Towering structures dominate the interior of Central Rock Gym in Hadley, where climbers of all ages cling to colorful grips and swing themselves continuously upward in a display of fearlessness and strength.

For eight of the gym’s young climbers, the pursuit of new heights as competitors in the USA Climbing Youth Nationals recently brought them to scale the same daunting walls that Team USA climbers used to prepare for the approaching Paris Olympics.

Qualifying for the USA Climbing Youth Nationals is no easy task, and involves several rounds of competition throughout the year. For some members of the gym’s competitive climbing team, it was the first realization of a goal years in the making. For others, it was a chance to top their performance at the previous year’s competition.

But regardless of age and experience, each of the eight team members will remember the unique electricity that pervaded the air of USA Climbing’s National Training Center in Salt Lake City, Utah a few weeks ago.

That’s the same facility where this year’s Olympic sports climbing team trained for the Paris Games that kick off Friday. Sport climbing, a modern sport that has grown in popularity over the past 20 years and features 39% of climbers under 18 years old, made its debut as an Olympic sport at the Toyko 2020 Games and is also on the docket for the Los Angeles Games in 2028.

For Cash Burton, 17, this wasn’t the first national competition. But this year’s event gave him the opportunity to climb on the Center’s enormous outdoor wall.

“That was a really fun experience, even though it was like 90 to 100 degrees,” said Burton. “My previous time at nationals, I didn’t do very well. This time I went into it with a goal of getting better.”

This year, Burton achieved his goal, qualifying for the finals in sport climbing.

Hadley’s climbers competed in sport climbing and bouldering, which each demanding different kinds of physical and mental exertion. Pat Donohoe, one of the team’s coaches, explained that bouldering involves “more complex, shorter, more physical climbs.”

“It’s 30 to 40 seconds of hard output,” he said.

On the other hand, sport climbers utilize ropes to conquer longer climbs on taller walls.

“You use more endurance, and you’re on the wall for maybe two to three minutes,” Donohoe explained.

Coral Pope, 15, qualified nationally for bouldering. While she was focused on performing as well as she could at the competition, the experience of climbing at the Center and encountering so many “motivated and strong” climbers her age was already reward enough.

“It was cool to be able to climb on the same walls that people from the national team climb on,” she said as she finished using her phone to craft a practice path on one of the Hadley gym’s app-controlled walls. Though she and her teammates are used to the large and sometimes high-tech equipment at their home gym, they all expressed amazement about the National Training Center.

“Before I got on the wall, just being at the training center was pretty awesome,” said Adam Engel, 14, who competed nationally for the first time in sport climbing.

Even Justin Kim, 18, who has been to the national competition five times, including last year when it was also held at the Center, relished the experience.

“Once you make it to nationals, it’s all about the experience,” he said. “The atmosphere… it’s just full of strong, super psyched and excited people.”

Kim, who qualified in both bouldering and sport climbing, said he had hoped to get better results than he did. But the results almost didn’t matter as he got to try for new personal bests in the same place that some of the world’s premier climbers hone their skills.

“Each climb is something you have to figure out,” he said. “I like pushing the limits of what I can do.”

The other Youth National competitors from the Central Rock Gym Hadley competitive climbing team this year were Rex Hanneke, Matthew Brown, Griffin Edmands, and Finley Skog.

Problem solving, passion

Climbing can be physically grueling and high-risk, but it also gives climbers the chance to accomplish impressive feats while also flexing their mental muscles. Physical strength and dexterity are essential to being a great climber, but problem-solving skills are just as important — and they’re something that outgoing Head Coach Dean Katsaros knows a thing or two about.

Katsaros brings years of competitive climbing experience to the team, but he also brings the analytical mindset that comes from being a PhD candidate in the mathematics department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. For him, the week of the national competition came with dual pressures: the challenge of coaching eight youth competitors to success, and the fact that he had to fly back to Massachusetts early to complete his thesis defense.

“I was hoping to time it so that the two wouldn’t overlap, but that didn’t happen,” he laughed.

Intense dedication to climbing and studying has taught Katsaros the importance of hard work, but also the need for fun and camaraderie, which he focuses on fostering among the teammates.

“You give them some idea of what they could do, and some direction, but you also give them as many opportunities as possible to be kids and be friends with each other,” he said. “It’s about making them feel safe enough to be themselves… as coaches we have to show a willingness to make mistakes and get better ourselves.”

Despite their difficult training, the atmosphere of fun and friendship is clear at the gym as team members laugh, joke, and cheer each other on while they explore a shared passion for climbing.

Many members of the team started climbing in early elementary school through the summer camps offered at the gym. Those camps were what introduced Graham McQuade, 17, to climbing, and now he spends his summers working at them. For over six years, climbing has offered him a space to forget about life’s stresses.

“I love it because I can just climb and not worry about anything else,” he said.

As the climbers have grown up frequenting the gym, they’ve become strong both physically and mentally, and created a community of like-minded individuals striving, literally, to make it to the top.

“The team was a big part of my growing as a person,” said Burton.

Though the next round of competitions for the team is a ways away, Katsaros said they plan to spend the summer honing basic skills and strength, and of course tuning in to watch their sport be represented in the Olympics.