Dying of Embarassment

Quoted message said:

From: [email hidden] (Tom Kunich)
Date: 9/15/2004 12:33 PM Eastern

Quoted message said:

Can someone suggest why the USCF isn't dying of embarassment over the
fact that they can only generate ONE junior woman rider for the Junior
World's?

Exactly what does that tell the world about the state of cycling in
the USA?

What a bunch of feckless asses!

I wish the best of luck to Rebecca Much but without any team members
for support it is a rediculous wish.

Pretty simple. I wouldn't blame the current USCF crop they inherited the mess
though they could be doing more to encourage people to run Jr's and Kids.
Almost every headache we've hit with getting the kids series up and running has
come from the bureaucracy at USCF hq. They have NOT made it any easier to run a
"non-competitive" Kids race than a regular crit, and haven't given us any
incentive to do so. Ne-bra on the other hand has really helped out quite a bit.
They want people to act at the grassroots level, but do nothing much to
encourage this.
Bill C

TritonRider said:

Quoted message said:

From: [email hidden] (Tom Kunich)
Date: 9/15/2004 12:33 PM Eastern

Quoted message said:

Can someone suggest why the USCF isn't dying of embarassment over the
fact that they can only generate ONE junior woman rider for the Junior
World's?

Exactly what does that tell the world about the state of cycling in
the USA?

What a bunch of feckless asses!

I wish the best of luck to Rebecca Much but without any team members
for support it is a rediculous wish.

Pretty simple. I wouldn't blame the current USCF crop they inherited the mess
though they could be doing more to encourage people to run Jr's and Kids.
Almost every headache we've hit with getting the kids series up and running has
come from the bureaucracy at USCF hq. They have NOT made it any easier to run a
"non-competitive" Kids race than a regular crit, and haven't given us any
incentive to do so. Ne-bra on the other hand has really helped out quite a bit.
They want people to act at the grassroots level, but do nothing much to
encourage this.

The NCNCA re-entered the USAC by one vote. That sucked. There is nothing like
a bit of power dispersion (really competition) to keep folks honest and
performing better. I don't know how many times this lesson needs to be learned.

Course:
DBAD101

In article <[email hidden]>, TritonRider

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

From: [email hidden] (Tom Kunich)
Date: 9/15/2004 12:33 PM Eastern

Quoted message said:

Can someone suggest why the USCF isn't dying of embarassment over the
fact that they can only generate ONE junior woman rider for the Junior
World's?

Exactly what does that tell the world about the state of cycling in
the USA?

What a bunch of feckless asses!

I wish the best of luck to Rebecca Much but without any team members
for support it is a rediculous wish.

Pretty simple. I wouldn't blame the current USCF crop they inherited the mess
though they could be doing more to encourage people to run Jr's and Kids.
Almost every headache we've hit with getting the kids series up and running
has
come from the bureaucracy at USCF hq. They have NOT made it any easier to run
a
"non-competitive" Kids race than a regular crit, and haven't given us any
incentive to do so. Ne-bra on the other hand has really helped out quite a
bit.
They want people to act at the grassroots level, but do nothing much to
encourage this.

A local club is running a kids event. I wasn't sure if it would be best
to run it as a competitive event or a non-competitive event. I
suggested the club contact USAC for advise. The club was pleased how
things turned out and I haven't heard of any problems the club is
having in putting together their kids event.

Quoted message said:

From: Casey Kerrigan [email hidden]

Quoted message said:

A local club is running a kids event. I wasn't sure if it would be best
to run it as a competitive event or a non-competitive event. I
suggested the club contact USAC for advise. The club was pleased how
things turned out and I haven't heard of any problems the club is
having in putting together their kids event.

Good for them. We had problems with the permitting, and insurance, and got
shuffled from person to person when we tried to get something other than
conflicting answers. Luckily Diane Fortini ran interference and helped us get
it settled pretty quickly.
Bill C

In article <[email hidden]>, TritonRider

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

From: Casey Kerrigan [email hidden]

Quoted message said:

A local club is running a kids event. I wasn't sure if it would be best
to run it as a competitive event or a non-competitive event. I
suggested the club contact USAC for advise. The club was pleased how
things turned out and I haven't heard of any problems the club is
having in putting together their kids event.

Good for them. We had problems with the permitting, and insurance, and got
shuffled from person to person when we tried to get something other than
conflicting answers. Luckily Diane Fortini ran interference and helped us get
it settled pretty quickly.
Bill C

Maybe you just needed your representative from your local association
to send you to the correct person at USAC in the first place. Our
member service coordinator for our section has always come through when
someone in our region has needed something done.

Quoted message said:

From: Casey Kerrigan [email hidden]

Quoted message said:

Maybe you just needed your representative from your local association
to send you to the correct person at USAC in the first place. Our
member service coordinator for our section has always come through when
someone in our region has needed something done.

It should have been straight forward. The first question was would the kids
events be covered under the Clubs existing non-competitive event insurance. It
took quite a while for people in Colorado to decide how to answer that after
telling us both yes and no. The other issue was our attempt to get some of the
late permitting fees reduced or waved as our local city government gave us a
runaround on a site for the series which held up our permit application.
The end result was that we had to change our dates and push the series back to
avoid getting slapped with large, in regard to our budget, late fee.
USAC did not do anything to make this easier for us or provide any incentives
for us to do it.
Bill C

[email hidden] (TritonRider) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

From: Casey Kerrigan [email hidden]

Quoted message said:

Maybe you just needed your representative from your local association
to send you to the correct person at USAC in the first place. Our
member service coordinator for our section has always come through when
someone in our region has needed something done.

It should have been straight forward. The first question was would the kids
events be covered under the Clubs existing non-competitive event insurance. It
took quite a while for people in Colorado to decide how to answer that after
telling us both yes and no. The other issue was our attempt to get some of the
late permitting fees reduced or waved as our local city government gave us a
runaround on a site for the series which held up our permit application.
The end result was that we had to change our dates and push the series back to
avoid getting slapped with large, in regard to our budget, late fee.
USAC did not do anything to make this easier for us or provide any incentives
for us to do it.
Bill C

One of my teammates here in Greensboro, NC has done something about
the lack of Junior involvement and has started a cycling team at the
local high school he teaches at. It's not something huge, but it's a
start. With support from our team and local shop, he's gotten some
decent equipment donations, and is running training rides with the
kids after school. So maybe some sort of feeder programs such as
these would be good to look at starting? Football, baseball,
basketball, and the other "major" sports all have pee-wee leagues.
Why can't cycling? That would be the key I think, getting them
started younger and earlier. Yes? No?

Tom

Quoted message said:

From: [email hidden] (Tom Arsenault)

Quoted message said:

One of my teammates here in Greensboro, NC has done something about
the lack of Junior involvement and has started a cycling team at the
local high school he teaches at. It's not something huge, but it's a
start. With support from our team and local shop, he's gotten some
decent equipment donations, and is running training rides with the
kids after school. So maybe some sort of feeder programs such as
these would be good to look at starting? Football, baseball,
basketball, and the other "major" sports all have pee-wee leagues.
Why can't cycling? That would be the key I think, getting them
started younger and earlier. Yes? No?

Tom

Exactly. It's fantastic that the HS was willing to work with him. We got
nothing but roadblocks tossed at us by the superintendent's office here when we
looked into starting a HS team earlier. The wanted nothing to do with student
cyclists in traffic and went from there.
The city here was just as receptive. Fortunately the former long time Parks
and Rec director, who is a great guy is now running one of our local
public/private parks and was more than happy to work with us and have us there.
He's actually collected a bunch of stuff the Rec dept. used to run.
We're not really even worried about these kids going on to race. If they do
that's great, but we just want to get more of them out from in front of the
idiot box and on bikes.
There really does seem to ba a growing movement out there to do this. We got
on the bandwagon kind of late. Joe Anthony and ECV were already doing lots of
stuff. Jeff Hamilton is working with them, and helping everyone else out too.
The people at NEBC run a fantastic kids race and intro to racing course. Mike
Ward and BCA run a great series and we had a good first season after doing
single races the last few years.
Here are some links and any of the people involved have been more than willing
to help out.

http://www.berkshirecycling.org/races/youth.php

http://www.ecvcycling.org/racing/2004/kidsraces/index.html

http://www.northeastbicycleclub.org/Events/#KidsCrit

http://www.bkcase.com/hyc
If it hadn't been for the encouragement help and advice of these other people
and Ne-bra we wouldn't have have been as successful and had anywhere near as
much fun.
Bill C

In article <[email hidden]>, TritonRider

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

From: [email hidden] (Tom Arsenault)

Quoted message said:

One of my teammates here in Greensboro, NC has done something about
the lack of Junior involvement and has started a cycling team at the
local high school he teaches at. It's not something huge, but it's a
start. With support from our team and local shop, he's gotten some
decent equipment donations, and is running training rides with the
kids after school. So maybe some sort of feeder programs such as
these would be good to look at starting? Football, baseball,
basketball, and the other "major" sports all have pee-wee leagues.
Why can't cycling? That would be the key I think, getting them
started younger and earlier. Yes? No?

Tom

Exactly. It's fantastic that the HS was willing to work with him. We got
nothing but roadblocks tossed at us by the superintendent's office here when
we
looked into starting a HS team earlier. The wanted nothing to do with student
cyclists in traffic and went from there.

For schools that have a concern about kids racing/training on roads
with traffic a MTB racing league might be the approach to take. Here in
Nor Cal we have a growing Highschool MTB leauge. See
http://www.norcalmtb.org/ for mroe Info. We have seen some of the kids
who started racing in the MTB league cross over into road racing the
past couple of years.

[email hidden] (TritonRider) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Exactly. It's fantastic that the HS
was willing to work with him. We got
nothing but roadblocks tossed at us by
the superintendent's office here when we
looked into starting a HS team earlier.
The wanted nothing to do with student
cyclists in traffic and went from there.

While I don't agree with their attitude, I can sympathize. But it's
unfortunate that basically young people are being told that bikes are
not transportation.

I think that mountain biking and track riding are naturals for kids
and schools really should not object to that sort of stuff. But there
are too few places to practice these sports.

Quoted message said:

Fortunately the former long time Parks
and Rec director, who is a great guy is
now running one of our local
public/private parks and was more than happy
to work with us and have us there.

My high school was, luckily, near a park with a 6 mile road that was
often closed to cars. And we had a cycling club, not oriented to
racing, but to a little bit of riding with a gym teacher as our
advisor. The focus was a semi-competive event in the park where
people rode around as far as possible in 24 hours.

JT

[email hidden] (TritonRider) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Exactly. It's fantastic that the HS
was willing to work with him. We got
nothing but roadblocks tossed at us by
the superintendent's office here when we
looked into starting a HS team earlier.
The wanted nothing to do with student
cyclists in traffic and went from there.

While I don't agree with their attitude, I can sympathize. But it's
unfortunate that basically young people are being told that bikes are
not transportation.

I think that mountain biking and track riding are naturals for kids
and schools really should not object to that sort of stuff. But there
are too few places to practice these sports.

Quoted message said:

Fortunately the former long time Parks
and Rec director, who is a great guy is
now running one of our local
public/private parks and was more than happy
to work with us and have us there.

My high school was, luckily, near a park with a 6 mile road that was
often closed to cars. And we had a cycling club, not oriented to
racing, but to a little bit of riding with a gym teacher as our
advisor. The focus was a semi-competive event in the park where
people rode around as far as possible in 24 hours.

JT