Sidney was now part of the big red machine known as Team Vertical World and she went right to work. It seemed like she was always on the wall during practice. She became fast friends with everyone on the team in Everett and it looked like she found her own niche apart from her brother. Well, that didn't last long. At first, Chase and I would go hang out at the library or do errands and then go have a nice dinner together. That got old for him very fast and after about a month he said he wanted to climb in the gym during practice but not be on team. I thought that was a good idea and got him a membership. Before I know it, he's buddies with everyone on the team, too. He basically was practicing with the team but not on the team. He finally broke down and said he wanted to join the team. By then, it was toward the end of the ABS season and we agreed that he would start officially when the SCS season started. Now my second climber was born. Back to Sidney. Right out of the gate, she did very well at the local comps. 5th place at the opener at the Circuit, 5th place at Edgeworks, 2nd place at Inclimb, 6th place at the SBC and 3rd place at Redmond VW(Chase also competed in this comp and finished 5th). I thought she would do well but this was better than I expected. Regionals was at Clubsport and when she came out of Iso I could tell she was really nervous. She did fine on the first 2 problems but fell at the same spot 4 times on the 3rd problem. After the 4th attempt I figured she was toast but she proved me wrong. She was resting and then the timer announced "1 minute left." As soon as she heard that, she hopped on the wall and went straight to the top. She had issues with the 4th problem but did fine and then we waited for the results. 5th place! A great result for your first Regionals but one spot from an invitation to Nationals. She was a bit down but all right. Later in the week she got a 2nd round invite and I had a big decision to make. Should I send her even though prior results shown that she probably wouldn't do well or spend the money and see what happens? Plus, she was so young that I figured she would have plenty more chances to go. I smile to this day that I made the right decision to take her to Boulder, CO for the big event. I think being nervous at Regionals was a good thing for her because I have not seen her nervous at any comp since. She is very cool under fire. By Nationals, she was looking strong but I wasn't expecting much. I just wanted her to get some experience. The first day was qualifiers and she did very well. There were 30 girls competing with the top 10 making it to Finals. She ended up qualifying 8th (which is good luck as you'll see in a future post) by the hair of her chinny-chin-chin. She actually had the same score as 5 other girls but had no falls. We were giddy that night. Whatever happened the next day we didn't seem to care. She had made finals! The next day she climbed like she had no pressure finishing 3rd to make the podium and US Team. She tied for 2nd place but got 3rd because of falls. She was happy but I don't think she realized what she had accomplished, yet. She'd figure it out soon enough. My favorite moment is the picture I took of her and B-Hops with their team jackets on. B-Hops was a big reason she fell in love with climbing and now they were both members of Team USA. She had come full circle in a very short time.
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