In September, the Akins Rock Climbing Club received a $3,000 grant from the Austin Ed Fund to help fund its activities.
The Rock Climbing Club has existed for two years at Akins and so far has mostly relied on private donations to pay for its expenses, which includes passes to rock climbing gyms in Austin.
The Eagle’s Eye interviews Akins Rock Climbing club adviser Christopher Aguilar on the grant they received from Austin Ed Fund and more information about the club.
EE: What is the Akins Rock Climbing club?
CA: “It was started two years ago by a student here at Akins who was an avid rock climber, like she was all about rock climbing, she climbs at UT now, and so we started it. It was just to give Akins kids an opportunity to try something that they might not have done before. Many people might have heard of rock climbing, but a lot of people haven’t tried it before. It used to be we met during fit on Thursdays just to have like, a, like the social aspect of it, like the team building stuff. So we do little fun little games, and have me and just talk about stuff, and then we would climb at Crux every other Saturday morning.”
EE: What gym does the club use?
CA: “So Crux, there’s several in Austin. There’s there’s Austin bouldering product, Austin bouldering project, that’s the one that’s right by Westgate. We’ve been there a few times, but we spend most of our time at Crux. Crux is climbing gym is right by st Ed’s. And Crux has been good with us. We hadn’t started the club yet, It was more of an idea, and I think at the time, Crux was charging people $175 for a 10 day pass, and they were giving us the same pass for 100 bucks. So they were giving us a pretty good discount. So they have been helpful.”
EE: How much does it cost to join the club?
CA: “So when I’ve purchased before, I purchase 100 passes at a time, and they’re just purchased under the rock climbing account. So the Saturdays that we show up, the kids just give them their name, and it just comes out of the total amount of passes that we have. And the other thing that crux was super helpful about, if you just purchase a pass from crux, that pass just gets you in. It doesn’t get you the shoes or the chalk or anything like that. You have to pay extra for that, but they included it in our package. So we paid 100 bucks, which is less than normal, and that included the shoes and that’s been super helpful.”
EE: So what are some expenses that you have to run the club? And is that why you sought out the grant?
CA:” Yeah. So the main expense is just those passes, you know. So getting because, and again, they keep raising prices. I think a day pass, like if you just wanted to go for one day, I think it’s like 20 or 25, bucks, and it does not include shoes or anything like that. So it’s not super expensive, but it can be. It can be a problem for some of our kids, you know. so all the money that we’ve gotten and that we raised is to pay for those passes, which does include, again, the shoes and the chalk we go to climb. Another thing that we have done in the past, we have had a party towards the end of the first semester, and so that money can help pay for some of those expenses too. Then at the end of the school year, we have like, one big last climb, and there’s a party that pays for pizza and stuff like that.”
EE: What is the source of the grant that you applied to?
CA: “It’s from Austin Ed Fund. That’s where my application process went through. Wasn’t a super long process and the questions, you know, obviously, “why do you want the money? Who’s going to benefit from the money? Where’s the money going to go? What’s the ultimate goal of the project?”” But yeah, the money is coming from Austin Ed Fund and that was four or five pages you had to go through.”
EE: Is this source of funding enough or will you need more?
CA: “Probably I would need to seek more. So the way that the club got started again, it’s been free. So we’ve been around for two years already, and it’s been free for the kids only because I’ve got at my old job, I worked with people that made a lot of money, and I was just calling them, and they were just writing checks, and they were just giving our club money. So it’s been free for the kids so far, but it’s been like out of pocket from just people who have wanted to help me out and that just wanted to help more kids. I heard about this opportunity. I was like, well, let me try getting the grant. So when we go again, we’re just trying to get started this year, because not having fit has made it a little bit challenging to me. So and I figured this grant should last us this year for sure, and hopefully next year too, and then I’ll probably need to start looking to get some more.”
EE: Has there ever been issues with the club’s size?
CA: “Well, yes and no, right? And that’s what I’m kind of excited about, because it was sort of being privately funded before I did have a sort of limited money, so we didn’t put a hard cap on that number. But I was always kind of concerned about if too many people sign up, we had a limited amount of money, so that kept us from maybe advertising more than we should have, because at one point we got to about 25 people, like the first year. So if I bought the 100 pass thing, we could only go as a club just four times, you know. So I did get a little concerned last year, we sort of dipped down in numbers a little bit, and again, I was a little concerned about trying to recruit more kids. But with this amount of money, we should be able to, like open it up, and I know kids have been putting posters around. So we are trying to recruit more. Now that Miss Van Horn just emailed saying that clubs can now meet during the advisory, we hadn’t been able to talk about things and figure out, okay how do we advertise more and get more people signed up for it?”
