From May 2-5, Salt Lake City hosted the 2025 USA Climbing Collegiate National Championships, where the University of Utah earned gold medals across all categories — including overall — securing its fourth consecutive national title.The competition featured three disciplines: bouldering, lead and speed, drawing over 300 athletes from 101 colleges nationwide.
National Championships
This year, the team saw immense growth, with around 80 members on the competition roster and roughly 30 qualifying for nationals — reportedly the largest collegiate turnout at the event, according to head coach Sophia Hoermann.
The competitors were divided into intermediate and advanced categories, both of which were introduced last year. The intermediate division “opens the accessibility” for collegiate climbers who are new to competition, as it has a lower skill requirement.
“The advanced category, especially as of late, is pretty tough competition,” Hoermann said. “A lot of climbers who grew up competing their whole lives, when they go to college, they decide they don’t want to compete in elite or in youth and they just do collegiate instead…but they’re very high-level climbing competitors, so [USA Climbing] made an intermediate category, at least this is my view of it.”
Building on their regular weekly practices, the Utah Climbing Team expanded its training opportunities this year by partnering with USA Climbing — the sport’s leading national organization — to host training camps at the Salt Lake City training center. These camps featured coaching support from American Olympian Kyra Condie and longtime competitor Charlie Osborne.
“We were hoping to use [USA Climbing’s] facilities, but they decided that they wanted to be more involved with [the team] so [trainings] became a USA Climbing event,” Hoermann said. “That was an awesome opportunity for our members and also other collegiate competitors to get some insight into what competitive climbing is like.”
Utah Climbing Team
The Utah Climbing Team is a student-run organization with both recreational and competitive divisions available to all students. Founded in 2014, the team aims to connect and challenge students by providing resources that help build community and improve on skills.
“This year, we provided day passes to a certain number of people every week,” Julia Duffy, vice-president of the team, said. “Even if people didn’t have a gym membership, if they signed up for a free day pass, they could come to practice and participate, which I think increased our engagement a lot.”
Due to the team’s status as a student-run organization, the Utah Climbing Team manages most of its own funding, often used for opportunities such as entry fees for nationals.
“It would be nice in the future to become more affiliated with the university so that we can rep the university brand,” Duffy said. “[We want to] become a bit more affiliated and then hopefully get more money that way. The amount of funding we get varies every year because a lot of it comes from internal fundraising.”
Despite this, Hoermann attributes the team’s success in collegiate competitions to the club’s accessible and and open structure.
“There’s no tryouts, there’s nothing like that,” Hoermann said. “I think that’s one of our big strengths. We have a very big team of people who are all really psyched on climbing and improving, and we have all these opportunities for people to get better if they want.”
