Ella Easton – Rock Climbing

2019  has been my best year yet in terms of my climbing career. I have been climbing competitively for around 3 years now, but having only competed in Australian competitions, I wanted to take my game to an international level. Luckily, in May this year, my performance in the Australian Youth Championships allowed me to qualify for the World Youth Championships for all 3 climbing disciplines!

The Championships themselves took place in Arco, Italy, over a two week period in August. In the lead up to this event, I took my training pretty seriously, training 6 times per week for about 2-4 hours each session. This sometimes made it hard to get all my schoolwork done but luckily the school is very accommodating.

Though the competition was somehow even harder than I expected, the experience I gained was really valuable. I learnt how to deal with a huge amount of pressure and still perform as well as possible, and I met insanely strong athletes from all around the world. I even traded my Australian singlet for a Ukranian one!

My competition season ended this past weekend with the Australian National Open (adult) Championships. I came in with low expectations and a lot of anxiety about how I would perform, but I ended up taking home 3 medals, making the Open team for Lead and Speed  and also qualifying for the Oceanic Championships in March, which is an Olympic selection event. This means that the top female with the highest combined ranking after this competition earns a spot at the 2020 Olympic games. Hopefully I have a chance at winning that spot!

Ella Easton