Utah Bike Summit this Friday!

Hello!  We will have a booth at the Utah Bike Summit this Friday, April 29! The summit is from 7:30 am to 5 pm at the Salt Lake Community College, Miller Campus. Andy Clark, President of the League of American Bicyclists will be presenting, along with Kevin Lewis, Brett McIff, Shaunna Burbidge, Max Testa, Dave Harward and others. Bike Utah's mission is to promote and preserve the safety, opportunities, and responsibilities of cyclists through legislation, education, and facilities development. I want to thank Tara McKee for supporting us and asking us to come!

Lori is off to Colorado's Leader Summit this weekend. Heather, our coach at Mound Ford Jr. is going too. We are looking forward to a great experience! Did you see the great NICA t-shirts? "I wish they had this when we were in school"? Well, not only is it true that everyone says that to us, but I also wish I could have gone to this clinic years ago and learned some on-the-bike skills! Sigh!

More exciting news, we are half-way there in sponsorship money. Yae! We are still waiting to hear back from several businesses, and are making contact with others as well. If you happen to have a connection with anyone  you think would be interested in sponsoring us, contact Lori.

Our coaches are still contacting schools, and we keep hearing back from more and more. Park City is on board! We have several schools in Alpine District we need to work out some details for, but we have coaches and the schools are supportive.

Everything is going really great! We just need the snow to melt to map out some race courses in the mountains!

Sponsorship & Diversity

Hi friends! I have been super focussed on sponsorship all week. If anyone has connections for me of possible sponsors, please email me! I am hoping for good weather this weekend to get out and check out a couple possible venue sites with Dave, Alex and Justin.

I thought with recent events in Utah, you might be interested in NICA's policy on diversity. This blog is in  no way, shape or form commenting or taking a stance on said incidences. It is purely to give you information of NICA policy.  Here is a quote right out of the coaching manual.

Finding Grants

Spent the week drafting the bid. I also spent hours upon hours pouring over grants. I literally looked at 1292 federal grants that were health related. There are a couple we can apply for.  Has anyone written grants before and want to serve on our sponsorship/fundraising committee? :)  :)  :) please?

What's going on?

First, how about if I tell you about our coaches meeting. We have some really amazing and dedicated coaches! John Miller from St. George came up. He has connected with other St. George coaches and they are starting their programs this year. Their club rush was March, and they went for it! They have a plan and have coaches at every school in St. George. They are planning on attending the coaches summit in Souther Cal this Oct. Alta has 5 coaches! All of them fantastic! We have Heather Williams up in Ogden who actually got a grant for 10 bikes this year and is starting her program. Both she and our new Team Development Committee head (Wesley Rasmussen) will be going with me to Colorado's Coaching Summit April 30. But, it's not just the motivation behind these coaches, it's the kind of people they are! Really really good people! The kind of people who I would love my kids to have as coaches. They care about the kids! As I get to know them and learn about them, I am amazed! While many are very accomplished riders themselves, I believe it takes more than that to be a positive role model for kids. And that is what I'm talking about. Anyone can scream at a kid and tell them to do better and use intimidation or call them names (my all-time annoyance "you play like a girl!"). That is not what a good coach does! Our coaches are the kind of people who are fun to be with and enthusiastic about biking and will put the kids first (not their own agenda). They are great people!