Crested Butte High school bike team opens season at Chalk Creek

Four top 10, everyone top 20

The Alpine Orthopaedics high school mountain bike team opened their season of racing on Sunday, September 25, with four of the eight riders placing top 10 and all eight athletes cracking the top 20 at the Chalk Creek Challenge in Nathrop.
The team has been training hard after school, putting together a mix of long rides and intervals to build fitness as well as speed.
“We’ve been riding them pretty hard to get more top-end and more power,” says head coach Torrey Carroll.
On Sunday, their efforts over the past month were put to the test and they rose to the challenge.
“I think everybody rode a really solid race,” says Carroll. “There were no crashes, no blow-ups and everybody was still riding hard at the end of the race, which was good to see.”
Freshmen Emerson Wohlers and Colton Schnaitter got their first taste of mountain bike racing. Carroll gave them some advice prior to the start.
“I told them it’s easy to go too hard at the start,” says Carroll. “I told them to ride hard but pay attention to their legs and their breathing.”
Both Wohlers and Schnaitter followed Carroll’s advice, moving their way through a field of 26 bikers to take 14th and 17th respectively in the freshman class. Carroll believes Wohlers will be making his mark as the season continues.
“I think he has the ability to crack the top 10,” says Carroll.
Meanwhile, their freshmen teammates Oz Scott and Derek Schomler were near the front of the field battling. Schomler finished in seventh and Scott in ninth in the freshman race.
Sophomore Michael Ryan and Tristan Kraatz opened their season with strong results among their sophomore peers. Ryan cracked the top 20 once last season and Kraatz was on the bubble, but they both made their way into the top 20 in the first race this year as Ryan took 17th and Kraatz 18th place.
Junior Josh Gallen and senior Ian Kelly had their hands full in the varsity race. The course was long and the field of 18 riders was full of talent, including one rider who was fresh off racing in the cyclocross Grand Prix against the top pros.
Kelly and Gallen each had a rough start, as confusion had them starting in the back of the pack. As a result, they got caught behind some struggling riders on the first climb of the first lap.
“That probably cost them a little bit of time,” says Carroll.
Kelly and Gallen made up time on their second and third laps of the race, with Kelly finishing in seventh and Gallen taking 10th place.
“It was definitely very competitive over there,” says Carroll. “You had to fight and claw to get into the top 10. The front of that race was amazingly fast.”
The team heads to Granby this Sunday, October 2 for their second of four races and Carroll is looking for improvements across the board.
“I want to see everybody ride a smart race again, dig a little deeper, ride a little harder,” says Carroll. “I think everybody can move up now that they have one race under their belt.”