A pack of teenagers from Providencia is heading to San Salvador in two weeks for a major regional climbing competition, and for some reason I’m their coach.We should start at the beginning, with Eric and Ying Allen. A commercial fisherman and beekeeper from the Yukon (which is somewhere north of the United States), they spend six months of their year in Costa Rica operating the school at which I am volunteering these days.

In the Allen Family, as Eric says, there is no clear dividing line between climbing and religion. At the school, students are encouraged to participate in all sports, so long as that sport is climbing.

So they do, and they’re good, as a shelf attests. Maicol, for instance, is 14 and still so short that he wouldn’t be able to go on the better carnival rides, but he can do 15 pull ups and climbs up a wall in a way that makes you wonder if he wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider at one point in his life. He also looks, by the way, as though he were a direct descendent of Alfred E. Newman.

The four kids headed to this tournament in El Salvador represent nearly half of the Costa Rican delegation, which, given the size of this town, would be a bit like 40 percent of the U.S. Olympic team coming from Plains, Georgia.

The competition promises to be fierce, however, and that’s where my expert training regime comes in. While the idea of climbing rocks actually makes me want to do something more interesting, like watch bananas ripen, I can order people to do push ups with the best of ‘em. I can even tell people to start climbing a wall and then stop until they just can’t stand it anymore. Channeling my old college friend/running coach Luca, I tell them to worship the pain.

They complain, of course. David is fond of asking why I am not a normal boy (sounds better in Spanish). But I’ll be damned if we’re going to surrender to the Guatemalans, or worse, the despised Nicaraguans.

Besides, the real coach, a big golden retriever of a guy named Tony, had to go back to the United States to get one of those “jobs” I keep hearing about, and someone’s gotta do it.

And so we train, and prepare for the battle. Passports are being processed. And our tickets for the 19-hour bus ride have been bought.

We’ll have the results of the competition in the December 15 edition, assuming I can find a decent Internet connection in San Salvador. Please wish us luck. And you Cubans: Oh yea, we’re coming for you too.

Bring it.