As I stated in my Elite Series post, the culminating event formerly called 'Open Nationals' now is called Yeti Climbing National Championships. This year, as of this writing, it was held in Salt Lake City.
You can see from my previous post, looking at the National Eligibility Lists, that there are many ways to qualify for the National Championships. Brendan took the route of the NACS circuit. What was interesting was that there were five North American Cup Series events (NACS). What is not easy to figure out is that a climber really needs to compete in more than one of them if they do not score insanely high at their first event. Brendan's first event was at the Training Center in Salt Lake. As a first experience, he was just figuring things out. His second event was at the GO PRO games as we were already in Colorado for Orientation at Colorado State in Fort Collins. He decided to add a third event in New Jersey at the GOAT Gym in Hackensack. The combination of his three scores got him placed 87th in the nation. Since he was in the top 100 ranked competitors, he qualified to go. Now the interesting twist was that there was still one more NACS to go that could change the rankings. But USA Climbing decided that they would allow anyone who qualified after the 2nd to the last event AND the last event because Nationals was only five days away from the last event. Brendan got bumped down to 102 because he didn't compete in the last event in Canada (way too far and too much time off from College to get there) but it didn't matter, he was already in.
After all is said and done, his 2025 USA Team ranking right now as of this writing is 57th. I'll take that as a proud Climbing Mom!
BONUS HEALTH TIP: ALWAYS wear a mask in the airport/on the plane after a comp. Brendan got sick every time because he would have a compromised immune system and pick something up from the plane on the way back. When he started masking up after comps to travel home, NO PROBLEMS!
CLIMB ON!
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