Coach's Corner  

JUNIORS DOMINATE OUR CLUB STATISTICS - ADULTS PLAN COMEBACK

A couple of days ago, I updated and published our club statistics pages FCP Statistics and Records and FCP Career Leaders. Over the past few years, there has been a trend developing... Juniors are beginning to dominate our club career statistics.  Here are the top 20 career mileage leaders for men:

You will note that third, ninth, sixteen, and nineteenth place belong to juniors.  And Nick occupies second place with more than 36,000 of his miles logged as a junior.

For our adult women, mileage and participation has dropped faster than for the adult men.  Among women, juniors are at the very top of the career mileage list with Zoe and Dominique.  Melissa Goodman, Carrie Burke, and Brittney Hartley hold seventh, thirteenth, and eighteenth place, respectively.  All girls quit riding between two and three years ago - indicating little movement by are adult women members for during that time.  By the way, Abigail Aldridge, who's only 14 years old, is tenth and quickly moving up the list. 

For this year, juniors again dominate.  Here are the cyclists with the top 25 club miles for this year.

For club miles in 2011, juniors occupy the top 5 places, and 14 of the top 15.   There are only eight adults in the top 25.

Here are the cyclists with the top 25 number of club rides for the year:

Of these 25 cyclists, 21 are juniors.

The last year when adult members dominated our club statistics was 2005.  For that season, Kevin Mitchell logged 6052 club miles, Pat Tuley logged 5062, Chuck Howard had 4544, Chris Jarvis with 4071, and Mary Scott Freeman with 4010.  Interestingly, none of these cyclists are current members.

Frazier Cycling's Frazier Cycling Partners have been around since 1992.  Until 2002, all of the members were adults; that was the first year that my son, Nick, who at the time was 10, joined our club.  Back then, I would not have predicted that Frazier Cycling Partners would become predominately a junior cycling club.  Even when we started our junior race team in 2003, it was not my intention to have the club become a junior cycling club. 

When I lived in southeastern Ohio in the 70's and 80's, I had very few training partners.  Almost all of my training miles were alone. When I moved to the Atlanta area in 1992, I had retired from racing, but I wanted to maintain my fitness through cycling.  With the large metro-Atlanta population, I decided to take action and start a cycling club with the objective to have riding "partners".  Even after a few members joined my club, I discovered, there wasn't any guarantee that I would have a "partner" for very many of my training rides.  I needed more members! 

At the time, my son Nick was a newborn. Even so, it occurred to me there was another path to getting more members and gaining more riding partners.  I decided  I would “raise my own” cycling partners!  Indeed, "raising my own children as cycling partners" had the side benefit to further increasing our club membership by gaining the friends of my offspring!  Of course, it would take some time before these young cyclists could develop the size, speed, and stamina to fold into the mainstream of  my club.  In the meantime, our adult membership gradually increased through the years until it hit its peak in 2005. 

While the adult part of our club flourished, I concentrated on nurturing our youth members and developing them into "real" cyclists.  Cathy and I sought help in this area.  At the end of 2003, we discovered Coach Kelli Rogan, a junior cycling coach, who by coincidence lived in the Suwanee area. With Kelli's help, Cathy and I designed a full development program for our youth members.  As a basis of our program, we created a  mission statement: “Grow the sport by developing the next generation of serious cyclists.  Groom junior cyclists with a focus on principles and values; good sportsmanship, attitude and teamwork.  Promote a lifestyle of fitness and exercise to build a healthy environment for families.”

Over the following eight years, our junior membership has grown and our junior program has been very successful.  In this short time, our program has produced six junior national road championships, 32 national junior medals, many Georgia state championships, and many individual wins and places in both junior and category races.  Our juniors have excelled to the point of setting club mileage, participation, and speed records.  In particular, the juniors began to dominate our rides and records beginning in 2006.

As our juniors began to integrate within our regular rides and workouts, most of the adult members seemed to accept the juniors. Although I heard some rumblings that these "kids" were "too slow" or "too unskilled" for the rides.  But as the years passed and our juniors became faster and more skilled, the sentiment of these same adults seem to change: "They're too fast" and "too advanced".

Last year, 2010, was the first year Frazier Cycling did not have an annual awards party for our adult members.  Declining participation by adults over the recent years prompted Cathy to send out a survey to inquire about attendance for the 2010 party.  Only four adult members responded that they were interested in attending.  As a consequence, we cancelled the party. 

Perhaps it seems like I'm "calling out" our adult members and faulting them as disinterested and indifferent toward club participation. It is not my intention to do so.  As a matter of fact, the blame is ENTIRELY on ME for ignoring the needs of our adult members and taking them for granted.  Indeed, I recognized my errors and I realized that action should be taken in favor of adult cycling.  For months, I struggled with coming up with something... Finally, a revelation came... but most of the credit goes to Brian Herbert. 

One day this late summer, Brian dropped by our house to evaluate some home repairs.  During his visit, we chatted in my living room.  I brought up the subject of our dwindling adult participation.  That prompted Brian to suggest that we start an adult race team similar to the structure of our junior team, but having some separate rides and practices.  Brian revealed that he had been thinking about this idea for a long time.  He felt that our success with our junior program would certainly transfer to the adults. He further suggested that we talk with Greg Hanson because "he's more familiar with the current adult racing scene and he knows some of the Master racers around the area".  Cathy and I really liked Brian's proposal.  Almost immediately, I approached Greg with Brian's suggestions.  Instantly, Greg was interested in helping drive our adult program.

Soon Greg and Brian were engaging other adult members with plans to rekindle our adult group.  They quickly recruited Humberto de Campos, David Haney, Johnny Mayero, Chris Porras, Giovanni Rojas, Mark Schulz, and Wendell Scott.

I'm glad to see such excitement!  Greg and Brian are making great progress and I'm confident that their efforts will be reflected in our club statistics in the near future.  I expect that we will have a more balanced club membership - a mixture of youth and experience.  My sincere appreciation and gratitude go Greg and Brian and all of the adult members!

Thank you!

Cyclocross, Burnout, and Peaking Sep 28, 2011

My 1,000th Flowery Branch 50 December 17, 2010

Field Testing - 3.2-mile ITT October 19, 2010