Dear Coaches,

After 11 years of climbing, I've been through my fair share of coaches. Some of you could only manage to stick around for a month (or less!), but others stayed for years before moving on with their lives. I don't really blame you- being a climbing coach means dealing with dozens of high-maintenance kids for very little pay, but losing a coach is different than switching jobs (especially for young climbers).

When a climber is on the wall, they're alone (duh), but it's exactly the opposite once they get back on the ground. The team is as much, is not more, a family than actual blood relatives. In order to climb together, you must have complete trust in the person, as your life quite literally is in their hands. Not only are we trusting that our partner won't kill us, but also won't make the climbing any harder or more painful than it has to be. With that said, the coach(es) are the parents of the team. Each and every one of the athletes l ook up to the coaches for all kinds of advice.

The first two coaches I lost were because of me, not them. After about two years on Team Indy Flash, a new gym opened and my sister and I switched to Hoosier Heights. With our old gym and teammates, we also left two coaches.

Our next true coach stayed with us for a while, and was greatly missed once he had left. The team had spent so much time together, it was like waking up from a dream when it changed. My favorite thing about this coach was his ability to fit in just as well with the athletes as he did with the parents. Whenever the team went out to eat after competitions, he would snag a seat at the "kids' table", and ensure that the laughter never ceased. Another one of my fondest memories with this coach was the routine that we had every time we stretched as a team. He had several silly names for stretches, but my favorite was when we pulled our arms behind our backs because he would chase us around while we were still in the stretch. The time came when he stopped coaching to manage the gym and then moved on to teach physics.

It went along similar to that, with one of you showing up to coach until you got your life together, and then moving on to greater things. Every once in a while, we got one that hung around for long enough that we began to think that you might actually stay. Suddenly, you would get a great job opportunity and the cycle would start again. As I grew, I slowly resigned myself to accepting the pattern. As hard as I tried, I couldn't stop myself from attaching to every new parent figure that came into my life.

So many of you don't even think twice about the time that you coached my team, but each and every one you is close to my (and many others') heart. No matter how short or long you were with the team, you had a part in raising and guiding dozens of kids.Thank you.

Love,

Shae Kelly, Team Hoosier Heights, and the old Indy Flash team members