After striking gold and silver in the British Para Climbing event, We are delighted to announce that two of our pupils, Reanne  (15) and Samantha  (17) have been selected for the Great Britain Climbing Team.

Reanne and Sam only started climbing last December with the OnThisROC Visually Impaired Climbing Club. The girls are competing in Paris at the 2012 IFSC World Para Climbing Championships in September after spending the summer holidays training and raising sponsorship to attend the event.

The girls started rock climbing ten months ago with a group from school. The girls explained how on ‘Wednesday and Thursday night we stay over at school to help with our social skills and when we were asked to join the group we said we’d give it a go because it sounded fun. We became the first Blind/Partially sighted team to enter the 2012 para climbing series and now we’re going to Paris in September to climb as part of team GB!’

Samantha who has a dual sensory impairment (vision and hearing loss) said ‘Climbing makes me feel strong, and confident in myself. I love being able to get involved and taking part in competitions. I love reaching the top of the wall and the excitement and happiness of knowing that I’ve done it fills me with joy, I can’t wait to do it again. Climbing takes a lot of thinking and hard work but the end result is worth all the effort. When I’m climbing up a high wall I forget everything going on around me and I just keep climbing, I am the same as everyone else.

St Vincent’s wishes both girls every success in their bid to climb to the top.