“It’s so much fun to to be outside,” Elizabeth McInroy, sophomore, says. “When you go down hills, you just feel the wind and you’re free! You don’t have to worry about anything.”

Mountain biking isn’t all relaxing, though.  According to junior Logan Shreck, “It takes a lot of self-motivation to get good, and takes a lot of endurance.”

Both Elizabeth and Logan participate in Ralston Valley’s Mountain Biking Club, which is coached by Mr. Kailus. “Myself and Mr. Bohnert started it a few years ago- that was when the league started,” Kailus explains.

“Cycling is the thing I love to do, so its cool to see high school students really getting into it and finding joy in it,” coach Kailus

Team training doesn’t take up too much time, however, quality makes up for quantity. “We have practice twice a week,” McInroy states. “On Monday we have speed training, which sucks. It’s hard. Then we go up to North Table on Wednesday; usually we ride around 20 miles.”

Some students train on their own as well. Shreck, who is on varsity, definitely does. “I personally roadbike a lot and then mountain bike on local trails. I also race Enduro over the summer, which helps a little bit”

The Mountain Biking Club also competes in competitive races. “The season only has four races in the fall, and our results have kind of varied,” Kailus continues. “It’s kind of like Cross Country; there are individual results, but there’s also a team scoring system. We haven’t gotten any team awards any time recently, but we’ve had several good individual results.”

At the most recent race (I don’t know where that was yet), Logan Shreck took second place!

Shreck says, “It was pretty successful. I went from last year finishing top 15, and then coming back to finish second was good.”

Needless to say, the races are extremely competitive. Elizabeth McInroy has probably had the closest squeeze, though. “It was one of the races last year. This racer from Boulder beat me by five hundredths of a second, and that really just whooped me up. I just knew that I had to get better so that didn’t happen again.”

Since then, she has come back around to take fifth place out of the JV girls. “Me being the only girl on the team, the coaches all push me and say, ‘You got to beat all the boys up the hill!’ It’s major motivation,” Mcinroy says.

“During training rides, a lot of the times whoever’s leading you try to catch them.” Shreck says. “We give each other support.”

Mountain biking is definitely a competitive sport, yet Ralston Valley’s team is still unable to earn a letter. CHSAA doesn’t designate mountain biking as a varsity sport, so it would be extremely unlikely to be able to receive a sports letter. However, it would still be completely possible to earn an activity letter.

“I would really like to be able to letter, I think it should be a varsity sport,” agrees Logan Shreck. “Fort Lewis has the #1 mountain biking team in the US, and they are thinking about making it a varsity sport at their school.”

The coach, however, doesn’t really seem to have any inhibition to make it happen. “I don’t know about that. We’re still working on it, I guess.”

Letter or no letter, these kids are going to keep on pedaling. McInroy says it best: “Just don’t give up. You really have to try more than once, and it’s not going to come easily the first time.”