Out & About: High schools eye mountain biking
OUTPEDAL – Mountain biking offers teenagers immediate fun and a sport they can continue long after high school.
Some day it might also earn boys and girls a varsity letterman’s jacket.
The National Interscholastic Cycling Association is drumming up volunteers to form a league in southern Idaho with a four-race season planned in the fall.
“We’re trying to make it as simple as possible,” said Dylan Gradhandt, Idaho High School Cycling League executive director.
The association already has 15 leagues in 14 states.
Although Washington, Montana and Oregon are not yet involved, NICA has a goal of going coast-to-coast by 2020.
The association handles much of the administrative work, such as insurance, fees and rules, but still leaves each state leeway to adapt its own program. It’s also designed to make mountain biking accessible to all riders and abilities.
Teams can be associated with individual schools or “composite” squads consisting of riders from different schools. Teams are open to grades 9-12, ages 13-19. Teams are coed, but boys and girls compete with their own gender.
Idaho’s first races are scheduled in September and October near Boise and at Grand Targhee ski resort near Driggs and Galena Lodge between Ketchum and Stanley.
There are no tryouts or benchwarmers. “We’re really interested (in kids) who may have fallen through the cracks, and stick-and-ball sports didn’t suit them,” Gradhandt said.
“We teach these coaches to get kids to the trailhead, get them out for a fun, safe ride and get them back. ”
He likened the cycling league to a rec-league team, where the emphasis is on having fun. Gradhandt is a former national junior racer who coached squads in Northern California that were among the first organized high school mountain biking teams.
“We rapidly learned the kids were coming out to be with their friends and to be outdoors,” he said.
NICA data shows about half of parents resume, or start riding, mountain bikes when their kids get involved in the program.
Idaho is a natural for mountain biking teams because it’s already a popular activity, he said, and the riding, traveling and camping are a natural fit for people used to outdoor vacations.
His goal is to have 150 to 160 riders in the first season and 12 to 16 teams. Several teams have already formed and raced in Utah last year.
Gathering celebrates primitive skills
OUTBACK – The third annual Between the Rivers Gathering, an extended ancestral living skills workshop geared for families, is returning May 26-30 in Valley, Washington, north of Spokane, sponsored by the nonprofit group Bridges to the Past.
The event features hands-on primitive skills instruction, from Upper Paleolithic to Early American homesteading with camping, communal meals.
Classes, workshops and meals are for paying participants; no fee for daily observers.