As the second full week of classes continue at Sedona Red Rock High School, its mountain biking club is looking for a few good riders from the new junior high.
“Seventh- and eighth-graders can race in three of our five races on Sundays,” said Eric Mace, third-year head coach and club sponsor. “I wasn’t going to do it, but when the junior high moved in, it made it that much easier.”
Now if Mace could just find some. The youngest of six riders in the club is also its only new member to date, freshman Cooper Barber.
“I don’t want to be that coach yelling on the sidelines,” Mace said. “As coaches, we’re not looking for the next big star; we’re looking for more kids to stay active on bikes.
“The goal for the team is that everybody enjoys the ride.”
Josh Reilly, a triathlete from American Heritage Academy in Cottonwood, also joins Mace’s son, Cole, a junior, on the team.
SRRHS sophomores Anthony “BB” Quidera, Daniel Tarazon and Thomas Zielinski also meet after school at Schuerman Mountain trailhead for thrice-weekly practices for fall races.
“The trails here are technical and more of just an endurance challenge compared to what the races are,” Mace said. “Lots of rocks and roots in the Sedona area.”
Practices are held Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. — three-hour rides after school. Bikers also ride from four to six hours on weekends, either on a Saturday or Sunday.
Rides are six to 12 miles long, ranging along local trails such as Broken Arrow, Chuck Wagon and Mescal along with Dead Man’s Pass and other routes near Dry Creek Road and in the Village of Oak Creek.
“As we get closer to our races, we try to ride more trails that match them, like Cockscomb to Western Civilization,” Mace said. “The route is flat with more flow, wider and less intense.”
Three two-day races will incorporate a junior high competition, which Mace wants to take advantage of against larger teams like Sierra Vista, host site for SRRHS’ third meet it will be competing in.
Its local club near Fort Huachuca has 50 members.
“It’s really caught on down there,” he said. “They have a huge team.”
That sort of popularity and camaraderie is what Mace is shooting for.
“I’m trying to give all our kids the opportunity to race,” he said. “Our childhood obesity rate needs to be overcome.”
While riders like Reilly might have a top-10 finish as a personal goal, others will just be about finishing the race without pushing the bike across the finish line, Mace added.
“It would be nice for BB to have a race without an incident,” Mace said. “He broke a chain one time, got a flat tire another time, dropped a pair of sunglasses — even was riding four people wide in a corner a couple hundred yards from the start and got pushed off the course.”
For the full schedule of fall high school mountain biking meets, please see the Wednesday, Aug. 17, issue of the Sedona Red Rock News.
