Fixe Super Shut anchors
On April 28, 2008 Whitman College first-year student Stephanie Foster fell 35 feet from the top of the Sherwood climbing wall located in the college’s recreation center. Just two days after the wall had been closed for major construction, Foster landed on her back in the rubber chips at the base of the wall, fracturing her L1 vertebrae.
Athletic Business and Recreation-Law.com continue the story:
Foster was employed as a student climbing instructor for the college’s outdoor program. The day of the accident Foster was asked by her supervisor to remove several climbing ropes that were hanging from the top of the wall. Foster climbed atop a platform adjacent to the wall where she removed all but one of the ropes. All ropes were clipped into Fixe Super Shut anchors. Having completed her task, Foster lowered herself back onto the climbing wall and began rappelling down the wall using the remaining rope. During her descent, however, the rope became unhooked from its anchors, and Foster fell approximately 35 feet to the ground, suffering permanent injury to her spine.
A year before Foster’s fall, Whitman College had hired Adventure Safety International to perform a risk management audit of the outdoor program. Auditor Alex Kosseff met with several students and administrators who were involved with the outdoor program and also observed several activities utilizing the climbing wall. After completing his site visit, Kosseff submitted a written report of his findings and recommendations to Whitman College. The report assigned the outdoor program the highest rating, noting that the quality of the program’s equipment was “exceptional” and that those responsible for the program routinely inspected the facility for potential safety hazards.
As a result of her injuries, Foster filed a lawsuit against Kosseff and ASI, claiming that they were negligent for failing to identify the risks posed by the Super Shut anchors during ASI’s risk assessment audit.
After the accident the college hired the same auditor to investigate the accident. (Can you say conflict of interest?) The auditor submitted a report on his investigation into the accident. The report stated that the plaintiff had climbed above the Super Shut anchors which released the rope causing her to fall.
It was determined that Foster’s fall occurred because the Super Shut anchors were not designed to accommodate a person climbing above them. Had Kosseff identified that risk and reported it to Whitman College in the intial audit, Foster claimed, the problem could have been corrected before she was injured.
Kosseff and ASI moved for summary judgment, arguing that Foster’s negligence claims must fail as a matter of law because neither Kosseff nor ASI owed her a duty of care to identify the dangerous conditions that caused her to fall.
The court concluded that Foster was unable to establish that ASI owed her a duty of care to discover and report the danger posed by misuse of the Super Shut anchors. In the absence of a duty of a care, the court concluded, Foster could not win her negligence claim.
Under Washington’s law, someone who inspects the premises of another does not become the insurer of anyone injured by the negligence of the inspection. In most states, an inspecting party is only “liable for undiscovered hazards which he or she undertook to discover in the first place.” Meaning, you are only liable for what you say you are going to discover and don’t.
The court found that ASI did not contract with Whitman College to address dangers caused by misuse of the outdoor program’s equipment. The court also ruled that even if ASI had a duty to inspect individual pieces of equipment, it could not reasonably have been expected to identify hazards stemming from potential misuse of the equipment.
RISK INVESTMENT
Although Kosseff and ASI were not found negligent for Foster’s injuries, there are a couple of important points that sports and recreation administrators, as well as risk management auditors, should take away from the court’s decision.
First, as the court noted, although the duty is limited to only inspecting the risks that they were hired to discover, risk management auditors do have a legal duty of care to those using the facility or program.
Second, since the main purpose of a risk management audit is to improve an organization’s safety practices rather than to identify and document specific safety hazards, risk management auditors are not insurers against all risks, and their legal duty of care will depend on the risks that were actually targeted by his or her inspection.
In the long term, colleges are going to be hesitant to build climbing walls because this case [against Whitman College] is going to settle or go to trial for a large amount of money. Spinal cord injuries are multimillion dollar cases.
Coach Hoffart and team. Photo: Midwest Climbing Academy
Coach Tyler Hoffart loved coaching but was tired of crowding his youth climbing team into the local gym, Vertical Endeavors in St. Paul, Minnesota, fighting members for space and ropes in order to train his athletes.
Like most climbing team coaches, Hoffart had to balance the needs of his team with the demands of the gym’s members.
“[Vertical Endeavors] is very popular and many, many people climb there,” Hoffart told CBJ. “This is a good thing in many ways and the energy is high, but trying to teach/mentor/coach kids in this situation is far from easy or effective.”
After years of coaching, Hoffart got a little nudge from the coach of Team Texas, Kyle Clinkscales, one of the most successful youth climbing coaches in America. At a competition the two were attending Clinkscales posed an important question to Hoffart about the future of his role as a coach. Hoffart recalls that Coach Kyle asked him, “Do you have a plan Tyler? You know, of how you could make this a career? You seem like a great coach, you are really good with kids. But I see lots of coaches come and go, coaches better than me.”
That inquiry was all it took for Hoffart to start thinking of ways to get out of the gym and into his own training center. Thus was born the Midwest Climbing Academy. The Academy is one of only two dedicated climbing training centers in the US. The other is Team ABC in Boulder, Colorado which opened the doors of its own facility in 2012.
The Academy features 3,100 square feet of roped terrain which includes a 40′ tall by 36′ wide lead wall and an official 10 meter speed wall. There is also 3,100 square feet of bouldering with a moveable boulder dubbed “Andon the Sandcrawler”which can be moved outside on those fleeting midwestern summer days. “We are small, but what we have really packs a fun punch,” said Hoffart.
Photo: Midwest Climbing Academy
Team Training
Modeled after Team ABC and other European training centers, Hoffart and his two other coaches hope to achieve the same success that Team ABC has achieved.
The Academy has five levels of training teams (both competitive and pre-competitive) for youths ages 6 – 19. Each Academy team member goes through a tryout that the coaches use to determine which team the young athlete should join. The Academy will take all kids regardless of experience, even those who have climbed only once before.
But for Hoffart the Academy is more than just a place for kids to get strong. “Comp climbing is not everything to us. More importantly, we want to build strong youth, whether they are competing or not, so that they can take on the rest of life with confidence,” Hoffart said.
Photo: Midwest Climbing Academy
Not Your Average Gym Membership
Both the Midwest Climbing Academy and Team ABC’s climbing training centers are less like traditional climbing gyms and more like private gymnastic training centers. They are not open to the public (or have limited public time). They also are not open to groups or birthday parties.
Without these other revenues, training facilities have to rely solely on team member dues to cover their expenses. For most gym owners this seems like a risky strategy, but Hoffert is not worried. “Just like a gymnastics center, we believe we can be successful on team fees,” said Hoffart.
The annual fee for the Academy’s lowest team level is $1,020 and fees go up to $3,825 per year for their elite team. This upper tier is higher than most climbing team’s annual membership dues, but it’s hard to compare the experience of training in a dedicated space with professional coaches and routes set specifically for each age group. For parents looking for the ideal place to take their children’s climbing to the next level, it may offer the perfect investment.
Why Training Facilities May Be The Future
Since Team ABC opened their training facility their team has come to dominate the youth competition scene, and coaches across the nation have taken note. Some may attribute their success to the unique style of the ABC coaches, but one shouldn’t underestimate the importance of having a dedicated training facility.
Team ABC has yet to spawn a slew of copycats, but it has made just about every coach who trains in a crowded climbing gym think about how nice it would be to have their own team facility. Meanwhile, more gym owners are challenged with how best to serve their regular customers and growing youth team within a limited space.
In the coming years, coaches and managers at traditional gyms will need to take a good look at the feasibility of opening a dedicated training center. They need to ask: Are their enough youth climbers in our area to support a training center? Will a training gym reduce the conflict between our team and regular customers, and can our gym support more members to offset the loss of team dues? How much additional revenue would a training center produce?
They should also weigh the possibility of other coaches following the lead of Coach Hoffart and creating their own training center nearby.
If Hoffart and his team do inspire other entrepreneurs they would be happy with the result. “If we can be a part of a trend which sees young people all over the country becoming very strong young people through climbing AND people who know how to properly mitigate and manage risk; well then, we’d be a lucky bunch indeed,” said Hoffart.
