Mountain biking closes out its season

By Steve Smail, Mountain Biking Coach, Website Manager, HS Film & Geology Teacher

With the weather and trail conditions so solid, our riders in top form and some season-long points and positions on the line, anticipation, enthusiasm and stoke was high as the waves of racers left the start line with all categories fielding the largest groups of racers all season.

This race also was the capstone for 3 of our seniors who joined the team early on as Middle Schoolers before the league even allowed middle school race categories. Yoshi D’Souza, Campbell Luschen and Cameron Stenhouse have put in thousands of miles with us and have helped this group of student bikers develop into the mature team that it’s become. Kudos to all of you seniors.

For our HS girls, Lydia West completed her first season with the team racing the JV category, and her race finish put her 9th out of 18 riders overall, a great result for a novice rider. Our other JV rider Katya Mendez was unfortunately not able to attend this race, but a great bonus for Lydia and Katya was receiving the annual NICA GRiT Kindness Award, along with a rider from the neighboring Williamson County Composite (WILCO) team. We are so proud of these girls for a great first season!

Our veteran 9th grade racers Eleanor Shepard and Jaimie List both put in amazing efforts in their 2-lap race, with Eleanor posting a 2nd lap 40 seconds faster than her first (and nearly 11 minutes faster in total than last year’s race on the same course), with Jaimie improving her race time by a stunning 9 minutes compared to 2018. Eleanor’s effort on race day secured her a podium spot for both the race and 3rd place overall for the season in the Freshman, with Jaimie tied for 5th place overall. These HS girls amassed 75% of our total team points at each race this season, a gigantic shift in how races are scored for our team.

Our 2 middle school girls who could make this race were 8th graders Maya Guha, who has shown big skill and speed improvement all year, and Ella Cheek, another first-year rider on our team. Overall for the season these girls finished 15th and 16th in an unusually fast and competitive category in which the top 10 8th grade girls could race against the JV and Varsity HS girls. Claire Gilliam was only able to make one race this year, but we look forward to her joining us in the future. Well done to all our growing crew of HS and MS girls competing in these races!

The MS boys trio of Chris Haynes, Benjamin Kampine and Jack Wellons had an incredible race day in a large field of almost 60 8th grade boys. Haynes finished 13th, with Kampine and Wellons a few minutes behind in 28th and 36th positions. Despite a broken finger that didn’t allow Chris to join race #3, he still finished 13th out of 71 riders for the season, a great season and a sign of things to come! 7th graders Leo Frein and Tate Green were not able to make it to this race, but proved they have the skills and speed to mix it up at the front of the 8th grade group next year.

Our HS JV boys had a tough 3 laps on this course, with our 3 seniors  - Yoshi D’Souza, Raleigh Parr and Cameron Stenhouse  - riding in their final miles of their NICA careers. Of special note are Yoshi and Cameron finishing 5 seasons of NICA racing and 6+ years of riding with our team, nearly from our start in 2014.

Junior Alexander Haynes was once again our fastest JV rider of the day, finishing 24th and with Parr a little back at 30th. D’Souza left it all out on the trail and had his best-ever race finishing 36th with Stenhouse a few spots behind in 39th. Senior Campbell Luschen, still recovering from a Race #1 injury, served as our honorary coach for this last race of 2019.

Sophomore Isaac Gorden was our final racer of the day and he once again proved to be Mr. Consistency for lap times in all his races, coming in 38th of 64 sophomores for the season. We look forward to Luca Smith and Krishin Parikh joining us in 2020 after a season missed due to injury.

Overall, we are excited that our small high school team finished 9th of 28 teams across the state, with the girls paving the way for our teams points accumulation and Freshman Eleanor Shepard’s podium placements all season long bringing home some hardware for the MTB Tigers. In middle school, our younger racers finished 12th of 24 middle teams led by a great group of 7th and 8th graders. Full results can be found at https://my.raceresult.com/141602/

We look forward to another 5-race season in 2020 with our next generation of middle school USN cyclists joining the HS categories. Any student interested in the team, or wanting to join us for an off-season fun ride should contact Coaches Steve Smail or Amy Dortch.