Sport Qualifiers and Speed Qualifiers were on Saturday. In Sidney’s FYB category, there were 25 young women competing in Sport and 24 in Speed. Each competitor would climb 2 qualifier routes with a cycle rest in between each route. After all the Sport climbers were finished, all the Speed qualifiers would be run in one session to end the day.
Qualifier 1 was on the left side of the climbing area where the walls are about 45 feet high and do not have any overhang. The route was very technical and required balance. Those who were patient and precise were rewarded with a well deserved send. In all, there were 8 tops of this route with 2 of those climbers making a clipping mistake that cost them .01 on their score but they still sent the route. The 8 sends were evenly divided between two regions. They were Hanna Grossman, Kara Herson, Madison Cline and Jenna Wang from Northern California and Melina Costanza, Cierra Graham, Makenna Graham and Sidney from Washington/Alaska. Of course, Sidney had to make things interesting at the top of the route by skipping a big sloper and just throwing for a crimp while fully extended. It’s so interesting to watch her make the calculations of skipping a hold and going dynamic. Once she makes the decision, though, she never hesitates and always executes the move with conviction. I never like it when she does this but she seems to always make it so what can you do? I just tell her great job and ask her to try to do the proper beta the next time. Maybe someday.
Qualifier 2 was on the front of the main wall and went the full length up into the roof section. The climb was a long, sustained grind that pushed the limit on timing out on the route. No one would top this route and only half of the category would make it past the halfway point on the climb. With a route score of 62 holds, only 7 climbers were able to get a score of 40 holds or more. They were Makenna at 40.57, Kara and Siobhan Duffy at 43.57, Cierra at 45.08, Hanna at 47.58, Sidney at 58.40 and Melina at 58.61. It was very close between the top 2 as Melina scored 1 clip more and Usable Surface compared to Sidney only getting Movement. After Qualifiers, the top 11 going into Sport Finals on Sunday in reverse order of finish were Sydney Palmer, Siobhan, Amelia Hunt, Jenna, Madison, Makenna, Kara, Cierra, Hanna, Sidney and Melina.
Speed Qualifiers were the last session of the day and was pretty action packed. Seattle VW has two fairly close approximations of the official Speed route so all the B, A and Junior categories were racing on those routes with the 2 younger categories racing on some jug routes on another wall. Sidney had 2 blazing times 8.27 seconds and 7.94 seconds for her qualifying runs. The next closest qualifying time of any female competitor was the 9.52 seconds put up by Jacquelyn Wu of the FYA category. In Sidney’s category, Melina really kicked it up a notch and was the next fastest qualifier with a time of 9.94 seconds. The rest of the category had times of 11.75 seconds or greater. Sidney would be a heavy favorite going into Speed Finals the next day.
Sunday would be short and sweet with 1 Finals route for each Sport finalist, followed by a Speed session for those finalists. With Sidney as a defending National Champion in both Sport and Speed, there would probably be 8 invites to Nationals in the FYB category for both disciplines instead of the usual 7 invitations.
The Sport Final route for the FYB/FYA category was pretty wicked. It started on the main face of the wall and moved on a steady line up and to the left. It then cut back to the right until you were in the roof section and then zagged left through an extended roof section to the finish. Between the 2 categories there were 21 combined finalists that attempted the route and only 1 climber topped it. The route scored to 55 holds with none of the first 7 FYB finalists making it past hold 32. Cierra, in 4th going into Finals, had a great climb and moved up 2 spots to finish in 2nd place with a score of 51.10. Hanna was next out and gave it a good go, scoring 45.59 and placing in 4th. Sidney was the next climber and she crushed the route with the only top of the FYB/FYA categories. Melina was last out and climbed tremendously but fell 1 hold short of tying Cierra and would settle for 3rd place. Sidney looked so strong in her flash but unfortunately my camera malfunctioned right as she started her climb so I have no pictures or video to prove it. That really bummed me out as it was a very cool send by her. The top 8 would get invites to Nationals and they were; 8th-Sydney, 7th-Madison, 6th-Jenna, 5th-Kara, 4th-Hanna, 3rd-Melina, 2nd-Cierra and 1st-Sidney.
Speed Finals went pretty much the same way as Qualifiers with no major surprises. Sidney pulled runs of 10.13 seconds and 8.82 seconds to finish in 1st place. Melina slightly improved her best time to 9.72 seconds to come in a solid 2nd place. No one else in the category had a time faster than 14 seconds as the Speed jitters may have gotten to a few of the participants. The rest of the Speed invites for Nationals went as follows; 3rd-Hanna, 4th-Jenna, 5th-Cierra, 6th-Sydney, 7th-Amelia and 8th-Kara.
Yet another SCS Divisionals was in the books and Sidney was very happy to have climbed well to win both disciplines. She enjoyed the moment but the Youth National event at Stone Summit loomed only a few weeks away and a lot was at stake for her, namely 2 berths into the Youth World event.
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