The climbing team at UVA is really, fundamentally a community. We just happen to all like to climb together too. 

The climbing center at UVA opened the fall of my first year, it's right next to dorms so i used to go there a lot. Once I started doing it more and got into it I joined the team. 

I'd never once climbed in my life, I hopped on that wall and talked to the person about the climbing team i'd heard of, and she was like, "Yeah, you should like totally sign up. Get on the listserv, there's a party this weekend." 

I remember looking up UVA Climbing Instagram before i even came to UVA to see who's on the team. 

ou know, it was probably one of the single best decisions i've ever made as a student here. 

The climbing house is pretty sweet we've had multiple years of climbers living there. Each year it kind of adapts, but it's always just climbers who are really good friends, living together and having a good time. We like to travel to all sorts of places, predominantly on the east coast. We'll go up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, we'll go to Old Rag Mountain in the Shenandoah National Park. We love going out to the New River Gorge in West Virginia. 

One of the really cool aspects of the team is how many of our members are really new climbers. Each semester, almost 50 are like, completely brand new or have only been climbing for like a few weeks. 

So, we have this program it's called Boulders and Pebbles it's equivalent to like a big/little program, you would see in a sorority or fraternity. 

That boulder is usually there with you at practice and you climb together and they'll walk you through some tips and tricks that they've picked up over their experience climbing. 

One of the main reasons i got into climbing and got really passionate about it was because I had some really wonderful role models who were like, supporting me and encouraging me. They were pushing me to be better and making me feel like i was included and in a safe space.

When you're getting on that wall, there's always a good couple of people cheering you on. There's a structural drive to get people to learn these things. 

They just progress so quickly and it's really rewarding to see someone new to the sport get excited about it and then provide them resources to continue to improve. 

The people there want to see you succeed and you can feel that.