Local mountain bike team competes in first season

Established this past spring by team director Jennifer Johnson and head Coach Andrew Olsson, Hood River Composite consists of 11 high school and middle school student-athletes from the local area. A dedicated cadre of coaches and parents have conducted skills clinics, practice sessions, and adventure rides that prepared the team for its debut season.

The team competes in the Oregon Interscholastic Cycling League (ORICL) with more than 700 other mountain bike racers on 24 regional teams throughout the state.

In the time trial “prologue,” held at Left Coast Cellars vineyard, competitors raced each other and the clock to gauge their riding skills and endurance over a challenging 4.5-mile course that rolled over vineyard roads through picturesque rows of grapevines. The course challenged riders with punchy climbs, fast descents, loose gravel turns, and a long one-mile uphill slug to the finish line. Ninety-five-degree temperatures greeted the riders and further challenged them to grit out their pedaling efforts.

In Klamath Falls, HRC riders raced over a 3.5-mile “cross country” loop of fast and flowy single-track trail dotted with several precarious rock gardens.

The team’s persistent hard work has produced impressive results at each race venue. In the opening prologue race, Hood River Middle School riders Pep Olsson and Olive Smeby finished second and third. Hood River Middle School riders Miles Caldwell and Rowan Hogue placed 1-2 in their race category. In the Klamath Falls cross country race, the team continued to shine with five riders finishing on top of their race categories. Olsson and Smeby placed 1-2, and they were joined on the podium by teammate Dara Goldstein of the New School with her third-place finish. In the boys race, HRC teammates switched podium places with Hogue placing first and Caldwell second.

The team is guided by “Great Teammate Pledge” created at its first practice earlier in the spring. Each member promised to have fun, to be kind, supportive and uplifting, to try their hardest, to be respectful, and to embrace good “sportskidship” during practices, group rides, and league races. The team will compete through October with race events at Mount Bachelor, Newport, and Prineville. The Prineville finale will determine the Oregon individual and team state champions.