High Ropes Offer Challenge by Choice

School students from second grade through Upper School are taking on a new challenge this fall—the high ropes course. Installed this summer behind the Girls’ Dorm next to the soccer field, the course is impressive just to look at. From the rock-climbing wall to the “vertical playground,” the professionally designed climbing apparatus offers something to challenge everyone, including the adults trained to help students safely navigate the course.

Several groups have already made use of the course, including Upper School boarders, Middle School PE classes, and even the second grade class under the careful supervision of a team of specially trained adults. After learning about the climbing equipment and safety procedures, the second graders were itching to get on the course. Some started with the rock-climbing wall, with two students climbing, two acting as “encouragers,” and two adults functioning as belayers. The first student made it all the way to the top of the wall on her first climb! Others followed her after repeated attempts, showing great determination. The second group took on the firecracker ladder, centipede, funky logs, and cargo net of the vertical playground. As the day progressed, more and more students were able to reach the platform at the top from either side of the course.

“If you climb up, you have to be able to climb down,” one of the adults reminded. This warning daunted few, however. The students understood that the activity wasn’t a competition, and that they were there to challenge themselves. There was no expectation that any student reach a certain level. “We call it, ‘challenge by choice,’ “ Lower School PE instructor Peter Martin explained. “We are all different when it comes to what challenges us—what we’re comfortable with. Some people will do this easily; for others it will be hard.” Learning to respect each other’s choices and be supportive of all was as essential to the activity as finding the right foothold.

For Lower and Middle Schoolers, taking on the course is part of the larger Project Adventure PE program, designed to foster unity and trust and to develop students’ problem solving skills. Climbing was one of the final “big activities” where students could put everything they’d learned into practice. Were they up to the challenge? As they say in the climbing world when everything is a go, “Climb on.”