The USN Mountain Bike Team kicked off its 2024 season on August 25th at Chickasaw Trace Trails in Columbia TN, with its first of five races across TN. A familiar course to the team, now in its 12th year, nearly our entire roster of 32 High School and Middle School cyclists took on 1, 2 or 3 challenging 4.2 mile loops in typically hot, dry and dusty conditions for our first NICA/TICL League competition.
Led by senior captains Quinn Dehner, Leo Frein, Tate Green and Rohan Ramachandran, the HS squad finished 18th out of 30 teams. Race series HS team points were awarded to freshman girls Hannah Mackler (4th), Maggie Weiss (6th) and Adeline Miller (10th), and Frein (14th) for their front-of-the-pack performances. Fastest team laps came from Frein and Green, both at 21:22, with Avery Savona just 1 second behind the seniors, finishing 28th in the Sophomore category. Sophomores Charlie Blau and Caden Carrabba put in great lap times in the intense heat of the day, and our large contingent of freshman riders (Basil Broemel, Seth Hauser, Aidan Harris, Emerson Unertl-Coffman and Suzie Zhao) kicked off their HS racing with clean laps, including a 22:01 lap from Harris. Mackler and Weiss’s early laps were in the impressive 23 minute range.
Our young but equally talented MS squad gained team points from performances by returning riders Elsa Absi (9th in 8th grade girls), Brianna Castro (13th in 8th), Mac Perry (14th in 7th) and new 6th grade teammate Brooks Lukach (27th), placing the MS squad 13th out of 25 teams for overall points. Brand new rider 8th grader Allen Chen put in amazingly consistent 25 and 26 minute laps, managing 32nd in a big and competitive field. Absi, Castro and Allen Chen were the MS riders able to complete 2 laps, while the remainder of the nearly all-new MS squad did one lap, including Clio Cherry-Pulay and Rosie Hauser for the girls categories, and Emmett Cheney, Caldwell Adams, Barry Chen, Townes and Vincent Van Zandt. Vincent suffered an early crash that resulted in an injured arm and unfortunately damaged half of his bike cockpit, and 8th grader Charlie McNulty started strong but also ran into double bike mechanical issues during his first lap.
In a growing league of more than 500 racers from across the state that includes many “composite” teams (rather than school-based teams), these results for both squads are just where we want them to be as we begin our lengthy season. Our 2nd race is on September 8th in Jackson, TN, where the team will take on the fast, sandy and flow-y trails in Pugh Bourne Park.
Click here to preview the camps USN will offer in 2025 and plan for warmer days. Registration opens at 12 p.m. Monday, January 6 at usn.org/summer, and waitlists are available for sold-out camps. USN Summer Camps will run Monday, June 2 through Friday, July 11. There will be no camps on Juneteenth or Independence Day. The popular Dog Days of Summer return to the River Campus from Monday, July 21 through Friday, August 1.
USN Mission: University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.