Benefield: NorCal Cycling League is a combo of friendly and fierce

The postgame locker room talk is different with this team, with this sport.

First, there is no locker room. Or chalk board. There are no set plays to go over, no blown coverage assignments to address.

With teams and riders who train and race in the NorCal League mountain bike league, where teams often camp and hang out the entire race weekend, the competition almost seems secondary.

Almost.

“After every race we all sit down at our tent and have a group conversation about highlights and low points and almost everyone will mention camping."Jasper Bayless, a junior at West County High, said. “Having fun with friends is almost half the experience.”

But the other half is, indeed, racing. And it’s happening at full pace this weekend.

Saturday marks the culminating race of this monthslong season.

Teams and racers were crowned league champs last month based on points accrued through the spring season, but Saturday’s race at Six Sigma Ranch and Winery in Lower Lake, tosses all of that out the window and lets riders race in one furious attempt to be crowned fastest.

Whereas the league title honors speed and consistency over the season, Saturday is all about speed.

“This is a big race for them — for bragging rights,” NorCal League Executive Director Vanessa Hauswald said.

‘The secret sauce...is where we ride’

Bayless and his West County teammates come into the competition riding high.

Among the Division 2 squads large enough to represent a single school, the West County squad won the league title in the final race of the season, beating out second place San Marin High, 1,899 to 1,850.

Middletown High finished in 11th, Maria Carrillo took 18th, Windsor was 19th and Casa Grande took 23rd.

Among the composite teams, West County topped all local teams with a sixth-place finish just ahead of Middletown at seventh. The Annadel Composite squad, which has riders from a slew of Santa Rosa high schools, came in 13th.

The difference between composite teams and high school teams? Composites can be exactly that — a collection of athletes from a variety of schools who compete under one banner.

But when a composite team has five or more riders from a single school, those riders are scored as a school team — hence West County practicing, traveling and organizing as one team, but scoring as two distinct entities.

And the two divisions, one and two, are based on team size, not school size.

Got it?

“It’s to stop teams from creating super all-star teams,” Hauswald said.

But some teams can’t help themselves.

Take the West County crew for instance.

El Molino High has historically fielded an excellent team. When El Molino and Analy merged to create West County High this fall, the team grew substantially in size.

Any worries about diluting the talent or an infusion of negative synergy couldn’t have been farther from the mark, riders said.

“Group chemistry has been fantastic this season,” said Bayless, who began his high school career at El Molino.

“With the school consolidation and the team twice as big (there was worry) that things would fall apart, but it has been fantastic. It has worked out so well,” he said. “Everybody is so integrated, it’s awesome.”

Bayless, who finished second in the Division 2 JV standings by the slimmest of margins, is all about the fun, but he’s also extraordinarily fast. Teammate Aiden Fraley came in third in the standings.

And then there is yet another West County teammate, Vida Lopez De San Roman.

Just a sophomore at Summerfield Waldforf, Lopez De San Roman has multiple national cyclocross and mountain bike titles on her proverbial shelf and she ran away with the varsity title riding for West County Composite this season.

For a rider who has raced across the U.S. and internationally, the NorCal events are just flat out fun.

“I think one of the biggest things about the team is how much fun we have together,” she said. “There are so many kids on the team, we like to get serious and it’s fast, but it’s always so much fun.”

In addition to the camaraderie, longtime coach Mike Warren (an elite racer himself, but that’s for another column) says there is something else in the mix when considering his crew’s success.

“The secret sauce, in part, is where we ride,” he said. “We go out of Occidental … there really is no flat ground. These kids don’t even realize it, but when we go out for a ride, it’s a big ride. It’s 15 to 18 miles and 2,000 feet of climbing every time we go out. We do that three times a week.”

West County junior Asa Bush isn’t calculating feet of climbing at practice. She’s taking in the view.

“The places we get to ride are incredible,” she said. “We get to see ocean views and we get to ride in the redwoods.”

‘I just wanted to get outside’

If practices are a tour of all that Sonoma County outdoors has to show off, race weekends are essentially family campouts.

For better or worse, the mountain biking is not sanctioned by the California Interscholastic Association, which means, among other things, that teams can camp for events and can compete on Sundays.

That non-sanctioned designation also gave them more leeway last year to hold races when scores of other sports were still on hold because of COVID-19.

But don’t misunderstand, the gatherings followed all safety guidelines.

The league, a nonprofit entity, went further and prohibited mass starts, running competitions as solo time trials instead. It was an effort to keep riders from clumping together on the start line or even on the racecourse.

“We ended up in the low risk, as a sport, category so that was fantastic,” Hauswald said. “We are outdoors, we don’t share equipment.”

Bush didn’t worry about the time trial format last season, she just wanted to do … something. Anything.

“During COVID I just wanted to get outside,” she said.

League organizers saw the numbers behind that desire. Remember the bike buying boon in the early days of the pandemic? NorCal officials saw it, too — everybody wanted to get out and ride.

They even added a program for middle schoolers. Enrollment was through the roof.

“Our stretch goal was 500 kids but we got 800. It’s insane,” Hauswald said.

There are about 2,500 riders in the high school program, she said.

Kids flocked to the program during the darkest days of COVID restrictions, she said, but some of those kids have found their way back to other sports when they returned to play.

Still, year over year growth sits at between15% to 20%, Hauswald said.

The roster of the Annadel Composite team, which fields riders from a bunch of Santa Rosa schools, has soared to more than 90 riders, Hauswald said.

“They are huge, massive,” she said. “They have done a really good job with recruiting and building a team this year.”

And everybody keeps pointing back to the vibe. It’s serious, but fun. It’s outdoors in beautiful surroundings. Nobody gets cut, everybody competes.

And the vibe, for many, stretches across teams, Bush said.

Seems there is kinship in suffering.

“You are screaming your lungs out, getting everybody hyped, even if you are not from the same team,” she said.

The same is true mid-race, said West County senior Joey Thompson.

“Both cross country and mountain biking are really supportive, even among other teams. If I pass someone, they’ll tell me ‘Great job,’’’ he said. “There is healthy competition among teammates that pushes us all, but it’s never fierce or anything.”

Except on Saturday.

Friendly? Yes. Sporting? Yes. Fierce? Definitely.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.