Danielle Rogan, Climbing to the Top

September 25, 2012

Imagine being at a dizzying height in a foreign country, climbing with your mere hands and feet up a wall, with your fingers getting sweaty. This is the experience that junior Danielle Rogan encountered when she entered the Adult World Championships for rock climbing in France as one of the youngest girls there.

“The competition in France was pretty scary,” Rogan said.

Rogan started rock climbing at one of those kiddy walls you see at say, Dick’s Sporting Goods when a guy there told her to check out climbing teams. Since starting in seventh grade Rogan has advanced her rock climbing skills and is looking towards a rock climbing future.

“Climbing is possibly going to be part of the Olympics in 2020, and I’ve always wanted to be in the Olympics,” Rogan said.

Few teens spend time dreaming of participating in the upcoming Olympics but Rogan humbly insists she is just like any other 16 year old girl. Climbing may be a part of Rogan’s life but also has many other unique interests involving school, family and friends.

“Outside of climbing, I’m just a normal high schooler. I hang out with friends, play violin, and try to keep up in school,” Rogan said.

Keeping up can be hard when she is traveling the world rock climbing. After being in France for a whole week, missing school, Rogan has to prioritize. And sometimes, rock climbing comes first.

“Rock climbing takes up a lot of time, like any sport. It’s hard, sometimes, to manage balancing everything out.” Rogan said,” You have to plan a lot of things in advance to accommodate competitions and traveling. So sometimes, I have to pick climbing over something else I like doing. For example, next week I’m missing the homecoming dance because I’ll be in Atlanta, Georgia for the only world cup competition taking place in the States.”

Other than social events with friends Rogan also says its hard to keep up on homework. Missing a whole week of rigorous classes can really add up on homework.

“It was hard coming back to school and having to deal with the major time change and all the extra homework that I missed,” Rogan said.

Of course, there are some great perks of the traveling that comes along with rock climbing. While in France Rogan got to sightsee at arguably some to the most amazing places in the world. From museums, to landmarks, to simply watching competitors climb in competition, Rogan got an eyeful.

“I did a lot of sightseeing, like the Louvre, the Arc de Triumph, the Eiffel Tower, and Notre Dame, to name a few. A lot of the time, I was at the competition cheering on the rest of the US Team, or just watching other climbers,” Rogan said.

Like any athlete Rogan aspires to accomplish things of others. Her idols fuel her inspiration and goals.

“There are many climbers that I admire, like an American climber named Sasha DiGiulian, who is 19, and has been professionally climbing longer than I’ve even been climbing competitively. I also admire a Russian climber named Yuliya Levochkina, who currently holds the Woman’s World Speed record of 8.37 seconds on the 15 meter wall,” Rogan said.

Danielle Rogan is definitely an athlete and student to watch, with much more in store for the future.

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Julia Vastano, Editor-in-chief

In 7th grade Julia signed up for newspaper class on a total whim. To this day she isn’t exactly sure what landed her in Mrs. Sanders 7th period newspaper class. She kind of just went with the flow (which is actually very peculiar for Julia because she usually plans everything at least 3 years in advance) Now she is one of the Editor-In-Chiefs of The Red Ledger so that happened and it’s cool and she likes the gig. Extra Curriculars are a huge part of Julia’s life. So much so she refuses to list them out here for fear of becoming explicitly boring. Her hobbies include dancing, tripping, falling, flailing and anything of that general nature. She wants to major in history or political science and go to law school eventually. Her fantasy career would be a paleontologist because dinosaurs are awesome, but she is more realistically looking into being a lawyer (which yes, she does find to be equally exciting.) Other than all of that, Julia is so super duper excited for the 2015-2016 Red Ledger staff. She is very confident that this year the online news source will kick some booty at something and be really informative. She is even more pumped to work along side the old married couple (also known as the other two amazing Editor-In-Chiefs of The Red Ledger) Jillian and Hallie.

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Danielle Rogan, Climbing to the Top

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