Small but Mighty MTB Squad takes on Monteagle Mountain

Steve Smail & Amy Dortch, MTB Team Head Coaches
The HS and MS Mountain Bike squads traveled to the St. Andrews Sewanee School on Monteagle Mountain on October 6th for the team’s 4th race of the season. Originally scheduled in the foothills of the mountains in East TN, Hurricane Helene decided that location was not ideal, and the league quickly switched to the trails on the SAS campus.

These trails the league used for many years as our State Championship course, but we have not been back to them since 2019. The small USN squad that was able to race discovered what are likely to be the best maintained and most fun course of the season. It included a super fast single track downhill, a challenging set of rock gardens, a rollercoaster-y single track section full of twist and turns, and a stretch that traversed the buildings and central quad of the SAS campus with lots of fans.
 
7 HS racers went fast and furious on this new course, with team points collected by Maggie Weiss and Adeline Miller (placing 4th and 11th in freshman girls), Sophomore Charlie Blau and Freshman Aidan Harris (both placing 24th in their categories). Weiss tore through two 23-minute laps to almost land on the podium, while Blau posted a 21:36 first lap, our fastest on the day and finishing 2 laps under an impressive 44 minutes. Avery Savona was just a few seconds behind Blau finishing 26th, while Caden Carrabba and Seth Hauser both placed 37th, all finishing under an hour.
 
The MS squad was only 5 riders strong but posted solid results and collected team points from 8th grader Sylvie Mackler (finishing 10th), 7th grader Rosie Hauser (finishing 12th) and 6th grader Emmett Cheney and 6th grader Barry Chen (both finishing 24th in their categories). 8th grader Allen Chen finished 26th in a very competitive category, and posted the fastest MS lap of the day in a superb 23:16.
 
Because many East TN teams and families were impacted by the Helene storms and damage, the league decided not to officially count team scores/rankings for this race and not have team results contribute to the overall season points/rankings. This puts all 30 NICA teams in a unique situation for our 5th and final state championship race, where the point margins will be very close. Individually, we have Maggie Weiss in 4th overall and a dozen teammates in the top 20 for their categories. Our final race is on the very challenging trails around Laurel Point at Racoon Mountain in Chattanooga on October 27th. Race standings are posted here: https://my.raceresult.com/312113/results#0_2A48B4
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