What is Mountain Bike Junior League?
Good question. A question that requires a little background info. It started in 2001 with the birth of Maverick Sports Promotions.
The roots of the league are pretty humble. We put our heads together and came up with ways to remove the obstacles that might be preventing kids from riding and racing their bikes. While we couldn’t do much about the cost of buying a bike, we could do something about the cost of participating in the local Wednesday night series, The Summit Mountain Challenge. The answer was simple: make it free to all juniors. So we did!
I’d like to say that the rest was history, but that would be untrue. At our first race of 2001 we had 11 juniors. It was a little underwhelming. Then at the second race we had 16. Better, but still not great. At the next race we had 25 junior racers. Not an out-and-out impressive number, but a validation of the fact that participation was on the rise. By the end of the summer of 2001 we had three races in the books with over 50 junior competitors. It was a huge victory!
The idea when it came was simple; why reinvent the wheel? There are kids programs that have been around for over half a century, Little League and Pop Warner Football being two good examples. What we ended up doing was “borrowing” elements from other youth programs and blending them or altering them to make them more relevant in our community. The result is called Mountain Bike Junior League (ask me about the original name of the program and the lawsuit that almost came down on my head).
We’d keep it free, or at least very cheap, and we’d sell team sponsorships to local merchants to offset the administrative costs. All the kids would get a custom jersey, free entry into the Summit Mt. Challenge races, and the opportunity to attend group rides throughout the summer. Awesome! We couldn’t wait. Here’s where it got real interesting!
Summit County is an area unique in the United States in that we are winning the battle of trail access and use (this is due in LARGE part to the dedicated work of Friends of the Dillon Ranger District, Summit County Mountain Bike Alliance (SCOMBA) and local Open Space and Trails Planners) We serve as a great example to other communities that are faced with user-conflict and trail damage issues. We’re winning the war, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t losing a battle or two here and there.
We’ve all seen someone who doesn’t know the drill come ripping around a corner sliding or skidding their rear tire. We’ve seen the occasional rider going around wet spots in the trail thus widening it (called braiding), or even blatantly riding when conditions are just too wet. It’s probably safe to assume that some of these folks are idiots, but all of them? We prefer not to think so. You have to believe that some of the bad behavior out there was the result of ignorance. Bandit trails were popping up all over the backcountry. A well-placed piece of education could go a long way in reducing the number of trail abusers out there. Here at last, with a kid’s program that we felt was going to be huge in terms of participation, was an opportunity. A huge one.
What started out as a youth development program turned into an environmental stewardship program before the first kid even signed up. The racing and the jersey are the ‘bait’. They’re what get kids interested. The ‘switch’ is the education that they walk away with. The kids learn about the environment, how to interact with other trail users, trail etiquette, some basic rules of the backcountry, and basic riding techniques. They learn about racing and healthy competition. They learn to overcome adversity and to be independent. They learn to have fun and respect each other. They learn to take joy in each other’s victories and console each other in defeat. We firmly believe that sport can be a healthy, safe, fun, and upbeat atmosphere. It produces better, more well-rounded human beings.
Some kids that started with us have pursued competitive cycling at the National and International level. Many MTB Junior Leaguers have stood on the podium of big events. That is somewhat gratifying. More rewarding is the fact that a new generation of backcountry users has been born. A new culture has taken shape.
