COVID Climb - Adrie Young

School has always included a lot of social activity. Rock climbing, on the other hand, is more of a solo sport because, while I work with teammates, I only rely on myself when I’m on the wall.

When COVID hit, school transitioned to online, and I lost touch with a lot of my classmates. As an eighth grader in a K-8 school, my last real school day with the classmates I’d been with for nine years came and went without any of us realizing. Our big eighth grade trip to Costa Rica, which we’d all been looking forward to since kindergarten, got cancelled. While normally I would have celebrated graduation next to all of my classmates following meaningful traditions, I instead spent the day squished into my living room couch in front of a screen with only my family.

Climbing was almost the complete opposite. An activity I’d always done for myself became one of my only ways to see people face-to-face. Though my climbing gym shut down, I was able to spend time rock climbing outdoors safely with friends.

During the summer, I played digital games with my friends, went to zoom calls with my family, participated in remote camps, and even had an online summer institute for my new school. But through all of this, climbing was a constant, and a way to see people in-person.

I created my project on Adobe Spark. This layout makes it easy to weave pictures and text together. It controls the photos people look at so they see one at a time and it is clear what text goes with which photo. I used images I took during the pandemic, but I wrote this piece specifically for this submission.

Recently, it’s been easy to focus on only the bad. Yes, I missed out on the last three months I’d ever have at my school, my entire summer was upended, and I had to venture into a new high school remotely. But I was still able to do the sport I love and use that activity to see my friends. Through these hectic and overwhelming times, climbing has truly been my rock - no pun intended.