North Springs Student Competing in Youth World Climbing Championship

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North Springs Charter High School’s Luke Muehring left for Italy this week to compete in the IFSC 2015 Youth World Climbing Championships.

He will compete in Speed Climbing in the 16-17 year old category, after making the U.S. team scaling a 15 meter (60 foot wall) in 7.61 seconds in this summer’s 2015 National Youth Climbing Championships.

His time, his personal best, was a fraction off the winning time of 7.2 seconds, but fast enough to earn a third place medal and a spot on the American team.

He will be one of four climbers representing the United States in speed climbing in the 16-17 year old category in Arco, Italy, during the small town’s historic 29th Arco Rock Festival, held each year at the end of August.

Muehring began climbing in 2012, and devotes three hours a day, five days a week to his sport. With travel time to and from his gym, Stone Gym in Kennesaw, Muehring estimates he spends, “25 hours a week climbing and burns through a new pair of shoes about every three weeks.”

He gets home about 9 p.m., and after taking a shower and eating dinner, he starts his homework around 10 pm.

Muehring, an equally successful math and science magnet student, intends to keep up with his homework as much as possible, while in Arco, thanks to the Internet. By graduation he will have taken 13 AP classes, including past favorites AP Calculus and AP Chemistry and this year’s AP Computer Science and Multi Variable Calculus through North Springs’ distance learning class with Georgia Tech.

He is not sure what he wants to pursue in college, but envisions something in technology along with climbing. He hopes his strong academics along with his climbing success will earn him a scholarship to help offset the expenses of his sport.

“Climbing is expensive -- all the gear and my shoes really add up,” he said.

For now, his focus is on Arco, where he will be competing along with 1,000 other young athletes from around the world. In the speed climbing competition, Muehring will compete in two runs, and the fastest time out of the two will count.

He will return to school Sept. 8, after the festival and championships end on Sept. 6.

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Photo 1: Luke Muehring races to the top in the 2015 National Youth Climbing Championships’ speed climbing competition held at Stone Summit Gym in Kennesaw, Georgia, this summer. He scaled the 60 foot wall in 7.61 seconds!
Photo 2: North Springs Charter High School senior Luke Muehring will be competing in the 2015 IFSC World Youth Climbing Championship in Arco, Italy, beginning August 28, after earning a spot on the US team at Nationals in July. He is shown here with his younder brother Joshua and older brother Daniel (NS ‘14, Presidential Scholar at SMU ) medaling in the 2015 National Youth Climbing Championships in Kennesaw, Georgia.
Photo credits: North Springs Charter High School