New SoCal High School Mountian Bike League needs your help!

[Clyde S Dale]

Originally Posted by Patrick

All students are welcome, public, private, church, home school...

Thanks. PM sent.

[ArrrKelly]

Originally Posted by guero

sounds like you are describing OCRIDER. that bubb was on the track team AND embarressed us all out on the trails!!!

Exactly.

[kbteachme]

Patrick, I just sent you an email.

P.S. I know teachers in San Clemente who are already doing an after school mountain biking club for students through the City of SC Parks & Recreation.

[mtnbikerdude87]

Wow this sounds awesome! When I was in High School I always wished that there was a HS MTB league.

[BFloFoxRider.]

Originally Posted by mtnbikerdude87

Wow this sounds awesome! When I was in High School I always wished that there was a HS MTB league.

actually, a few months ago i actually went to my principal and superintendant talking to them about starting a team, and that i needed permission and i needed jerseys made, and permission to race etc etc.. almost had it done, but i changed schools.

[herzalot]

As principal of a tiny little 3200 student high school smack dab in the middle of the OC, I may be qualified to comment. Most of my kids that are into bikes are into BMX, street and vert. I have a downhiller or two, but not many. Very few that I know of are into cross-country or road riding, but then again, I've never surveyed the whole school. As long as the bike competitions are run like the roller hockey leagues or the surf leagues, it shouldn't be much of a problem from a liability standpoint. Schools are reluctant to add sports that will cost money (thus taking away from existing resources) and add legal exposure. Roller Hockey and Surfing have their own leagues, their own venues and their own insurance. It works. Count me in as a supporter. You can pm me for specifics.

[genusmtbkr5]

Originally Posted by herzalot

Count me in as a supporter. You can pm me for specifics.

You do that and we'll make sure to hold clinics and such to get these kids equip with the skills. Count me in.

[bighit8]

Great thing you are trying to get going.I have kids and hope they would get involved in something like this.

[maxxisracing]

I go to Trabuco Hills High School I know a ton of people that ride and would probally help out. Me personally- I will do what ever it takes I think its an awsome idea.

Originally Posted by herzalot

As principal of a tiny little 3200 student high school smack dab in the middle of the OC, I may be qualified to comment. Most of my kids that are into bikes are into BMX, street and vert. I have a downhiller or two, but not many. Very few that I know of are into cross-country or road riding, but then again, I've never surveyed the whole school. As long as the bike competitions are run like the roller hockey leagues or the surf leagues, it shouldn't be much of a problem from a liability standpoint. Schools are reluctant to add sports that will cost money (thus taking away from existing resources) and add legal exposure. Roller Hockey and Surfing have their own leagues, their own venues and their own insurance. It works. Count me in as a supporter. You can pm me for specifics.

Yeah alot of kids are into BMX and downhill but I am positive there is also cross country kids out there

Damn so excited, I saw this thread and my heart literally started pounding with joy! let me no please

[ride hard]

I go to Mira Costa high school and have a few other friends that would probably be interested in this too.

[kbteachme]

This maybe a good thing for schools to generate outside source of funding... maybe this will start a trend and schools will generate funding from bike company logos on schools' web sites, computer screen savers, book covers, or PE lockers... like what you see on outfield fences at a lot of schools' baseball fields. Just imagine seeing The Path's logo next to your school's logo.

[Patrick]

Thank you to everyone for the excitement. I'm taking everyone's info and we'll have a formal announcement very soon. I'll address some of the issues brought up:

Liability: The good news is we are partnering with the NorCal league. They have worked out the issues and have a successful model in place that administrators and land managers are comfortable with. There will be six races beginning in March. Most will be "piggybacked" on existing events further addressing the liability exposure. New venues are being researched.

Financing/Sponsorship: NorCal has sponsors like Cliff and Cammelback and private donors are a huge part of the process. We'll be having fund raising activities. We all know this is a positive move in promoting a healthy lifestyle for kids and there should be no shortage of folks lining up.

Skills and Coaching: There will be certifications training for all involved. From basic skills to MTB first aid.

BMX, Downhill etc: We'll be sticking with XC for now. I can share some stories of schools that started with 1 or 2 riders and now have 45!

Keep the momentum, spread the word. Everyone who has responded and contacted me will be kept in the loop.

Here is the link to the NorCal League, if there are any doubts we can do this, spend some time on their site...

http://www.norcalmtb.org/

any ?'s. comments or desire to get involved, send me a PM.

"I'm into mountain biking, not X-Box..." Future SocalDirt rider.

[OTHRIDER]

As popular as MTB'g is, I think the league would be a quick success.

Look at how quickly H.S. club-level roller hockey and lacrosse have grown.

I think that a lot of H.S.'s award varsity letters for club sports (non-CIF recognized). Is that correct, Herzalot?

Anything that will get a youngster (who doesn't like the mainstream sports) involved has got to be a plus for the school and the kid.

[maxxisracing]

I'm in let me now please

[Jordansrealm]

Anything is possible so dont give up. When I was in HS a guy named Mike Mullane came to the school and wanted to put on a Lacrosse clinic. He got the HS gym teacher to okay a Lacrosse day for the students. He said he was going to put on a Lacrosse program in OC and was taking signups at the time as well. I ended up playing all four years and loving it. He faught with the school and CIF sanctioning for all 4 years with minimal luck. But, he created 5 HS teams in OC and everyone loved it. With help from parents you can do a lot. He left our senior year and myself and another player ended up coaching the HS team we played on for the next 5 years while in College. Now the OCLA league has CIF sanctioning and plays with divisions all over the state. So, if you work hard at it you can make it happen. Good luck!

[shudder]

I did some checking around in November 2006, looking for an MTB 'team' that I might get my son Willie onto. There was literally NOTHING going on (that I could find anyways), so when January '07 rolled around I signed us up for the Ranoa's 12 Hours of Temecula race.

We raced as a 2-man that first time out, and had a great time. Since then we both do that race solo. That allows us to do a fair bit of racing/riding together, which is great. There were no other kids in the race back then, but there certainly are some kid teams now (but, still he's the only solo I know of).

Willie will start high school in the Fall of 2009 (he's 12 right now), and it will be just great to get him onto a school team then (he actually races for Pua Sawicki's Team Mata Keiki now, and we will continue that as long as we can -- I don't think his participation on her team will interfere with him racing for a school team... guess we'll just have to wait and see -- and in any case, I am definitely putting the cart before the horse!).

I am not sure what school he is going to go to (there are at least three public HS in our local area that he might end up at), but I would certainly be interested in taking your plan, whatever it is at that time, to the school he attends. Keep me in the loop.

Thanks for doing this!

shud

[mtb_prodigy]

how come there is only XC?

[herzalot]

Originally Posted by OTHRIDER

As popular as MTB'g is, I think the league would be a quick success.

Look at how quickly H.S. club-level roller hockey and lacrosse have grown.

I think that a lot of H.S.'s award varsity letters for club sports (non-CIF recognized). Is that correct, Herzalot?

Anything that will get a youngster (who doesn't like the mainstream sports) involved has got to be a plus for the school and the kid.

We stay away from letters for non-school sponsored sports (roller hockey, surfing, lacrosse, rugby). We don't need the entanglement. Once we start awarding letters, it enters the land of high school sports politics. Trust me, you don't want that. We recognize kids with a lot of announcements, posters, webpages, pictures in the yearbook, profiles on our broadcast news, etc.

[jamesdc]

I may be in if you decide to include downhill but I'll only be in highschool for a few months once school starts again. I think this is a great idea but having xc only is going to severly limit it. Back when I went to a large normal highschool there was maybe one girl I knew that rode xc but there were probably 8 downhillers and fair amount of bmxers .

[KonaDupee]

This could be a good way to get teenagers into the sport. I can think of three former students that were very much into riding. Though, as jamesdc mentioned, each of them were huckers. Even if