Scottish Team News

Here you will find reports and articles about the activities and the competition experience of the members of the Scottish National Teams: Scotland North and South.

2012-2013 Scottish Teams

The three rounds of the Youth Climbing Series are now finished and we have identified Teams for Scotland North and Scotland South. These children now form the Scottish Team for the period April 2012 - March 2013. With the adoption of the IFSC age categories we have an extedned number of people in the team. As team members they recieve support from the MCofS for coaching and other activities through ReAch Climbing & Coaching and from various indoor climbing walls across Scoland who offer reduced or free access for training.

These team members will be competing in the British Final of the YCS being held at EICA: Ratho in May.

We are indebted to Interactive Designs Institute (idi) who have agreed to be the Scottish Team sponsors again for the year.

www.idesigni.co.uk

CURRENT NEWS:

MCofS Competitions Questionnaire Results

The Life of a YCS Competitor by Jodie Brown

MCofS Youth Climbing  Competitors Survey

During November 2011 Deputy Area Youth Coordinator (South Region) Avril Gall conducted a survey questionnaire to all 175 children/parents on the MCofS Youth Events database. The aim was to find out what their climbing activity entailed, their membership profile, views on the national and international scene, the recent changes to the competition categories and the childrens views on the MCofS proposal to try and arrange a Commonwealth Climbing Competition.

Read the Questionnaire Results Summary 

The Life of a Youth Climbing Series Competitor by Jodie Brown
Currie Community High School

Jodie took part in the MCofS YCS 2012 competing in the Youth B category (for children aged 14-15yrs). The format this year was the same as before, but the age categories have changed and the design of the routes and boulder problems was altered to focus more on technique. Jodie made it onto the Scotland South Team and this is her story:

"The last of this year’s 3 YCS (Youth Climbing Series), rounds was really hard!! This year saw me competing in the Youth-B category (year of birth '97/'98) which meant I was really young for the category - I'm very late '98. The first round was held in January at the EICA: Ratho. This is my "home" wall and I did really well, gaining my first ever podium place. I came 3rd - my good friends, Eilidh and Megan beating me to 1st and 2nd.  I had a really bad Round 2 in Stirling - I lost confidence after a bad attempt on my first route. I really let myself down and gave myself a huge job to do in Round 3 at the Glasgow Climbing Centre if I wanted to make the Scottish Squad."

Read Jodie's full article on the Kids Features page

2011-2012 Scottish Teams

Sponsors of the 2011 Scotland Youth Climbing Teams http://www.idesigni.co.uk/

The following boys and girls were selected from the results of the three rounds of the YCS 2011 to form two National Teams for Scotland North and Scotland South. These children form the teams for the period May 2011- April 2012. As team members they recieve support from the MCofS for coaching and other activities and from various Indoor climbing walls across Scoland who offer reduced or free access for training.

2010-2011 Scottish Teams

The following boys and girls were selected from their scores in the three rounds of the YCS to form the North and South Scotland Teams for the period June 2010 - May 2011:

BLCC 2010: MCofS Prep Event

The MCofS supported a coaching in competitions session at EICA: Ratho by coach Robbie Phillips, with guest coach Natalie Berry along to inspire. Purpose of Event was to provide valuable on-sight & competition preparation; to give experience of climbing in a competition format event.

It was open to all children of applicable age in the Scottish Youth Teams North and South Region and all SYCC 2010 attendees in the age range of 17-19yrs.

The session ran simply as a competition, with qualifiers and finals! For the first qualifier the climbers were split into two groups (less experienced mixed with experienced) to discuss in more depth route-reading: what to look out for, etc.

The second qualifier ran as a normal competition at International standard, coaches making sure all children were comfortable and know what they are doing.

Everyone was then taken through a finals set-up run with isolation in the bouldering wall. Coaches were present in isolation and at the wall before moving onto the final route.

After the event, discussion in groups looked at how each performed and how they could move on from this for a better performance in the forthcoming BLCC competition!

12 children took part in this - a first for MCofS. They travelled from as far away as Aberdeen and Inverness. There was a mixed group of climbers from International competition ‘old hands’ like Jonathan Field and new leading lights on the British Team (Rachael Carr and Eleanor Hopkins), to first timers like Emily Eadie from Inverness and Scott Kier and Malcolm Bradley from Aberdeen-shire.

Attendees:
Jonathan Field, Megan Saunders, Rachael Carr, Eleanor Hopkins, Sophie Harper, Rebekah Drummond, Malcolm Bradley, Scott Kier, Emily Eadie, William Bosie, Eilidh Vasspane.

You can read more about the session on Robbie’s website blog at: http://robbiephillips.co.uk/blog and here are two reports from the children themselves:

Competition Coaching Event
By Malcolm Bradley

I will have been climbing for about a year in November and absolutely, love it!!!

I took part in the BLCC prep event on Saturday 2^nd October and really enjoyed it. The routes at the event were hard and really challenged me. I got some great advice from Natalie Berry and Robert MacKenzie (who are on the British Climbing Team) on performance climbing and competition experience.

They both have great competition experience and gave really sound advice. The event also gave me a real idea of the layout of a competition. I got my first experience of isolation. Isolation is used in most lead climbing competitions. You climb two qualifying routes then a final. If you make the final then you get a certain time to look at the route (observation) then go into isolation. You come out one by one to climb the route. The winner is determined by who climbs the furthest.

I have not done many competitions yet. My first competition was the first round of North of Scotland Youth Climbing Series 2010. I learned to lead climb only the week before that, so I had never really properly prepared for a competition. The next two rounds of the series went well and overall I came 4^th just missing out on a spot in the British Finals. 2011 YCS are coming up and I hope to do well in them.

Climbing comps are great, but competitions aren't everything. Climbing is great fun, whether it is competitions, outdoors, bouldering, ice climbing, trad climbing, sport climbing, you name it!

Climbing is an awesome sport to start young and enjoy!

Feedback on the Mini Competition
By Eilidh Vass Payne

On Saturday the 2^nd of October, Robbie Phillips – “the Beast!” and Natalie Berry, British Senior Climbing Champion, hosted a preparation competition/ practice run. This was to help prepare the Scottish juniors (about 12 of us juniors came along) for the BIG competition coming up the next weekend, better known as the BLCC’s - British Lead Climbing Championships.

Our mini comp started up about 1pm and went on until about 6pm. Throughout the day we had talks from Robbie and Natalie about what to eat, how to warm up and stay warm, what to do in isolation…Each of these talks was very useful and really helped me and everyone else at the BLCC’s on Saturday.

As the day progressed from the a-bit-longer-than-15mins warm up, we had demonstrations from Natalie and Robbie on the routes (they used the main lead wall not the comp walls) for each of the categories. Each of us competitors tried our absolute best at attempting each of the routes, most of us completing our first climbs! The climbs were quite hard and as the day went on I learned more about what to do when you get nerves, how to prepare for the climb and so on. This was really useful at the BLCC’s as I came mostly prepared and ready, having been told all about it.

Everyone went into isolation, which was actually quite interesting, (isolation is normally boring, I have been told)! In isolation we played warm up games and waited patiently (some of us less patiently!) until it was our turn to go out.

I think that the whole day went really well and I personally learned a lot from it. I hope everyone else also enjoyed the day and a big thanks to Robbie and Natalie for hosting such a fun and useful event.

Thank you again.