CB Devo bike team steps on podium at state

“We thought we had a good chance at the podium and a slight chance to win”

By Than Acuff  

After missing out on the Division III podium last year as a team, the CB Devo high school mountain bike team returned this year placing third at the state championships Saturday and Sunday, October 19-20. 

This year all 10 CB Devo athletes qualified for the state championships and while they dominated their conference winning all four races of the season, the state championships bring riders from all around the state from all different sized programs to compete as individuals, with team titles still divided by divisions. As a result, the riders are competing in a field much larger than they’ve seen all year in their respective class from the freshman category on up to the varsity category.

“Each category has between 150 and 160 riders in them,” says CB Devo coach Morgan Weinberg. “In our conference races there was really only between 50 and 60.”

Granted, each category was divided into two waves for the start, but the level of rider was far greater than what they typically see in the regular season.

“We knew there were some really fast kids,” says Weinberg. “The competition was pretty stiff.”

The weekend kicked off on Saturday with the Freshmen and JV categories and the young guns of the CB Devo team set the tone on opening day as freshmen Jackson Holsteen and Nate Taylor got their first taste of the big show with Holsteen placing 40^th and Taylor finishing in 76^th place. While Holsteen’s effort was relatively smooth, Taylor got bumped and crashed in the starting straightaway and fell to the back of the pack but rallied to pace numerous riders over the course of his race.

“They both had super good results,” says Weinberg. 

The CB Devo effort then ramped up in the JV class led by Temple Robertson. Robertson went out with the lead group in the first lap and into the start of the second lap of the race. The lead group started to spread out, but Robertson stayed in the hunt and rode to a fourth-place finish among all riders around the state to score the most team points for the CB Devo squad.

“Temple killed it,” says Weinberg. 

Ethan Armbrecht scored additional team points with his 33^rd place finish in the JV race and Ben Geisler did as much as he could given he spent the day leading up to the race packing out two elk and was somewhat depleted.

“Ethan rode super strong and just got better and better throughout the season,” says Weinberg. 

Brie Bender was the third CB Devo rider to boost the team’s overall points profile on day one as she placed 30^th in her race to round out a great opening day of racing for the team.

“The team was all psyched, and everyone was stoked to see Temple on the podium,” says Weinberg.

Day two of the state championships was “Legacy” day for CB Devo as varsity riders Finn Veit, Sam Bullock, Ebbet Weinberg and Kenny Bullock wrapped up their high school racing careers.

Veit has two state titles, one as an individual and one as part of a team title and while his first varsity state race last year didn’t go as planned, he learned from his effort and came into this race a bit more calculated.

“He was wary of going out too hard like he did last year,” says Weinberg.

The change paid off as Veit finished 15^th in the varsity race to generate massive team points. Sam had a solid race, as is his m.o., to place 59^th in the varsity race and round out the team points total. 

“He always rides a steady race and he did again,” says Weinberg. “He’s a really good descender and he just gets stuck behind not so good descenders sometimes.”

Ebbet and Kenny then continued their friendly competition from throughout the season. The two raced together, and against each other, at the state championships with Ebbet crossing the finish line just 9/100ths of a second ahead of Kenny closing out the four riders’ high school careers.

“It’s a painful sport so I think they were all happy to be done,” says Weinberg.

While the individual accolades include all riders from all sizes of teams, the team results are broken down into divisions based on team size and the CB Devo team finished on the podium in third place in Division III.

“We thought we had a good chance to podium and a slight chance to win,” says Weinberg. “We were definitely in it, it’s just hard to win with only one girl racing. We need more girls.”