Before Basin, Eloise Williams climbed whatever was available. Trees. The door frames of her house. She was the kind of kid whose feet didn’t stay on the ground, and a family friend who’d watched her scale the furniture for years finally told her mom, “You’ve got to get her into climbing.”
So the Williams family came to Basin. None of the four of them had ever climbed before.
“Our friend Alyssa brought us up here, and for Eloise it just clicked,” her mom Courtney told us. “She loved it and could not wait to come back.”
Eloise’s own memory of walking in the first time is three words long: “This is exciting.”
The quiet kid
Here’s the part of the story Courtney didn’t see coming.
“Eloise has always been my quiet and reserved child. She never had a big passion, just a sweet, sweet child,” Courtney said. “After climbing, we’ve seen a confidence in her that has blown my mind, and everybody who knows her.”
It wasn’t just her parents noticing. “My family members have said she is so confident right now. People notice a difference in her.”
Courtney tells one story that captures it. The family was climbing for fun one day when she watched her daughter, 10 years old at the time, walk over to a group of college students.
“I was like, what is she doing? That’s not like her, to go talk to people she doesn’t know,” Courtney said. “They started talking about a route and how to accomplish it, and I watched her take turns with them, all cheering each other on. It shocked me that she felt like she was part of the group, a tiny 10-year-old with these college boys.”
That’s a kid who found out she belongs in the mix, not in the background.
Falling, as told by an 11-year-old
Ask Eloise what she loves about the sport and she answers like a climber.
“It’s a little bit like on the tip of your toes, like you could fall,” she said. “And that’s just a part of the sport.”
Her mom watched that lesson sink in from the ground. “I was more nervous for her climbing than she has been. With every climb and every fall, it hasn’t deterred her, it’s just motivated her. She has this determination and intensity we hadn’t seen in her before.”
That’s the thing we say all the time at Basin, coming back to us through a fourth grader: falling isn’t failing. It’s information, and Eloise reads it fluently.
Finding the team
On the family’s first visit, someone asked Courtney if Eloise was on one of the teams. She didn’t know there were teams. They signed her up almost immediately, and a year later, Eloise has competed on walls as tall as 65 feet, including her first competition in Houston.
“It blows my mind, her confidence walking into a competition, never having done one, not knowing what it would look like, and being able to walk in there by herself and do all of that,” Courtney said. “It’s a testament to what climbing has done for her.”
What does Eloise say about her coaches? “They’re very encouraging, but they challenge me.”
Courtney’s reaction: “That’s exactly what you want in a coach. Someone who builds you up but pushes you to be better.”
The part where mom got hooked too
Courtney came to Basin expecting to watch. “I was super intimidated. I thought, this is Eloise’s thing, I’ll come, but… okay, that looks kind of fun. I’ve been shocked that at 42 she gave me a new hobby that was never on my radar.”
Now all four Williamses climb, on the same wall, at the same time. “Having my 10-year-old excel at something I physically can’t do has been very strange, but so cool that we can do a sport together, encourage each other. She teaches me a ton.”
And the gym that intimidated her turned out to be the opposite. “When I came not knowing anything, I didn’t even know what ‘beta’ meant, people were excited that I was trying something new and willing to help me. It was, ‘No, come here, let’s work on this together.’”
What Basin became
We asked Courtney to finish the sentence “Basin has become ___ for our family.”
“Basin has become a community for our family. A place we walk through the door and people are excited to see us, they know us, they encourage us. A sweet place where we feel known and have a lot of fun.”
If this sounds like your kid
Courtney’s advice to parents on the fence is better than any pitch we could write: “Give it a try, definitely. I wish we’d started earlier with Eloise. If you have a child whose feet don’t stay on the ground at home, this is the place to redirect that energy.”
Eloise started with one visit and no experience. Your kid can start the same way, come on a day pass and let them explore, and if they’re curious about what Eloise found, the Rec Team’s first class is free, no tryout, Monday and Wednesday afternoons.
The wall is patient, and the Basin family has room for one more.
-Trinity Robb, Founder