Mountain Bikers compete in first race of the 2019 season

Fielding its biggest team and race squad ever, the USN Mountain Bike team began its 2019 competitive season with its first of 5 races at Lock 4 trails in Gallatin on Sunday, September 1st. The expected muggy and hot conditions took its toll on many riders as the day went on, but the trails were in great shape for some fantastic racing and both individual and team performances.

The day was broken into 4 waves of racing, and the HS and MS girls kicked off the morning. Brand new cyclists Lydia West and Katya Mendez raced in the JV category and completed a single lap exactly according to their race plan, which was to ride together the entire race and cross the finish line together. Amazingly, their timing chips recorded the exact same time for the 2 girls down to hundredths of a second - well done to get through a first race for these HS juniors!

Our veteran freshman racers, Eleanor Shepard and Jamie List both rode well through their 2 laps, with “ELS” pulling off consistent 27 minute laps for a 3rd-place podium finish and Jamie not far behind in 6th finishing her race in 1 hour, 6 minutes. 8th graders Maya Guha finished her lap in 37 minutes and new rider Ella Cheek finished her single lap safely in under an hour, which is exactly what we want our first-time racers to achieve.

Our middle school boys raced in huge fields with 8th graders Chris Haynes, Benjamin Kampine and Jack Wellons taking on 2 laps. Chris Haynes flew through his laps and in fact posted the 2 fastest lap times of our team all day, with a 23:39 and 24:34 for a 7th place finish, while Kampine and Wellons pulled off 26 to 30 minute laps finishing 25th and 33rd out of a field of 60. 7th graders Tate Green and Leo Frein (Frein racing for the first time) finished 11th and 14th out of 45 with impressive single laps of about 27 minutes.

We fielded 5 high school boys in the JV 3-lap category that included 61 riders. Senior Campbell Luschen got a call-up to the second row from his past season performances, but unfortunately was “crashed out” by other riders in the first 5 seconds of the race start, sustaining an immediate shoulder injury from other cyclists crashing into him from behind. Luschen’s race was essentially over before the race began, a huge blow to his season start and to the team - we wish Campbell a speedy recovery to race again this season. Luckily avoiding that pile-up were seniors Raleigh Parr, Cameron Stenhouse, Yoshi D’Souza and junior Alexander Haynes. As we got to 1:00pm the heat was officially brutal and Parr, Stenhouse and Haynes stayed within seconds of each other for all 3 laps, with Parr finishing in 1 hour, 16 minutes and Haynes and Stenhouse a minute behind for 20/24/26th place, while D’Souza finished 2 laps in 57 minutes for 44th out of 61, and just missing the time cutoff to ride a 3rd lap.

Sophomore Isaac Gorden was our solo rider in the last (heat) wave of the day, riding a great 2 laps in 57 minutes for a 33rd place finish out of 53 sophomore. His 10th grade riding crew were not able to race, with Krishin Parikh out of town and Luca Smith suffering a broken arm the day before.

Combined, our HS team finished 11th of 27 teams and the MS team finished 11th of 22 teams, a solid performance from all our rider efforts, especially considering several brand new cyclists have joined us in MS and HS. Of special note is that, for the first time ever, our HS team score was calculated by the 3 top girl point finishers (Mendez, Shepard and List) with 1 boy finish (Parr). For several years, with few or no girls racing, the team has only had 3 boys points to accumulate (effectively missing out on 25% of our points with no girls racing).

Full results are at: https://my2.raceresult.com/134933/

The team is at Chickasaw Trace Park in Columbia on September 15th for Race #2, the only other “local” race for us this season, and our mountain bikers would love your cheers and support.

-Coaches Smail, Dortch and Crumpton