YCS Final Wolverhamption

Alasdair, Kirsten, mum , dad and I left on Friday afternoon. Kirsten and I had brought blankets to make tents in the back of the car and lots of climbing dvd’s.
We ate pasta for tea and went to bed early.
The next morning we registered at 8.30 at Wolf Mountain. It was quite an interesting wall but there were so many people!! It was all a bit confusing and nobody seemed to know what was happening. We were split into our groups and so I didn’t have Kirsten or Eilidh in my group but I did have Emily and Rebecca from Scotland North. We were to do our first two boulders and then swap with the other group and do our first two routes. We hadn’t done a big warm up which we would normally do, so the lady looking after us just said to put on our climbing shoes and traverse along the wall. I was a bit anxious because I normally do a much longer warm up and the first boulder problem didn’t look that easy. Then I realised everybody was going back through to the main area to do a warm up, I could hardly get through because of all the parents, so I decided to stay and warm up by myself. I managed the first boulder but the second one was hard. There was a really difficult move at the very start of the problem and only a couple of girls got past it out of the whole group. I was really disappointed but I was finding it really hard to focus because it was raining and there was nowhere to sit or keep warm before climbing. I then went on to my first route which I topped, but the second route was more difficult. I came off at 88 points although I felt I should have had 89 because I touched the hold. When I came down the judge asked if I had touched the hold but when I said yes she then said she hadn’t seen me and so couldn’t give me the point. I was disappointed and when I looked at mums video it was obvious I had touched the hold, but the judges cannot look at parents videos for evidence. I just wished the judge had moved to a position where she could see.
We were then shown our last boulder problem. I was first up but I knew I had three goes. I was really pleased with my first attempt and it wasn’t until their second goes that two of the girls went beyond where I had got to. The last route looked really hard technically. I was in a good position because I was climbing last, I could watch all the other girls climb, the only thing was that it was very off putting when everybody kept falling off . Then the girl who won topped it, which was a brilliant climb. I was really psyched to climb well, but I came off because I just couldn’t hold onto a tricky move onto a not very good hold. I was disappointed but overall came in 12th position, and all the girls ahead of me were a year older. I think I could have climbed better but overall I climbed okay. We went out with lots of people for dinner and then played at the hotel until about 11 o’clock. We drove home the next day.