Alon Andrews
Royer-Andrews is a member of Boulders’ Summit team.
Four years ago, on a particularly nasty Wisconsin day, Alon Andrews took his 6-year-old daughter to Boulders Climbing Gym on Madison’s east side and changed her life.
“I was into climbing trees a lot, and I’m pretty athletic,” Rimona Royer-Andrews, an enthusiastic and well-spoken 10-year-old who attends Madison Country Day School, recently told me. “At Boulders, it was fun to see a different kind of climbing, and I was immediately attached to it.”
Royer-Andrews placed sixth out of 48 climbers between ages 9 and 11 last month at the 2017 USA Climbing Sport & Speed Youth National Championships, a prestigious competition held at Stone Summit Climbing & Fitness Center in Kennesaw, Georgia.
She was entered in the youngest age-group category in top-rope climbing and scaled walls significantly taller than the ones at Boulders.
En route to qualifying for youth nationals, Royer-Andrews placed first in USA Climbing’s Great Lakes Regional in Madison Heights, Michigan in May and second at the Midwest Regional in Bloomington, Minnesota in June.
“It was fun to be at a gym with really high walls, watch other people climb and be in such a supportive environment,” Royer-Andrews says about competing at Youth Nationals. She climbs for Boulders’ Summit team and also trains with Keith Kubiesa, owner of
Denise Miller
Royer-Andrews at the 2017 USA Climbing Sport & Speed Youth National Championships in Atlanta.
Summit Strength & Fitness, a climbing gym on Kingsley Way that opened in January.
“For me, it was four days of absolute hell,” laughs her father, 34, who didn’t take up the sport until he introduced it to his daughter. “Climbing can be stressful to watch for parents, because it’s just the wall and your kid, balancing on tiny ledges 60 feet in the air.”
Royer-Andrews practices about 12 hours per week, and her goal is to place in the top three at next year’s Youth Nationals. When training for competition, she and her dad will travel to larger gyms with higher walls in Milwaukee and Chicago.
“I honestly didn’t even consider rock climbing a sport until I took her to Boulders for the first time,” says Andrews, who grew up in New York City. “Afterwards, she was just so excited about it, and things took off from there. It’s a very empowering sport, because there’s really not much difference between girls and boys in terms of ability.”
With sport climbing debuting at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, it’s bound to generate more interest — and probably new participants. Royer-Andrews’ advice to beginners? Stretch regularly to increase flexibility, and don’t get discouraged. “Think really positive thoughts,” she says.
