Victory is personal
Colorado High School Mountain Bike League elevates passion for bikes — and winning the race
eagle» She didn’t win a medal. She didn’t finish in the top 10. Or the top 20.
But Alondra Hernandez, a 15-year-old sophomore at Battle Mountain High School, considers her finish of Eagle’s dusty Haymaker course a personal victory.
“It’s about putting your head down and never giving up,” she said at the seventh annual Colorado High School Mountain Bike League state championships on Sunday.
A year ago, Hernandez and her friend Emily Jimenez had never even ridden bikes, despite having grown up in the recreational Mecca around Vail. As members of Eagle Valley’s Cycle Effect team — which delivers cycling opportunities to local young women around the valley — the two have spent the year behind handlebars and on Sunday they raced in the state championship, pedaling to their own podium.
“I usually finish toward the last. It is my first year. But at the end of the race, I’m like ‘Well, I did it and I did my best and that’s what matters,’ ” Jimenez said.
From a couple hundreds students representing 20 communities in 2010, the Colorado High School Mountain Bike League has exploded, with more than 1,000 athletes from more than 60 high schools between Cheyenne, Wyo., and Taos, N.M. The league has grown so large, last year it split into north and south divisions.
The league’s five races every fall are day-long affairs, with several hundred mountain bikers and twice that many volunteers and parents.
The final race of the season in Eagle — where the town built a trail specifically for hosting the league’s championship races — is a circus with teams taking over the trailhead parking lot with expansive tents staffed with volunteer coaches, mechanics and parent cooks. The Haymaker Trail is lined with cheering athletes and parents, applauding every rider and every team with hastening cowbells and encouragement. The fast kids who finish early often return to the course to cheer on late finishers.
It’s a unique blend of riders at the league’s races. There are plenty of heavy hitters — teenagers that are tracking toward a professional career on a bike. They hail from big cities like Boulder and small towns like Salida. But there are many more cyclists who aren’t necessarily vying for victory but are winning regardless, developing a two- wheeled passion they likely will celebrate all their lives.
Garrison Hayes didn’t climb a podium this season. But he’s clearly winning. The 17-year-old cancer survivor who, in 2005, went through a Van Ness Rotationplasty procedure instead of a traditional amputation for a cancerous bone tumor, skis, plays soccer and races his mountain bike with his ankle joint serving as a knee. He’s not fast. But that’s never bothered him.
On Saturday, before his final state championship race, Hayes won the league’s most exceptional student athlete award.
Earlier in the week he was in California, working with a paralympic team that might want to train him for road bike racing. He credits four years of mountain bike racing with the Colorado league for giving him the confidence to pursue the athletic life.
“It’s all been small steps. Taking that first mountain bike ride and getting on the trail even though I knew I was going to crash and my mom is hysterical. It’s all these steps leading to a bigger life,” said the senior at Cherokee Trail High School who wants to attend either Stanford or the University of Colorado. “Everyone here has the potential to go as far as they want. It’s easier to find that potential because of this league.”
Roger Ryburn remembers when Hayes first approached him four years ago about joining the league’s Highlands Ranch Composite mountain bike team. Hayes admitted he had no experience on singletrack. Rayburn didn’t blink and Hayes became an anchor of the team.
“Our philosophy is that every kid has a podium. You work hard to find that podium and help them achieve it. Just to finish a race was Garrison’s podium when he started,” said Ryburn, who has grown his team from five kids in 2013 to more than 60 this season and won the league’s coach of the year award. “Coaching the new kids and watching their progress is the most satisfying thing. Just watching these kids be successful, whatever that means to each one, is so rewarding.”
The most common refrain at a high school mountain bike contest is from the parents, who lament the absence of such sport during their high school years. But another commonly heard perspective is from student athletes who never quite fit the high school athlete mold.
“They couldn’t find anything in a traditional school program and then they find cycling and it changes their life,” said Chris Conroy, president of Golden’s Yeti Cycles and a longtime sponsor of the league who serves on its board of directors. “Pretty cool to see.”
Cheyenne Mendoza was one of those athletes. He wasn’t keen on football or baseball or soccer at his Leadville High School. But he tried mountain biking. He showed up for the first practice in leather work boots.
“I wasn’t sure exactly what to wear to go mountain biking,” said the 17-year-old. He finished last in his first race. Now, he’s among the top 10 varsity racers in the league, traveling to races with his cheering family. On Saturday, he won his division’s most improved athlete award. He’s planning to race in the Leadville Trail 100 next year and he’s sure he will be pedaling for the rest of his life.
“Mountain biking has taught me perseverance. It’s not an easy sport by any stretch. It’s really easy to just constantly think ‘OK, this is where I’m going to call it. This is where I’m giving up,’ ” he said. “But I’ve learned to just get back on the bike and keep doing it. I’m trying to pursue a career in music and that’s also pretty difficult and there’s a lot of adversity for people who pursue music but mountain biking has taught me to just keep on going.”