Caroline's LAST Climbing Comp

Even though Caroline is REALLY good at climbing, she hasn't liked it for the last several months. Maybe the last year. Ever since Brandon quit in March of 2019, she has wanted to quit, too. But it was really hard for us to let her walk away from a sport where she was such an elite competitor. I kept hoping she would change her mind. But at the beginning of bouldering season this year, I told her that if she still wanted to quit when bouldering season was done, she could.

She had no second thoughts.

As soon as bouldering season was done, she was SO done.

Her last competition was Regionals, held in Murfreesboro, TN.

Road trip!

My favorite!

We got to drive over the mountains into Tennessee.

We stayed the night in a hotel on a Friday night

and C climbed on Saturday.

Regionals is one of the comps where

you have to go into isolation.

I had to drop her off at iso at noon

and didn't get to see her again until 3:30

when it was her turn to climb.

That's lame, especially when she didn't

have any teammates or coaches there.

And you're not allowed to have any

devices that could connect to the internet.

She had lots of snacks and some books.

Pretty soon it was time for her to climb!

You're not even allowed to LOOK at the route

until your four minute climbing window starts.

You climb six different routes.

And you can have as many attempts as

you want in those four minutes.

If you finish before the four minutes

is up, you can rest before your next route.

She flashed route 1.

Woo hoo!

She did awesome on route 2. 

Made it to the 15 point hold,

but couldn't quite get the finish.

Route 3 was HARD.

Teeny tiny holds that were

VERY far apart, with a big volume

right in your tummy as you're trying to go.

Only five girls out the 43 in C's age

group completed this route.

Route 4 was really hard, too.

The 10 point hold was way up on 

the top of that volume,

difficult for little arms to reach.

Usually the routes just keep getting harder

as you move along. I'm sure C was getting

frustrated after making little progress on

both routes 3 and 4.

Thankfully, she did awesome on route 5.

Flashed it!

By the time she got to Route 6, she was kind of done.

I was so proud of her.

Regionals is high pressure.

She hung in there and did a great job.

She ended up taking 16th place out of 43 girls in her age group.

The top ten go on to Divisionals.

She was only ten points away from 10th place.

And this is her first year in this age group.

As much as I wish she would keep climbing,

I understand that she wants to move on to other things.

I will miss cheering her on.

But I won't missing giving hundreds of 

dollars to the climbing gym every month. :)

After she finished climbing, we drove to Asheville

to spend the night with Destinee and her family.

(Ryan was out of town.)

It was so fun to see the for a bit.

We went to church with them on Sunday.

The primary kids came in to Sunday School

to sing a couple Christmas carols to us.

They were all decked out. So cute.

Grateful to have cousins nearby-ish.

Care Bear was happy to play with her 

cousins for a little while, too.

And then it was just a short drive home from there.

The next Monday, Caroline went in for her LAST

day of climbing with her teammates.

She spent four years climbing with these kids.

And had no problems walking away.

Weird.

I think it would have been different if there 

would've been other girls her age.

Unfortunately, there was no social

draw for her to stay.

I'm grateful for all the lessons

she learned and all the hard work

she put in to climbing.

We'll see what else the future holds for

this strong, determined young woman.