As all the regulars know, I'm team mechanic and assistant coach for El Cerrito High School Mountain Bike Racing Team. We're a Division 1 team in the Norcal League, Southern Conference. Our conference is traditionally dominated by Salinas High School, but our local rivals are Berkeley High and Albany High. Last year was a breakthrough season for us. We finished 2nd only to Salinas in League. This season we thought we had a chance against Salinas, but everything had to be perfect. Meanwhile, it was pretty clear Berkeley was tired of getting beat, and was gunning for us with their massive team. There were 5 league races, and while all of them were great, none of them was perfect. Something went wrong each time
Race 1: Nitzan missed it for a religious ceremony. Enzo finished third in his race, not realizing he had a broken collarbone. We were 2nd place Race 2: Enzo missed the race with his broken collarbone. Rainy conditions slowed down our top varsit boys. We were 2nd place Race 3: Enzo missed the race with his shoulder. Maddie had a mechanical in the last mile and finished 2nd instead of her normal 1st. We were 3rd in the race, 2nd overall Race 4: Enzo was back, but had to start in the very back of the field due to having so few points. Maria was nipped at the line for 1st, the only race she didn't win. Claire missed the race for a family event. We were 3rd in the race, 2nd overall Race 5: Almost everyone had their perfect race. We won JV Girls and Sophomore Girls. We got a 3rd in Freshman Girls and a 4th in JV Girls. We got a 2nd in Varsity Boys, Sophomore Boys and Freshman Boys. We got a 10th in Varsity Boys as well. All we needed to beat Salinas was a decent showing from our small but strong JV boys, but Tal, our top rider, switched bikes right before the start and had a derailer problem. He switched bikes again, started 3 minutes behind the entire field, had the ride of his life to finish 6th anyway. Then the 10 minute penalty for switching bikes placed him 18th. He could have won that day. Because of his low showing we placed second to Salinas, 14 points behind them, out of ~4000 total points. We maintained our 2nd place finish in League At State Championships, three Leagues race together: SoCal, NorCal North, and NorCal South. The three leagues are roughly the same size and strength, traditionally. So it was pretty normal to expect that if you finished 5th in League, you were probably going to finish 15th in State. The best El Cerrito has ever done was 10th as a team. Our goal was to be the top team from our league. In order to keep the fields relatively manageable, only the top ~60% of riders are allowed to compete. Each of the 11 races are limited to a max field of 100, and all of them had about 80 riders in them, so it was a big event. It was hosted in Petaluma, so it was the first time this season that our racers got to sleep in their own beds. Things started great with the girls: Maddie, who was first overall in League for JV Girls, finished 4th. Claire, who was 6th overall in League for JV Girls, finished 6th! Amazing Maria, who was first in League in Sophomore Girls, finished 3rd That was amazing. The next wave was the Sophomore Boys, who kept it going Nitzan was 6th overall in League, and finished on the podium in 5th Keith was 8th overall in League, and finished 10th racing on my personal bike (Yes, I have the 10th fastest mountain bike in the State of California, and I can prove it) Freshman Boys was another slog for Enzo because he again had to race from the back of the pack but plowed through a huge field to finish 12th Finally, the JV and Varsity Boys went off, and we got three more amazing rides Tal was 6th overall in JV Boys in League and finished 11th in the State Evan was 10th overall in League for Varsity Boys and finished 20th Matt was 5th overall in League for Varsity Boys and finished 5th in a photo-finish for 4th It was a near-perfect performance for our team, the first nearly perfect day all season. Salinas was 6th as a team, Berkeley was 8th, and Albany was 9th, but we made our goal as the top team from NorCal-South. NorCal-North was won by Tamalpais High School, but we beat them, too. SoCal has a number of powerhouse teams, led by Newbury Park, but we beat them also. Many of these teams were fielding 50-60 racers. We had 16 racers and placed SECOND overall in the state of California. We were only behind Marin County perennial behemoth, Sir Francis Drake High School. The Drake Pirates are the team that everyone in California wants to be, and we were right on them. I'm over the moon with pride about how hard our kids and coaches worked. We had a huge asset by having a ton of ride leaders, so our training rides were often one adult with two or three kids, or two adults with 4 or 5 kids. This allowed us to get a ton of work done with almost no standing around. We'd run into Berkeley or Oakland ride groups on the trails with a dozen kids trying to ride together, and that leads to a ton of standing around. This was my first year to be an active coach and ride leader, and these kids whipped my butt into shape as well. Our kids are already plotting their off-season weight training, and shooting for even bigger results in 2019. We only have one senior on our entire team, so everyone is going to be back. Maybe our favorite part of this group is how supportive and excited they are for each other. It's a real team atmosphere, a jock-free zone. Our best riders are celebrating the achievements and hard work of the slower kids, and they all like each other. It's super rewarding to work with kids like that. Many of you have donated to our team in the past, helping pay for our trailer and helping us buy race bikes for kids to borrow during the season, so thanks. Coach-Bill El Cerrito Gauchos P.S. The top-2 Varsity boys finishers are both reported to going pro immediately. The second place finisher was on a plane that night to join USA-Cycling. The convincing Winner of Varsity Boys was Oakland local Noah Hayes. That kid is incredible. Remember his name. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
