The BSM mountain biking team, BBBikers, has a combined team with The Blake School to make the team bigger and more competitive at larger races. The team is part of the Minnesota Cycling Association (MCA), and often practices with the St. Louis Park mountain bike team. The mountain biking season recently ended strong: the team sent nine BSM racers to the state tournament.
These racers are 7th graders Olive Ohly, 8th graders Blake Hoffman, Ian Winskowski, and Ben Kennedy, 9th graders Jack Kramar and Aiden Casey, and 10th graders Ryan Lynch, Gerik Nowlin, and Olin Rahn.
Seventh grader Olive Ohly is the only girl on the BSM part of the team and joined the team when she came to BSM this year. BBBikers is open to 6-12th graders, with various race categories for various ages. Before joining the team, Ohly biked for Trail Kids, a mountain biking program led by The Loppet Foundation in Minneapolis. “Trail Kids was really fun and when I heard about the [BSM] Mountain Biking team I wanted to do competitive mountain biking,” Ohly said.
Unlike many other sports, there was no official qualifying or section race before the state meet. Instead, participation was determined by how well athletes raced in their four races throughout the season. Of these courses, Ohly found her favorite was the state course in Chisolm, MN, because all of the fall colors made the course beautiful. Ohly raced well in her regular season meets in order to make it to the state competition. “You can get individual scores, but you also get a team score too, and can win a trophy. You can also win medals for yourself but you have to get in the top five. The closest I ever came to that was 17th place,” Ohly said.
The typical race for Ohly and other middle schoolers is one lap around a course that is around five miles of different terrain. Freshman Aidan Casey and his friends instead ride two laps, 10 miles total, for their races. Casey has been mountain biking for six years and joined the team to pursue his interest in the sport. “Mountain biking can be for a whole range of different skill levels, depending on what you want to ride. So it can be quite easy or as difficult as you want it to be. There are different kinds of features, like jumps, drops, rock rolls that can make a course more difficult,” Casey said.
Getting to state his first year of racing is an impressive accomplishment, and Casey was happy with this result. “They [the league] didn’t really have any record of me, so I essentially had to start from the back. I hope to qualify again in the future,” Casey said.
The athletes encourage everyone to join the mountain biking team, not only because of the sport itself but also because of the community. “I thought the season was really fun, the courses were really cool, I think they [the coaches] picked a lot of good courses for us to do. I thought it was super fun and exciting because you could cheer on your teammates as well,” Ohly said.