Posts Tagged ‘kids’
I was invited by Monk Bouldergym to be the voice of the coolest youth event of the year: Youth Open 2010!
The event started at 11 AM till 4 PM in the afternoon. Nearly 100 kids signed up for this competition! When I entered the gym, I received a nice red Christmas hat and a microphone to introduce myself.
It was really fun to talk during this competition. There were lots of kids running around when I announced they had 20 minutes left to finish their score form. Haha, I like the enthusiasm of the kids!
Everything went flawless. I can tell the kids, trainers, coaches, family members, friends, dj’s and Monk crew had a nice day. We ended our day with pancakes and the award ceremony. You can check the results here.
I think Monk Bouldergym organised a super event for these kids and I’m glad I was part of this day. Thank you.
It looks like I’m on a weekend break with the National Team. Yesterday we went to Klimax at Belgium and today we’ll stay in my hometown and join Monk Bouldergym at Eindhoven.
Arriving at Monk I ran into a big group of kids waiting to enter the climbing gym. I enter myself to change my clothes. Casper, Vera and Wouter are setting a few boulders at the competition wall. Next we are having a meeting with our team in the CTO area to discuss our plan.
Coach Wouter shared his plan about the Masterclass. After a short meeting we are going to warm up and the young people apply for this Masterclass. The National Team takes care of a Masterclass to nearly all youth finalists from the National Youth Boulder Championship in association with the NKBV and Monk. It is a closed training where Wouter, Casper, Vera, Kim, Teun, Bob, Eva and I share our experience about insight, power and tactics of bouldering.
Coach Wouter was talking about the training. The warm up movements was familiar to me, we have done these moves before. We joined the club. It was fun to see how enthusiastic everyone was during this training.
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We were involved as well. We divided this group into small groups. Teun and I were assigned to instruct kids how to gain insight in bouldering. Casper and Eva were assigned to instruct about tactics, Vera and Bob about power. It went very nice and successful.
After 2 hours we were done with the Masterclass. Time went by fast, it was nice to give instructions of the Masterclass. Next year I hope to see these kids on a stand!
Last week I was approached by the board of climbing competition. Casper ten Sijthoff requested if I wanted to set routes for this Youth Lead 2 competition at Eindhoven. That was nice because I didn’t have many plans anyway. My job was to set the most difficult route, the finals! My job was head chief setter, therefore the routes have to be good.
Members of the Youth Lead competition felt that the routes were poorly designed, and not challenging enough causing the competition to end late. I wanted to tackle this problem, if the routes were set well then the competition will end on time and everyone will be happy.
Last Thursday I visited Neoliet Eindhoven. Together with Martijn Dijkhuizen we set up a plan for the routes. I noticed that most of the routes were too easy or had to be reset. My first reaction about the routes was to set it more difficult. I started with my route, filled a sack with white holds and get busy setting. After 4 hours I was finally done with my final route.
From my experience I know it’s not nice to fall out a route especially when the route contains reachy movements or lock down movements. I set one white route with a lot of movements and I hope everyone will get really high. I also set a purple qualification route. My day went by fast.
Yesterday noon I returned to this climbing gym. Erik Jacobs was present to test routes as well. After I tested some qualification routes, I find a few routes not proper enough for this competition. The routes were too simple and too continuous. This meant extra load of work. I don’t like up side down holds and started filling a sack with holds to modify these routes. Martijn reset some routes too. We were busy taking care of these competition routes till past midnight. We fixed route drawings and added numbers on it as well. Unfortunately I was unable to go home by bus at 1 A.M, so I sat on the steering wheel of Martijn’s bike. That was so funny!
Today at 9 A.M. my alarm clock went off and I got up at 9.45 A.M. It was hard to get out of bed, however I had to be present at the climbing gym today. Youth Lead 2 was about to start. I peddled my way to the gym and was exhausted. At the climbing gym I ran into Kim van den Hout and heard her laughing. She requested if I could demonstrate the qualifications. What!? I was tired and didn’t expect this. I just wanted to watch, but I accepted her request anyway. I had a lot of things on my mind. I had to see Martijn to setup the audio for music and announcements and take care of the side walls. First I need to eat a sandwich and warm up properly. Before I started to demonstrate, I had to concentrate and go 100 percent for each route, black 6c, purple 6c, purple 7a+, yellow 7a+ and white 7a went well. The routes were worth climbing! Yes, now it is up to the kids to enjoy climbing these routes.
Next were the finals. When I was looking at my route, I missed a few foot holds and decided last minute to set some more foot holds. It was a good decision and received some compliments. The route was long and the higher you get, the more difficult it was to climb. I was content about it. There seem to be a good division among the youth climbers. My job was done for today, the competition ended at half past 5 and everyone was happy.
This competition went well, the organisation was good and I thank everyone who were present today. Check out the Youth Lead 2 results.
The National Youth Championship Boulder was held today at Monk Bouldergym.
Organizer Kim van den Hout asked me if I wanted to volunteer for this event. I will volunteer with pleasure when it comes to kids. My task was to support kids by wearing a Easter bunny suit. I entered the CTO area and my suit was ready for use. I changed my clothes and I was looking for eggs.
Eventually Dirk Mol handed me a basket full of delicate chocolates. I ran into most of the kids and shared an egg.
There was no more time for the qualifications and all the score forms were complete. Meanwhile Kim was briefing the judges and the scores were counted.
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The audience were amused of an interview by coach Wouter Jongeneelen. I was still dressed up as an Easter bunny and was sitting in the crowd next to Vera Zijlstra.
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After the interview it was time for some cool lottery. Dirk and I fixed the lottery tickets and speaker Joost Hofman handed out the prices. There were some nice prices included such as soft bristle brushes, shirts, climb on etc etc.
Finally I could get rid of my Easter bunny suit and started my second task of the day being a hold brusher. All finalist were in the isolation area and they were briefed by the main judge about the setup of the final problems. The competition wall was set ready and it looked amazing. It contained nice big volumes and really technical problems.
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Monk managed to draw a full house with family members, parents, friends and acquaintances. I also spotted some camera’s and photographers.
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I saw a few soft bristle brushes in front of me. I grabbed a blue Lapis brush. Dirk, Martijn, Vera and me were the hold brush team of today’s competition.
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It was nice to polish the holds on the beats of funky music in the background. This year I improved my polish techniques regard to last year. I suggest other hold cleaners to easy polish the hold, blow the chalk away and don’t try to block the climbers.
The setters team were ready to reset a problem in 4 minutes. It went so fast and in time. Fortunately I managed to shoot some pictures as well.
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Speaker Joost and organizer Kim are considering how to divide the prices. Vera wants to pose with her roommate and current youth champion.
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About 8.00 PM I felt really hungry of all that polishing and decided to have dinner downtown. We went by Wouter’s awesome vehicle. I was laying in the back but comfortable on a dirty crashpad with Celine.
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When we arrived downtown it was only a few minutes by foot to the restaurant. Conclusion: wok was okay for dinner.
By the way, the event was super and click here to check out the results.
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