By: CS Danielson

I have been routesetting since 1994 and have been a part of organizing and/or setting over 100 competitions all across the country at numerous facilities, in various formats, and with all different levels of competitors. One might think with a fairly serious degree of experience, a number of successful high-level events in the past, and a solid team of professional setters – all of whom I have worked with before – that I might have had a good shot of hitting an A grade as Head Setter for ABS 8 Adult Nationals this year.

Unfortunately I did not, or at least not in the realm of accurately gauging the ability of competitors and using that knowledge to divide the field fairly in competition. There were no injuries or technicals in the competition which can always be deemed a success, but there were numerous ties in the final onsight round and that reflected an inexcusably poor performance on my part.

So now I am faced with the challenge of disappointment, and what to do with it. Disappointment among the competitors, some of whom are my friends, among the spectators, who would like to have seen a better show, and my setting peers. For years now, I (and the setters with whom I have worked) have had high expectations for our performance, our discipline, and our ability to judge ability levels and determine successful competitions through effective coursesetting.

This event has been perhaps my biggest failure as a setter and I have concluded that my choices are to either walk away from the pressure of big events, or learn from it. I am going to try to learn from it and improve, and figured it might benefit the setting community if I shared this experience. What follows constitute the reasons (not excuses) for the less than desirable conclusion at ABS 8 Nationals, but first I will lay out what some of the goals were for the event.

An Insight into Failure

In recent years, USA Climbing and the team of setters working at major bouldering events have set problems so hard that they either saw few sends or none at all. We have consistently divided the field for years, but always struggled to set perfect problems and get an even divide of competitors up each, which is the best result for the climbers themselves and of course the spectators. Typically this means shooting for 18 – 20 competitors to do Finals 1, between 10 – 12 to do Finals 2, 2 – 4 to do Finals 3, and 1 – 2 to do Finals 4.

The failures of the past have been minor compared to this one, but what we have been challenged by in recent years is that we have ended up setting so that problems 3 and 4 are so ridiculously hard (around V11 for the men, V9 for the women) that Finals 3 only sees one ascent (as at Sendfest this past year – both men and women) and Finals 4 sees none (3 years running for the men).

So, this year, we had the goal of dividing the field fairly in qualifiers, and setting a bit easier in Finals so that we’d get some climbers up the wall and the crowd cheering consistently rather than waiting for a last send on Final 4 only to be disappointed. We succeeded in dividing the field for both the men and women in the qualifying round, which I do consider a success.

The results in finals were less desirable, and much more according to gender. In the Mens field, we saw 4 flashes of all 4 Finals, which was a couple more than we would have liked, but still fun to watch and fun for the competitors. I also concluded that this was fair, since Daniel Woods was the clear winner from Qualifiers.

In terms of the women, we set the problems far too easy and there were flashes of every Final by 8 women, which resulted in an impromptu superfinal on Mens 1 that worked extremely well in dividing the field (Alex Puccio was the clear winner, the only to send Mens 1, which re-enforced her number one qualifying spot the night before and was the official marker for her win of the overall event), but was disappointing for the competitors nonetheless since they were hoping to prove themselves on the Finals problems.

Five Errors

While I could continue to belabor the details of the failure down to the specific moves of each problem, I hope explaining the reasons behind them will be more useful, both for myself, and for any setters interested in the process as well. There are, in my view, five reasons why we did not hit the mark with effective coursesetting.

1. The first has to do with a fear of injury. On Wednesday, the week before the competition, one of the Youth Nationals Setting Team members, Zach Leavitt, had an unfortunate fall while forerunning (from about 15 feet) and dislocated his knee and broke his leg. We feel horrible about this young setter’s injury and wish him the best in his recovery. The injury certainly deflated the morale of the setting crew overall and had me increasingly worried about scary, difficult moves up high, not only since we could see bad falls, but also because the padding for the event could have been more dense and thicker overall.

2. The second reason was a desire to see more sends than we have typically seen in Finals, which, with the men, as I’ve said – we did fairly well with. I wanted to err on the side of more rather than less sends, and though clearly we did that, we also quite clearly overcompensated.

3. Together with that is the third error, which was that I did not correctly anticipate the degree to which the lower 10 women in the Finals field have improved as competitors. Typically there is a fairly serious difference in the ability of climber 20 and climber 1 in terms of the Finals running order, and while that is still the case, the young women competing are progressing at an increasingly fast pace and coming closer to the top at every event. While normally we set lower moves easier so that the bottom end of the field can still get through some of the moves in each problem, we did not need to do that as much in this competition as in former events, since climber 20 is improving at a higher rate than climber 1.

4. The fourth error was less than effective forerunning on the women’s Finals. Since I have had good success gauging the top women’s ability based on my own experience in the past, I have typically run the women’s problems myself and had only one or two female forerunners. In this competition I found myself running the Men’s problems more than I typically might, (in part due to one of our Adult Nationals Setting Team members being sick), and also because I wanted to work those moves out to perfection. A partial result of my increased climbing on the Men’s problems was that I did not spend as much time as I should have personally forerunning the Women’s, and when I did, I (and others who did climb them) may have been weaker from running the Men’s than I thought. We did have female forerunners who were helpful in the setting process, but better choices could have been made about when to have those women run the problems and have them climb more than perhaps I did.

5. The Last Three Moves. While typically my goal is to set progressively difficult movement, especially in the last 3 moves of a Finals problem, the fear factor (of injuring competitors) had a great deal to do with the last few moves on Mens and Womens Final 4 being easier than they have been in past comps. Originally we had the Men finishing over a tall 16 foot lip with dynamic movement, and the Women finishing in a 16 foot roof with a powerful heel hook move that might induce a spinning fall. I did not want to create dangerous movement and risk bad falls or injuries, and though I succeeded there, I obviously overcompensated by making the moves not nearly as challenging as they should have been, especially for the women.

In Hindsight…

The Men: With the men, I think we did fairly well according to my goals of getting more climbers to the top of all the problems, allowing 4 sends of Mens 4, and only a few more of Mens 3 – the only thing I would change would be to have made the very last two moves of Mens 4 more strenuous, so that perhaps 1 or 2 of the 4 competitors who flashed might have fallen at a high point.

The Women: With the women, I would have done a great deal differently. With Womens Final 4, I would have made the moves up to the middle of the problem generally harder, and kept difficult moves in the roof, but tested women on those moves, and the falls, through forerunning. I would have had female forerunners for a longer period of time, and perhaps different women whose ability levels I had a better understanding of (not that the women who helped forerun weren’t great – thank you to them!).

I would have climbed more on the Women’s problems myself, and charged the setting team with working more seriously on the Men’s – which was a partial error in task delegation. Lastly, the most serious error was a technical oversight. I would have made changes to Women’s Final 3, which I had intended to make and in the chaos of Finals setting thought had been made, but in fact had not. This is one of the things I am most upset about with myself, since I knew where the difficulty level of Women’s 3 should have been and I knew the necessary tweaks (for those who are interested: A counterclockwise turn on a middle slopey edge, another on a high gaston, yet another on the last match-able hold, and a smaller jug finish).

I am confident these changes, which I had run the night before, would have divided the field almost entirely and would have allowed few if any ties in the end. But, quite simply, I was wrong about them having already been made. This error is the one I am kicking myself about the most, since it was a strategic mistake in the transition period, rather than a miscalculation on my part.

The Superfinals: The Men’s superfinal was really only put together as a failsafe for ties in Finals and Qualifiers, and we did not intend to use it and only did since we were doing one for the Women and wanted to keep the guys moving for the crowd as well. I had thought we might use the Men’s Final 1 as a superfinal for the Women, and in the end made the decision to do so, partially to keep the girls in competition mode, and give them a better chance to show their true strengths (which I have to respect more in the future!).

This impromptu decision, supported by the organizers and the setters, is one I am happy I made, and hope it at least reflected some effort to make up for the failings that proved out in the Finals round. I would not have changed anything about running the superfinal except that I would have set the Men’s just slightly harder, and notified the women earlier that they would run in a superfinal if they flashed all 4 problems.

A Learning Experience

That wraps up my own review of the event, from the standpoint of failure, and I hope it proves to be a learning experience for myself and others. I welcome any feedback.

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