The New River Community College has a cycling club that competes in collegiate cycling events across the country.
The club was formed in 2015 to give students the opportunity to compete in races at the collegiate level and help club members improve their cycling skills. Members wanted to also promote cycling as a healthy exercise and lifelong recreational pursuit within NRCC and the community.
USA Cycling (USAC) is the governing body for competitive cycling in the United States and offers a collegiate program that allows people to compete against other schools in their conference as well as participate in Collegiate National Championships in the various seasons.
The New River Community College Cycling Club is in the Atlantic Collegiate Cycling Conference, with other colleges from Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and District of Columbia. In the conference, NRCC regularly races against colleges such as Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Duke and University of North Carolina.
Not many community colleges are a part of USAC.
“We are the smallest school in our conference and one of only a handful of community colleges in the nation to field a team,” says Lucas Weaver, club president.
NRCC’s cycling club is active year-round and competes in five cycling seasons comprised of road, track, mountain bike, cyclocross and BMX.
In the first year as a club, NRCC won the ACCC Division 2 Mountain Bike Team Omnium award, which is given to the team with the best overall scores from all regular season mountain bike races. Two team members also won the men’s and women’s ACCC D2 Mountain Bike Individual Omnium awards.
“It was awesome to take home those awards in our first year of competition,” Weaver said. “And this year one team member competed in his first bike race.”
The cycling club just finished up the cyclo-cross season and will be starting road season in February.
“We welcome anyone to join us and hope to see some more people riding bikes in a NRCC jersey,” says Weaver.
Club membership is open to the college’s faculty, staff and students, as well as members of the community. Anyone interested in joining the club should contact Weaver at lqw27@email.vccs.edu or Heidi Morehead, club advisor, at hmorehead@nr.edu. There are no dues required to be a member of the club.
— Submitted by Kelly Kaiser
