For McCormick sophomore Nicholas Rose, climbing three times a week with the Rock Climbing Club at Northwestern has provided him a break from the demanding college atmosphere.
“Climbing is the way at this school that I can just make my mind quiet,” Rose, a co-president of the club, said. “Nothing else has that effect.”
This sentiment has resonated with many Northwestern students, as the club has grown exponentially since it was founded in 2022 by McCormick junior Hunter Lee and Ethan Singer (Weinberg ’23). Even though the club started as a group of fewer than 20 friends who wanted to get discounts at climbing gyms, the club has since grown to hundreds of students who have signed up to climb — with an average practice attendance of about 60.
The club officially became a club sport this year, with regular competitions — open to all skill levels — against universities in the Heartland region of the USA Climbing Collegiate Series.
Along with the increased competitive nature, the club still hosts weekly social climbing events and quarterly outdoor trips.
These initiatives have provided a space for new friendships to blossom, according to club member and McCormick sophomore Grant Putnam.
“There is a social aspect born from the sport itself,” Putnam said. “You can climb super intensely for 30 seconds to a minute, then you’re sitting around and in that time, you’re looking at the climbs, you’re puzzling it together, you’re watching other people climb and you’re helping each other improve.”
To accommodate the growing number of members, the club has created at least seven new executive board member roles in the past year. This includes a social chair to organize social events, workout coordinators who work with inexperienced climbers and managers for outdoor trips and competitive practices.
Creating the workout coordinator position was a focus for the club this past quarter, according to workout coordinator and McCormick freshman Tommy Birge.
“We are trying to make it as open to newcomers as possible because it’s a growing sport and a growing community,” Birge said.
To make climbs more accessible, the club is currently searching for sponsors to provide free day passes for climbing gyms, Weinberg sophomore and club co-President Lleyton Gunter said.
For the upcoming year, the club is working with Evanston Athletic Club to get climbing usage rights three times a week for two and a half hours, free of charge. The Evanston Athletic Club is located in downtown Evanston. Previously, the club hosted climbs at Movement Wrigleyville, a climbing gym one hour away from Evanston by public transportation.
“The inclusion (and) accessibility front — that’s always going to be our main focus,” Gunter said. “We want our club to be completely barrier-free. We want anyone interested in climbing to be able to join.”
The club’s biggest current initiative is to expand climbing facilities onto campus. The club worked with Northwestern Recreation over this past year to add a hangboard, a training device to increase finger and hand strength, to the stretching room of Henry Crown Sports Pavilion, according to Gunter.
The club also sent a proposal to NU Recreation two weeks ago to bring a climbing wall to campus, Gunter added.
“We need all the help we can get in convincing Northwestern recreation that some sort of climbing wall is necessary to provide an experience for people interested in rock climbing,” Gunter said. “Because that is the goal at the end of the day — to provide recreational services for everybody.”
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the number of the Rock Climbing Club’s active members. The Daily regrets this error.
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