Tigers Reach New Heights at National Climbing Championships

Over Memorial Day Weekend, five members of the CC Climbing Team, along with nearly 400 other climbers from around the country, traveled to Arizona for the 2024 Collegiate National Championships. Conor Wellman ’25, Noah Wheeler ’25, Benn Wheeler ’27, Melanie Robertson ’26, and Sonia Gutierrez ’27 represented the Tigers in all three areas of the competition and both Gutierrez and Benn Wheeler placed high enough to qualify for the upcoming World Championship.

“Nationals this year was the biggest it’s been since I’ve started competing on the collegiate circuit, and the level of competition increased dramatically from past years,” says Wellman, a Computer Science and Math major. “The sport has grown immensely, and each year there are more and more talented freshmen coming in. Considering the drastic shift in difficulty, it was incredibly impressive to see the CC team continue to produce strong results.”

Of the five Tiger athletes, four qualified for finals in some discipline, with Gutierrez qualifying for all three.

“It was very exciting to watch Sonia and Benn qualify for Worlds as first years,” says Wellman. “I look forward to seeing how they do in Slovenia!”

“It was a lot of fun to spend time with my teammates and see climbing friends from all over the country,” says Gutierrez, who is planning to double major in Mathematics and Computer Science. She competed in all three disciplines at Nationals — bouldering, sport climbing, and speed climbing. “I was very happy to make finals in all three, despite mainly training for bouldering this past year. I had a great time on the routes and boulders, and ended up in fifteenth place for both.”

Although she competed in all three areas, Gutierrez’s strength is speed climbing and she felt the most confident when it came to that event. “I knew I had a pretty good chance of qualifying for Worlds. If I won my first race in the final, I would make it. I felt pretty nervous, and when the race started, I slipped on the first move. I was able to recover quickly, and although my opponent was ahead, I caught up and won the race by 0.03 seconds. It was pretty amazing to look up and see the light turn green, even though I had thought I was too far behind for a comeback. I am still a bit in disbelief that I pulled it off, and super excited to be going to the World Championships.”

“The bouldering qualifications were extremely stressful,” says Benn Wheeler, a Math major. “There were over a hundred and twenty competitors and the round took six hours from start to end. I didn’t have my best day, but I managed to make it into finals in thirteenth. My brother, Noah, also made it. It was very fun to get to compete against Noah in this competition, as usually I’m in a younger category.”

With their successful placement at the national competition, Gutierrez and Benn Wheeler will now be competing in the 2024 FISU World University Championships from September 8-12 in Koper, Slovenia.