With Westminster’s Mountain Sports Initiative, mountain biking is now on campus with one student on the team.
With Utah being one of the most popular states for mountain biking, it has still been hard to start a team according to the head coach of mountain biking, said Nic Sims.
“It is way harder than I thought it was going to be,” Sims said. “Utah is the biggest high school mountain bike league in the country with over 7,100 kids registered.”
Sims said it’s the lack of contact he is able to have with high school students that allow him to inform and recruit students about Westminster’s program.
“What’s hard is schools, teams and the leagues are not allowed to share your contact information with me because I’m trying to talk to the student who’s 16 [or] 17, they’re underage, so they can’t share it.”
Sims said his approach to inform students about Westminster’s program is to reach out to every league across the country and find the director, head coaches and team directors.
Another alternative to get the word out is attending festivals.
“We went to Sea Otter, which is the biggest Bike Festival in North America in May and went to Soho Springer, Soldier Hollow Bike Fest,” said Sims.
“We just got to get out there,” Sims said. “That’s all we can do.”
If students are not interested in competing, the alternative is joining the club.
“We’re not turning anybody away,” Sims said. “There’s something here for everybody, whether you’re recreational rider, you’ve got the club, if you think you want to compete, then there’s the team. So we’ve got options here.”
Sabrina Miner, a sophomore and psychology major, runs the club and is the only student on the team.
“There’s about 20-30 people in the club,” Miner said. “It’s mainly just to introduce people to the sport, start building that community and get people out on the trails.”
Although the club is growing, students don’t want to compete.
“I’ve talked to at least a couple of them that might be interested in the team, but a lot of them are just wanting the fun aspect of it,” Miner said.
One Westminster student who likes to mountain bike, but has not joined the team said he is looking for a type of racing that Westminster currently doesn’t offer.
“We only have a cross country team at the moment,” said Kohen Supple, a junior and international business and marketing major.
“I’m hoping that expands into a downhill mountain biking or an enduro team, then I would be wanting to do it,” Supple said.
Supple is from the east coast and said the cross country team is effective, but he is not as familiar as he is with enduro and downhill.
“I’ve only been able to do enduro riding and downhill riding,” Supple said. “So if they added an additional team, either enduro or downhill I would totally join the team.”
Supplle said that if they added either an enduro or downhill team more students would be inclined to join.
“I think the biggest pull for people coming to school here and the people that already go to school here would be a downhill team,” Supple said.
What next year is looking like.
“Ive got like 15 [students] that are interested in next year and eight that are interested in in the year after that, “Sims said. “So even if I only get half of those, I feel confident we’ll have a few more riders for next season.”
Miner shares her thoughts about the team so far.
“I like it,” Miner said. “Definitely more personalized training which is nice, but I’m excited to hopefully have more of a team next year because I love the community and team.”
Sims said that he is not worried about winning but first, building the team and community aspect.
“These first two or three years of building the program, finding the riders, getting people to hear about Westminster and that we have a good cycling program, and want to come here to bike right now,” Sims said.
The goal that Sims has for this program is for students to feel like it’s their team.
“My big thing is this is your team, it’s not my team, it’s your team,” Sims said. “So it can be whatever you want it to be. You really get to help build something.”
