competing against yourself.”
There are three types of climbing: top roped climbing, bouldering, and lead climbing.
Top roped climbing is what most people envision when they think of rock climbing: a climber anchored by a rope to the the top of the wall and back down to his or her partner (the belayer).
Bouldering consists of short, low climbs that do not require ropes.
“You focus on a few moves and you try your hardest for those few moves,” Oppenheim, who likes bouldering best of all, said. “It’s such a big accomplishment to finish your route because they’re so hard.”
Lead climbing uses more advanced climbing and belay techniques. The rope is disconnected from all anchors, and the climber is the one to gradually anchor it as she or her climbs. If a climber loses his or her grip while trying to anchor the rope, the fall is particularly jarring, as the rope falls double the distance, and the climber is left suspended from the previous anchor.
On an April break trip to Kentucky for climbing, Oppenheim practiced lead climbing on natural sandstone that was in the area. One of the successes of the trip, she said, was the fact that she had a lead fall.
“I haven’t taken lead falls outside before and I did this trip and it was awesome,” she said. “If you can’t fall you can’t try your hardest.”
Though rock climbing is not yet near the level of the more mainstream sports, it is gaining ground, demonstrated by a club geared around it that was begun this year.
“I’m not disappointed that people don’t know about [rock climbing]; I just hope that people get a chance to try it,” said senior Matt McNally, another rock climber. “It’s just a fun thing to do.”
