ATHENS COUNTY, Ohio — Formed in 2019 for sixth- through 12- graders, the Athens County Cougarbats mountain biking team gets youth outside to exercise and make friends.
The first practice of the season was July 2, beginning at 5:30 p.m., at the Chauncey-Dover Trailhead Park and onto the Baileys Trail System. The sky was clear and the ground was soft from the recent rain, making the terrain more challenging for riders.
The practice began with a circle-up in shaded grass, with disturbed nats buzzing around the kids feet. Riders and coaches played an introduction game to get shy new members to open up by chatting about their favorite cartoons. Then the coaches — all adults — taught everyone how to check that their gear was ready for the trail. With air in their tires, chains on the gears, and tested brakes and derailers, the team peddled to higher ground.
This year, the team consists of 35 student athletes and 19 coaches from around the county.
After a warm-up ride in the grass, the experienced members split off, starting their trail ride adventures. The newer members practiced shifting gears in the grass.
The student-athletes returned from the trail with mud splattered on their clothes and bikes and smiles on their faces.
Meredith Erlewine founded the Cougarbats with Joey Boyle and Jeffrey McAdoo in 2019, after they attended a three-day leaders’ summit and learned how to build a mountain biking team.
“It was because I wanted to start a team for our community,” Erlewine said. “I wanted this activity to be available to kids in a place where I live, and I was willing to put the time in to make it happen.”
The Cougarbats are members of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, which was founded in 2009.
NICA is a national league “that promotes youth development through mountain biking,” Erlewine said. “So their goal is to build strong bodies, minds, character and community.”
The team is part of the West Virginia Interscholastic Cycling League NICA chapter.
The Cougarbats mountain biking season starts each July and ends at the end of October. Practices are twice weekly, on Mondays and Wednesdays, for two hours. When school starts, the team only practices once per week.
Hanna Vorisek became the co-director of the team last season after Erlewine stepped down to be a coach.
Dan Vorisek, Hanna’s husband, has been a coach with the Cougarbats since it formed, said NICA and the Cougarbats prefer to have a lot of coaches so the team can split up during practices.
“We have riders of a range of ability levels and you get better skill development when you can get smaller groups,” Vorisek said.
Vorisek said they recruit in late winter and early spring.
Many of the volunteer coaches, like Emily Guseman, have children on the team. Adults have to have at least a level-one coaching certification from NICA to ride with the team, Guseman said.
“The level one coaching certification is really easy to obtain,” Guseman said. It requires taking a $25 webinar course about physical safety, psychological safety and team values, she continued.
Level three is for team leaders and requires first-aid training.
Parents without a coaching certification can still volunteer by bringing food for team dinners before races, or carpooling for practices.
“It does take a lot of volunteers to make the whole thing work,” Guseman said.
Off to the races
The team attends five races per season, although riders don’t have to attend all of them. Meets last all weekend, with a team pre-ride and other activities on Saturday, and the races on Sunday. Both pre-rides and races are gendered and organized by experience, with the oldest boys racing first, and the youngest girls racing last.
Pre-rides help riders get comfortable with the course, Guseman said. After the pre-ride, the athletes can choose not to race if they want to. Usually, about half of the team chooses not to race, Erlewine said.
Riders also can sign up for the Saturday Girls Riding Together, or GRiT, ride. GRiT is an NICA program that aims to get more girls and women mountain biking. The GRiT ride the day before the races is aimed towards girls and women, but Guseman said anyone can join.
Guseman said the GRiT ride is also organized by pace — “super spicy” being the fastest, which goes first. She and her daughter always ride “party pace,” which “goes however slow people need to go.”
“Everybody cheers for everybody,” Vorisek said. “Whether they’re the first rider through or the last rider through, people from all teams — parents, coaches — are giving them a lot of positive encouragement the whole time.”
Guseman said the training that the team puts the athletes and coaches through is based on research.
Erlemine and Guseman both emphasized that the team is not uniformly competitive, and the kids can be as competitive as they feel like.
Garrett Vorisek, a high school senior, has been on the team since he was in sixth grade. He said he wants to get on the podium at a race, since this is his last year. “The real goal is just to have fun,” he said.
Guseman said older kids often help mentor the younger kids and often, one of the older kids is elected as team captain.
The races have “this very cool atmosphere of people who are all very excited about the same thing, and kids are on their bikes constantly,” Guseman said.
Price to bike
Erlewine said the coaches have paid for all of their own training.
She said they don’t encourage bike rentals because that would be too expensive. For the first six years they had a loaner fleet available for the kids who didn’t have a bike, but they phased it out this year.
“It was a wonderful experiment that we tried for six years, but it became unmanageable,” she said.
Families pay a $315 registration fee that goes to the national ($55) and state leagues ($260). The Cougarbats themselves get none of the money; instead, the team’s costs are covered by sponsors, Erlewine said.
This year’s sponsors include OUCU Financial, among others, she said.
Athlete experience
Kids decide to join for a variety of reasons: Because of their parents’ encouragement, because friends joined, andbecause their family loves mountain biking.
Guseman has a PhD in pediatric exercise physiology, which she said gave her high standards for her daughter’s physical education.
“The Athens County Cougarbats really exemplified a lot of those things that I wanted for her,” Guseman said.
Dan Vorisek said watching athletes improve over just a few weeks of being on the team is one of his favorite things about being a coach. “You know you’ve just given them something they can use for the rest of their life,” he said.
He said the mountain biking community, “Is an incredibly rich experience for the kids and the families – unlike any other sport I’ve been around.”
Guseman described the team as positive and supportive.
“It doesn’t feel like things are going to be easy, but it feels accessible, and it feels like it’s a safe place to try and push yourself a little harder,” Guseman said.
Guseman has seen the team already have a positive influence on her daughter, who has only been biking for a year.
“She really has grown a lot in her confidence and risk assessment skills and her willingness to try new things within her boundaries,” Guseman said.
At the end of the first practice, the student athletes rode their bikes around and around the cement bike park, waiting for their rides and spending time with their friends just a little bit longer.
Garrett Vorisek, standing with his bike by the cement hills, said, “I would’ve never met any of these people, probably would have never left Athens, if I hadn’t been on the team.”
