Students reach new heights in recently formed club, enjoy sport and community surrounding it

Though they just started about three weeks ago, Trinity’s newest club sport is climbing to success. The Trinity Rock Climbing club is a new club that aims to build a community of students who are passionate about rock climbing.

The group meets every week at a local gym called The District, which is about a five minute drive from campus.

The gym is primarily bouldering, which involves climbing short walls of about 15 feet without any ropes or harnesses. There are other forms of climbing, such as speed or traditional, but based mostly on restraints of the gym, bouldering is king for the Trinity team.

While practicing every week in the same gym may sound boring, The District changes their routes every week, allowing each practice to be a new experience. For students worried about gear or not enjoying their time and wasting money, the group is working on a solution for that too.

“All of the gear can be rented there,” said junior Tripp Wright. “They have day passes if you want to just come try it out, and we are trying to create a once-or-so a month event where you can come climb with the team and just try it out, so we could buy a package of passes and get those out and if you were interested you could come and just try a day. We want to make it where you can come and climb one time to see if it’s for you.”

As of now, the group is not attached to any competitive group, but as individuals they have gone to competitions. Eventually the club would like to become associated the CCS, or Collegiate Climbing Series, where they would be able to compete against a bunch of other collegiate climbing clubs at both a regional and national level.

Despite still being a relatively small group, the students are passionate and excited about not only climbing, but the community around it. Many students try climbing for the first time and love the experience so much they decide to commit to coming back.

“I was biking by the gym and I saw it, pulled in and bought a  day pass out of curiosity. I climbed for 15 minutes and then went up and asked the guy at the counter where the closest place I could buy shoes was,” said Will Skinner. “I went back to Trinity, borrowed my friend’s car, drove to REI, came back with my shoes and chalk bag, bought a membership and climbed for hours.”

Some students had initial hesitations about their skills, or lack thereof. First-year Ty Tinker says students may be surprised at how quickly they pick it up.

“I was hooked immediately. If you like it you’ll know and you’ll pick it up super quick. It’s almost an instantaneous process. It’s also super easy to get involved, you show up, we’ll put you in our group chat and you can hang with us. It’s not hard or out of reach at all so just give it a shot,” Tinker said.

Current members of the club encourage others to get involved for both the sport and the community.

“It’s such a great community,” Wright said. “I’ve gone to gyms all over the US and no matter where you are every wants to hang out and everyone wants to be friends. Even at competitions no one is ever mean about climbing.”

For anyone interested in joining, the fastest way would be through the contact information on the team’s Instagram page: @trinityrockclimbing.

The team will also be hosting a table in Coates in the near future, and is expecting to be placing a poster in Mabee, so keep an eye out for opportunities to join this up-and-coming group.