The Jesuit Cycling team has had great success in their recent races, impressing everyone around the state with great leadership from upperclassmen and some unexpected but important contributions from freshmen and sophomores.
Recently, the cycling team traveled to Texas A&M University to compete in a road race, a time trial, and a “criterium” race, a short race usually completed on city streets. In the B group, or junior varsity, Hugo Scala ’16 had a great competition, winning the road race and time trial. “He is really doing well,” says coach and Theology teacher Andrew Armstrong. “We expect him to be a big contributor as he gets more experience.” Additionally, Channing Washlesky ’16 also had a big race as he won the criterium (Crit) competition, allowing for a Jesuit sweep of the B group’s competitions.
In other groups that weekend, the team also walked away with four other riders making the podium. “We had a really good weekend,” says junior Thomas Baert. “The season has been very successful this year, in a large part due to new recruits from the freshman and sophomore classes.”
Later in the same week, Jesuit hosted a race as a fundraiser for the cycling team, as they are considered a club and not included in the athletic department budget and must basically fund themselves. “We want to give a special thank you to Richardson Bike Mart for all of their help to us. Without them we would not be experiencing such great growth in our team,” says Armstrong. Unfortunately, the results of the race were not spectacular, mostly due to the fact that most of the Jesuit bikers were helping to run the event for the majority of their time, other than when they were actually racing, which Baert remarks, ” definitely hurt our racing, but more importantly was that we raised some important funds for our team.”
In one year, the Jesuit cycling team has almost tripled in size, and looks to keep growing. And while now only a club, the team hopes one day to get athletic funding and continue to compete at higher and higher levels every year. With the new influx of freshmen and sophomore riders, the team is confident that they have a good foundation for years to come, and look to build on all the success they have had so far.
