From Joe Hill: High School MTB Team Assistance

Here is a message (a plea if you will) that you could post on the blog with information about how people can help, if willing, with the High School MTB Team.

I am slated to be the head coach, and I have a volunteer to be the team director in Lori Merrill who has a son on the team, but I am in need of assistant coaches, and more than that I need ride leaders or general volunteers.

NICA (National Interscholastic Cycling Association) requires that when we go on rides we have a ratio of 1 adult to every 6 athletes.  It appears that we may have as many as a dozen kids on the team.  It would be extremely beneficial to the student athletes, as well as to myself as the coach, if I can get at least 1 or 2 adult helpers at each practice/ride so that we can have an adult at the front of the group leading the way and making sure all of the correct turns are taken on a trail, and then one adult at the back of the group to act as a sweeper.  Hopefully this way we can keep everyone together regardless of skill or speed, we can increase safety, and we don't have to waste time because someone got lost.

My goal is to enlist the help of more ride leaders than we need so that it becomes easier to schedule who helps when.  Practice will be held weekly, and sometimes twice a week, and I will need the help of 1 or 2 people per practice, but if more than enough people are able to help then hopefully I don't need to bother people about it more than once every two weeks.  Also we have a great deal of experience from many individuals in our local group and it would be awesome if the kids had a chance to learn from all of them.  I certainly do not feel that I am one of these individuals that have a load of racing experience, so I am depending on the help of others to instruct these kids.

Practice can legally start in the month of July, which is tomorrow.  Realistically I won't be able to get things going until after Crusher, July 11th.

If people are interested in helping, I need their email (call or text Joe at 208.339.1120, or email ssbikesnboards@gmail.com) so that I can "invite" them to Pitzone, which is the registration program that NICA uses to keep everyones profile information organized.  Once I send them an invite there is a small registration fee ($25), they perform a background check ($22), and they require that each individual watch a video about concussions and answer some very obvious quiz questions.  The video and quizzes might take an hour total, maybe more like 30 mins if I remember correctly.  After those things are completed you are registered with NICA as a general volunteer and are approved to begin officially helping with practices.  I'm still learning about further training from there to become ride leader, assistant coach, etc. but it may involve attending a webinar... I'll get back to those interested.

The end goal of this program is to help more kids get on bikes to have fun and hopefully help them begin a healthy life long activity.  There's no doubt in my mind that we have the resources in this community for this to be a very successful program.

Joe Hill
Sled Shed Board Shop
Sticks n Stones Biking and Climbing
208.356.7116
www.ssbikesnboards.com