QA
with Rebecca Hounsell
Congratulations to Rebecca Hounsell (11SE) on her recent gold medal at the National Climbing Championships held in Rotorua.
R
ebecca was selected for Climbing New Zealand’s NZ Youth Team last year, to compete in the IFSC World Youth Championships. She has been climbing since she was a little girl and talks here about her love of the sport.
HOW DID YOU GET INTO THE SPORT? I got into rock climbing quite by accident. When I was four my mum was ill with leukaemia, and my dad was looking for things for me to do – one of his friends suggested going to the climbing gym for the day. I loved it so much I wanted to stay all day and I got him to take me back every day he could. After a year I was allowed to join the climbing club and my passion has grown since then.
WHAT INFLUENCED YOU TO DO IT? Although it is hard to remember what attracted me as a four-year-old, I have some early memories of what I liked and my dad recalls things that I told him when I was little. I liked the physical challenge of climbing – you need to pull hard. I loved the mental challenge of working out the puzzle of how to do a climb. I made a lot of really good friends of a wide range of ages and I was able to compete in a sport that I liked. There 70
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