Veteran mountain bike coach Dylan Renn says it with a chuckle, but his go-to quips on biking contain more than a grain of truth: “Get kids hooked on mountain biking and they won’t have enough money for drugs,” or, his other favorite, “give a kid life behind bars.”
In other words, mountain biking can be a positive habit. And a new scholastic mountain bike league — open to students ages 13 to 19 — is here to promote just that. The league’s underlying goal isn’t to make all kids the fastest bikers on the planet, but to recruit anyone interested in biking to come out and ride no matter their experience or financial limitations.
The official title is the Nevada Interscholastic Cycling League, although participation isn’t restricted to state lines. It’s a new addition to the fast-growing National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA), the governing body for youth prep mountain biking in the U.S. The races will begin late August in the Tahoe, Reno, and Mammoth areas, making it ideal for local kids. Prior, a handful of kids at Incline and Truckee High competed in Northern California’s NorCal league (the first league in the country of its type and the country’s flagship program), but its events were centered in the state’s western corridor, requiring extensive travel. Additionally, the NorCal league is a spring sport, which can interfere with skiing, whereas the Nevada League will take place in the fall.
Since its founding in 2009, NICA has grown to include 14 states. Nevada, along with Arkansas and Pennsylvania, will be starting in the fall of 2016. Teams compete among other teams within the same league. The leagues are not official school sports but classified as a club, which means they don’t receive school funding, and are almost completely a volunteer-run organization.
Nevada league founder Doug Bedient, whose son raced at Incline High through the NorCal league, says around 15 schools are currently signed on, comprising about 85 total participants. North Tahoe High, Truckee High, and Incline High are three of the schools, with the others concentrated in the Reno and Mammoth areas. There are also composite teams made up of several schools. Compared to leagues like the one in Utah, which has more than 1,500 kids, the Nevada league is modest, but Bedient only started organizing the league in April 2014, and hopes to have 150 kids signed up by the end of the year.
Among a host of reasons to get the league going, he hopes it can inject a needed shot of life into the youth mountain biking scene. “Around Tahoe, I have seen something of a downturn in mountain biking, and was looking to revitalize that a little,” Bedient said. “What got lost was new kids on bikes. The kids of the kids that were riding in the ’80s and ’90s weren’t riding as much.”
THE NEW SCHOOL
While the structure of NICA is based around a race schedule, and only a slim number of elite riders will continue a career in biking, the overall purpose of the league is geared toward inclusivity versus cutthroat competition. There are no tryouts to make the team, everyone competes, and riders with no mountain biking experience are encouraged to get involved. In fact, Bedient estimates that only 10 to 15 percent of riders who have signed on to the league have previous racing experience.
“At the end of the day, it’s a youth development league that utilizes biking,” Bedient said.
League organizers say this helps promote the idea of biking as an activity to carry through all stages of life, not just a sport to begin and end in high school. Continuing to ride a bike after high school is easier compared to a sport like football, and those involved in the league encourage that relationship to biking to be at the forefront.
“Biking is a lifelong activity. We want to develop a culture of athletes — not just the skills to ride a bike, but aspects like camaraderie and trail etiquette,” said Jim Easterbrook, who works as community liaison for the newly formed RideonTNT, a nonprofit that formed in conjunction with the league as a way to facilitate riders getting into the sport.
Races are done cross-country style, with variations on the amount of climbing and the level of technicality on the trail. They are not meant to require a specific biking skill set, nor a high-end bike.
“You don’t need a ton of suspension, nor do you need the bikes to be super light. There’s not a huge amount of climbing, nor any crazy downhill section,” Bedient said. He acknowledges that some kids do show up with expensive carbon bikes that are faster, but believes the format of the races and the culture behind the sport are not enough to make a significant difference in results or affect the inclusiveness of the leagues.
But the question of cost — as well as the fact that the equipment is non-standardized — arises with a sport like mountain biking. Not only is a bike needed, but helmets, pads, jerseys, and other gear as well. Even though most kids are racing on more affordable hard tails (that only have front suspension), which at around $800 for a race-ready bike are much less expensive than most bikes, the cost can still be prohibitive.
Therefore, groups like RideonTNT are making inclusivity a principal focus of their work.
“We want to get underprivileged and at-risk youth involved as much as we can,” Easterbrook said.
“If a student comes to a local NICA meeting with interest, but doesn’t have a bike or any gear, that’s where TNT comes in. We have the means to get people going.”
Bedient is also working on getting scholarships, applying for grants, working on deals with bike manufacturers, and exploring other options such as a potential loaner-bike program, that some other leagues have implemented.
BICYCLE BENEFITS
The fresh air, hard work, and fast pace intrinsic to the sport create little need to sell the positives of biking, but new studies show how far-reaching the benefits can be. In particular, studies are showing the mental benefits that regular biking can bring, in addition to physical boosts.
In early 2015, bike manufacturer Specialized formed a nonprofit arm to fund research and programs that show cycling’s positive effects on children suffering from attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders.
In the study, researchers noted that a single biking session “significantly improved measures of executive attention in ADHD subjects.” Researchers found that longer term biking led to an increase in positive mood and in the participants abilities to understand their own feelings. Riding also boosted behavioral measures.
The studies thus indicate that mountain biking sharpens brain functionality.
In a recent study in the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research, scientists found that people scored higher on tests of memory, reasoning, and planning after 30 minutes of spinning on a stationary bike than they did before the exercise. They also completed the tests faster after pedaling.
Coach Renn, who coached at Marin Catholic High School — a premier biking school in the NorCal league — for two years before coming back to Tahoe, and has worked with hundreds of kids, believes the boost in confidence it creates is the best benefit of mountain biking.
“It creates a confidence that the kids might not even know is there, but can be seen,” Renn said.
Austin Smith, a 16-year-old who attends Reno’s Galena High, raced in the NorCal league for several years, and is pumped to move to the Nevada league and race locally.
“The races are a mix of excitement, being nervous, and much more, and after we are done, we get to cheer on the other race groups,” Smith said. He got an early introduction to the sport and competed in his first race at age 10, and while he isn’t sure if competitive mountain biking will continue past high school, he knows one thing for certain: “I’ll always be riding. I’m going to ride bikes for my whole life.”
Visit nevadamtb.org to learn more about the Nevada league and how to participate or get your kids involved.
