By Mark Ambrogi
Megan Carr will have one final crack in the World Youth Climbing Championships, since she will be forced to move to the adult division in 2016.
“My goal is to have fun,” said Carr of her upcoming trip to the International Federation of Sport Climbing world tournament in Arco, Italy. “This is my last go-around (in youth division) but I would like to place better than I have in the past. I placed eighth the last time and I like to make top four this year.”
The 2014 Carmel High School graduate was eighth in the world in speed climbing (on a 15-meter wall) in the girls 16-17 division in Canada in 2013 and 10th in the world in Singapore in the 16-17 class in 2012.
Carr, who trains at Hoosier Heights in Carmel, will have four days to train in Italy before competition on Sept. 4.
She qualified by finishing third in her girls 18-19 speed climbing division in the national climbing championships in Atlanta in July.
Carr, who will be a sophomore at Indiana University, won her 18-19 division in nationals in 2014 and qualified for the world tourney in Austria but couldn’t go because of missing too much of her first year in college.
Carr will miss about one-and-a-half weeks of classes, and she is planning to do a little sight-seeing with her parents in Italy.
Carr plans to compete on the adult circuit if she has time to train well in college. Carr started climbing when she was about 6 years old when her older sister Kate, now 23, took up climbing. Kate has given it up since she is now in medical school.
“I started climbing on the official speed wall when I was 11,” said Carr, who competed in the pole vault for CHS. “Speed has always been my favorite and I’m best at it. I love that it’s so specific. It’s one route, everyone knows it and you just have to do it as fast as you can. The way you get faster is to change your body movements.”
To learn more or to make a donation for Carr’s trip to Italy, visit usaclimbing.rallyme.com/rallies/1989.
