Supporting Rock Climbing Middle School ASA

For this quarter I’ve started helping out with the climbing after school activity for middle schoolers. We have about eight students that join for the activity and all of them are always very excited to climb. As a leader I help out with leading stretches, getting gear for everyone, giving advice mid climb to people and recently, belaying. Belaying is where you support the climber by providing a safety line. Both the belayer and climber are connected with a rope and as they climb the belayer stays on the ground. Last session Ms. Kamila gave me a refresher on how to belay since it’s been about four years since I last belayed for someone. I did pretty well but I just need to work on giving slack (for when the climber is coming down from the wall) since I got a nasty rope burn on my hand which took a while to heal. This quarter we had about four sessions which all went very smoothly and just from the handful of sessions I can see the improvement in the middle schoolers climbing. All of them have gotten a lot more confident facing the tall heights and overall climbing abilities have improved. To continue this for next quarter I need to focus more on belaying and overall just being consistent since it’s been a while since I’ve climbed and belayed so often. Not only that I will continue to support the teachers in any way I can and help out the middle schoolers reach their goals.