SKILLS FOR THRILLS World champion climbers teach at UTC By Charlie Reed
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UTC.EDU/MAGAZINE/SYNERGY
6 | The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Magazine
or professional rock climbers Wills Young and Lisa Rands, climbing is their passion and their business. It’s also how they fell for each other. Married for 18 years, they have spent years doing things most people will only see in photographs or videos. In 2010, they moved to Chattanooga from Bishop, California, a little town on the cusp of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and haven’t looked back. They chose the Scenic City—after coming here for a competition sponsored by The North Face—to start their next adventure in climbing. This time as instructors. “It’s the perfect size with stuff going on and the climbing right on the back door,” says Young, who began teaching climbing for students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in fall 2022, when outdoors classes returned after a pandemic hiatus. They employ and teach UTC students at their gym, Synergy Climbing and Ninja, which they opened in the summer of 2020 amid tough times and after years of working for other people. One of their newest employees, Luke Holmes, started as an intern from the UTC College of Health and Human Performance. Holmes earned a bachelor’s degree in outdoor recreation and sports management in the fall of 2021 and interned at Synergy the summer before that. He’s been climbing since his teens and says the job couldn’t be more perfect. “There’s a lot of hanging out and fun that’s part of it,” says Holmes. “Wills and Lisa are the best. They’ve just done so much so it’s awesome to get to work here.” Aside from their expertise and the innate exhilaration that comes with the very idea of rock climbing, it’s no wonder people are drawn to Young and Rands. They were the late 1990s/early 2000s version of today’s social media influencers. Rands was hitting her professional stride and with Young as her coach and partner, the couple
