Two Bay Area climbers made the national team in speed climbing at the Sport Climbing Series Open National Championships, Saturday in Santa Ana.
Jacquelyn Wu, 17, of San Francisco, was third in the women’s competition. A senior at Urban School in San Francisco, she also made the national speed team last year in both youth and open divisions. In the sport-climbing competition at the weekend’s event, she placed eighth.
On the men’s side, Josh Levin, 20, finished fifth in speed. A 2012 graduate of Sunnyvale’s Fremont High School, he attends Northeastern University in Boston. He was last year’s national open champion in speed, and as a youth competitor, he was national speed champion in his age group for 10 consecutive years.
Wu and Levin compete for Zero Gravity, a Bay Area climbing team.
The national championships, overseen by USA Climbing, drew more than 80 climbers age 15 and up to the Sender One climbing gym in Santa Ana. In the sport climbing discipline, they competed on routes about 50 feet tall and were scored on how far they got before falling. The speed event was on a 10-meter route.
The big draw on the competitor list was Chris Sharma, 32, the Santa Cruz native who is arguably the most famous climber in the world. He attended the event as owner of host gym Sender One but scrapped his plan to compete, citing jet lag and an exhausting recent climbing schedule.
The men’s sport climbing medalists were Brad Weaver, 25, of Atlanta; Noah Ridge, 20, of Minneapolis; and Rob D’Anastasio, 30, of Boulder, Colo. Defending champion Daniel Woods, 24, finished seventh.
Among women, the repeat national champion was Delaney Miller, 19, a Colorado State University student from Frisco, Texas. The other medalists were Sasha DiGiulian, 21, a Columbia University student from Alexandria, Va., and Claire Buhrfeind, 15, from Plano, Texas.
Miller and Buhrfeind compete for Team Texas, as does Grace McKeehan, 15, who finished fourth in speed and fifth in sport.
The men’s speed champion was John Brosler, 17, of Plano, Texas – another Team Texas member – who set a U.S. speed climbing record with a time of 3.95 seconds on the 10-meter wall. The women’s champion was Megan Carr, 17, of Carmel, Ind.
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