The Digest | New Jersey Magazine
Issue link: https://magazines.vuenj.com/i/1326760
daily. Especially now, living in Salt Lake City, I train with a lot of women. Growing up, there weren't very many girls to climb with–it used to be me as a young teenage girl and a bunch of adult guys, so now I am just really inspired to climb with my female peers. Growing up in climbing, the person I looked up to most was Alex Johnson. When I started climbing she was already winning World Cups, and she trained at my gym. She was the reason I knew that World Cups existed. What competitions are on the horizon for you? My main focus, along with my coach, is on the Olympics next year in Tokyo. e Olympics were supposed to happen this year, but they were postponed due to the Pandemic. is was the first time that climbing was going to be in the Olympics, so it was going to be our debut. What are your climbing goals for the future? One of the biggest goals I'm striving to achieve is making climbing more accessible. I do a lot of work with my federation and the international federation as well to advocate for athletes. is is a big goal for me unrelated to my own performance. With regards to my own performance in climbing, my goal is to perform at the Olympics, and I already have a spot there. For the upcoming Olympic Games, the climbing athletes qualify by name, which means that when I qualified for the Olympics I qualified under my own name, not just a U.S. spot, and that means I get to maintain my spot for when the Olympics are rescheduled. "Most of the time you're climbing, you're falling off a cliff, and if you're only climbing things you're not falling off of, you're probably not getting any better at the sport. This can be really hard for people who aren't good at accepting failure, so you have to find the wins in each situation." V U E N J . C O M 45