Recruiting High School Student Athletes

Post date: Dec 14, 2009 9:35:0 PM

Well...I think the time has finally come. We're all grown up now. We've sent riders to three nationals in the last 16 months, we appear to be poised to send at least one member of the team to road nationals over the next four years, cross nationals for the next two years, we have established a very successful cyclocross clinic that brings in some of the nation's top riders and coaches as instructors, and all of our dream toys were approved for purchase with delivery expected some time around the beginning of next semester! What does this mean? Well it means all of the stuff I've been working on for the past five years has been solved and now before I get bored we need a new challenge. Recruiting high school students! Here's the letter I just sent the school to see what they think (they replied within 5 minutes and are really excited ):

Our organization has matured to the point where it is beginning look at recruiting high school students. We knew this point was coming and soon and one of the current members who will be graduating in the Spring and I were going to concentrate on it for next year but over the weekend I was watching Nationals for a discipline of bike racing called cyclocross and caught some of the junior's category races. This basically turned into a scouting

exercise and I noticed one rider in particular (edit: yada yada yada, details about a specific rider we're intereseted in who was accepted to a certain school), which is one of the few schools with an athletics department that supports bike racing as a varsity sport. (one of about a half dozen schools in the country).

As with all of these varsity teams, the schools are tiny liberal arts colleges that are mostly in the middle of nowhere using cycling as a tool to make themselves known and attract students. This gives our university an advantage since we are both a great school and a great cycling program. During the 2009-2010 academic year, after the first of the four national competitions we were ranked 5th in Division 2 (in order, the nationals events are Track, Mt. Bike, Cyclocross and Road). We have some trouble explaining how rankings work so let me make it as clear as possible: There are no NCAA divisions, no NCAA at all and no NAIA. Every school in the country is part of the National Collegiate Cycling Association (NCCA) which is a part of the national governing body of the sport (the group that chooses our nation's Olympians, etc) The NCCA has two divisions, one for schools with more than 15,000 students and one for fewer. We are the 5th best school in the country with fewer than 15,000 students. And this is only our 5 year in existence.

Okay so that's great that we're ranked fairly well but the bigger deal is that we're one of the very few really good schools in the nation to go along with our really good team. (along with MIT, West Point, and Dartmouth). Our university is also downtown in the 3rd biggest city in the country which is great for internships etc, as well as all the other facts your office is great at telling prospective students. This gives us the unique position for students to not only race their bikes but also learn all the things that go into the high-tech world of bike racing including aerodynamics, material sciences, mechanical and electrical engineering, etc, and then go out and get an internship (here in Chicago or very close nearby) at a cutting-edge company that makes these products that they race on. Sram, a maker of the shifting components on bikes is located in downtown Chicago, Trek is in Wisconsin, Zipp who makes the wheels that almost ever pro races on is in Indianapolis, and there are dozens more

all within 150 miles. We think this is a great way to get these students interested in science and technology. If they want to pursue a career in these industries great. If not, well their fall-back careers are likely to be even more lucrative! (Boeing pays a lot more than Trek)

Bike racing is odd in that best riders all have personal coaches. This has allowed us to spend funds on some of the most cutting edge training tools. (which I believe not even all of the varsity programs have) Some of this is the same equipment that the Tour de France contenders train on. Our student athletes then are able go back to their personal coaches with the information gathered from these tools, which will help the coaches develop a better training regimen. Another opportunity we can provide that many of the varsity programs can not is access to a velodrome (track for bike racing, think nascar but smaller). We're located within a three hour drive to three of the nations 24 velodromes, with the closest only a half hour away in Northbrook. Chicago is also home to the Chicago Cross Cup with is one of the top cyclocross racing series in the country, and all 10 of the races in the series are within a two hour drive.

We'd like to send this one student athlete some promotional materials from IIT and our club, and if you have any ideas or tips for how we could go about recruiting students in the future we'd love to discuss them.

Thanks,

-Loren Bo

Illinois Tech Cycling

Advisor