MEAGHAN STANTON
Meaghan Stanton is our fifth Pearl Izumi Local Hero. Meaghan is based in the beautiful Southern Highlands of NSW and is heavily involved in her local cycling community. Meaghan says she’s become more involved with Southern Highlands Cycling Club club in the last year due to wanting to see more events on the calendar, as well as giving back to the cycling community.
‘I’ve been racing for a while now, so in the last year or so I started to feel like it was time to give back a bit, and I’ve become more involved in my local club. After forming a little subcommittee with some mates, we have tried to run club races more often and to mix it up a bit in terms of the format. We’ve done short track, relays, night racing, and used different courses each time. We hope that the variety will keep it fun and exciting for everyone. Having a BBQ after every race to give people a chance to stand around and have a chat is also working well.’
Meaghan says she’d like to get more people involved with the club, as well as girls.
‘There’s quite a lot of people who follow our club Facebook page and are interested in what goes on but haven’t yet taken the step of coming to events, so I’d like to change that. I’m a mother of three daughters and for me, boosting the number of women involved in our sport is something I’m passionate about. I’ve started organising women’s group rides and will also be running coaching clinics when I can.’
Alongside her commitment to the Southern Highlands Cycling Club, last year Meaghan organised and ran a brand-new race called the GD Champs through her role as a teacher at Oxley College. This was part of her nomination:
‘In 2020 Meaghan developed, organised, and ran the inaugural GD Champs, a school relay race held in honour of and to celebrate the life of George Dummer, a budding young mountain biker from the Highlands. Over 80 kids participated in the first year, an amazing success considering the current climate with COVID and the time frame to get it organised. The GD Champs will be an annual event and Meaghan hopes to develop it into a school competition that attracts schools from all over NSW.’
Meaghan says the GD Champs is a great way for the community to remember George.
‘George’s death was completely devastating, so the GD Champs feels like one small way for the broader mountain bike community to gather and provide ongoing support to George’s family. For me, it will always be a hugely important event - the very idea of a bunch of kids getting together to ride bikes is what George was all about. I’m hoping to add a gravity format to the event next year too, because that was George’s real passion.’
Another part of the community Meaghan supports is the Oxley College MTB Team. Meaghan says the mountain biking program at Oxley College is growing year on year.
‘My partner, Peter Dowse and I started the mountain biking program at Oxley College almost four years ago with twelve students – we now have five coaches and thirty students. Although MTB tends to attract boys in greater numbers, it’s been fantastic to have nine girls involved in the program so far, especially having started with only one.’
Meaghan says she expects many of these students to continue to ride mountain bikes when they’ve finished school, something that’s less common with some traditional sports.
‘Some school sports are difficult to continue as an adult, especially if you live in a small town that may not have the population or facilities to support them, but with a lifestyle sport like mountain biking there are fewer barriers. From my point of view, getting kids on mountain bikes is a great way to set them up with a sport they can continue, in one way or another, their whole lives! You can ride on your own or with others anywhere - on road, off road, using it for transport, recreation, or even competing in a whole variety of disciplines. Local clubs are important in developing the sport at a grass roots level, but schools have so much power to reach a lot of people, so my aim is to make mountain biking a mainstream school sport. There’s something special that seems to happen when kids ride mountain bikes together too – they develop respect for each other so naturally and this camaraderie crosses age and gender barriers and makes lifelong friendships.’ Volunteering in a single area is a huge achievement in the busy world we live in. Meaghan’s commitment to several groups within her local cycling community has had a massive impact on riders of all ages within the Southern Highlands region.