The Mud-Soaked Path to Success

BY EMILY KESEL

It’s a typically gray-skied, rainy day in Valkenburg, Netherlands, and fans of a niche sport are gathered by the thousands around a muddy track. In the middle of the venue, the most hardcore of those fans populate a rave tent, celebrating and wearing costumes and having a blast.

The sport is cyclocross. The event is the 2018 World Championships. And somewhere in all the chaos is Raylyn Nuss, '13, experiencing the “aha moment” that would change the path of her life.

Nuss had been competing in the sport already as a way to train for the cycling portion of triathlon, but her trip to Worlds inspired her to pivot to cyclocross completely. Part of the appeal was the more rigorous athletic demands of the sport – which consists of about 50 minutes’ worth of laps around a course that can include all types of terrain and must force a rider off their bike at least once – but she also saw the value of the community-oriented nature of cyclocross.

“At that moment I was all in,” she said of seeing the Super Bowllike crowds at the World Championships. “I dropped triathlon and told myself I’d do everything I can to be able to race in this race.”

She did just that, quickly working her way up the ranks of the women’s cyclocross riders in the U.S. within a couple years of picking up the sport. As a basketball player for the majority of her life, including her time at Central, Nuss says the discipline suited her background well.

“In traditional cycling, you can get away with just being very smart and savvy, kind of sitting in groups,” she said. “But with this sport, you’re exposed, and there’s no hiding. So you have to have the fitness. You have to be very punchy and quick.”

You also have to be prepared to face the elements of nature, as the competitive season takes place in the fall and winter months for the Northern Hemisphere. Racers compete in the rain and snow, on grass, dirt, sand, and what little pavement there may be at the starting line – mostly riding, but also carrying their bikes while running up stairs or around other impediments.

Nuss trained hard whenever she could in her early years of racing while working full-time as a scientist at Pfizer, running, biking, and doing fitness training on her lunch breaks or after work. The routine helped her land a few podiums and earn a number seven ranking in the U.S. for the 2019 season, but as she began racing in World Cups – the top level of the sport – she knew she had to commit further.

“The buildup before going over [to Europe] while working fulltime was kind of the moment where I’ve never been more stressed out in my entire life,” said Nuss. “And I knew that if I really wanted to pursue this career as a cyclist while I’m still young enough to be able to do it, I would have to leave my job.”

So she quit in 2020 “during COVID, from Pfizer, of all companies” and helped start a professional cycling team. She now says it was the best decision she’s ever made and that her history as a student athlete had a great effect on her decision not to simply join an existing team.

“Everyone was telling me, ‘Just sign on with a team,’” said Nuss. “It is easier to just be an athlete and only worry about training and performing, but because of being a student athlete, I’ve got to have some sort of side hustle, or I’m going to get bored of just doing a sport.”

Ironically, she wasn’t doing much of the sport for her first year after getting the team up and running, as events were sidelined because of the pandemic, but the extra time gave Nuss the opportunity to put all her effort into the formation of Steve Tilford Foundation Racing. And when the competition came back in 2021, she was ready for a breakout year.

Nuss won the Pan American Championships and placed second at the National Championships, qualifying for the ultimate race, the one that won her over to the sport in the first place: the World Championships. The major cyclocross event has been taking place since 1950, and for only the second time in history, it was held in the United States in 2022, in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

The proximity allowed Nuss’s family from the St. Louis area to be in attendance, as well as her friends from Lawrence, Kansas, where she now resides. The crowd of nearly 10,000 people was the largest she’s raced in front of, since most of her biggest competitions have occurred while audiences were limited by the pandemic.

“The buzz and the atmosphere were just incredible. It was one of the best days of my life,” said Nuss, who finished 15th on the day. “I thought it would be great to be in the top 20, but when I found myself in the top 15, I was pretty stoked. It was really good to build off of that.”

Soon after her Worlds experience in January, Nuss received an invitation to join Team USA, where she’ll be one of the faces of the U.S. cycling federation for the next three or four years. She’s looking forward to the opportunity to use both that platform and her team to elevate the sport, especially in the eyes of college-aged women.

“You can get into the sport, like I did, at around 25 years old and still be really good at it,” said Nuss. “I think there’s such an untapped market, and I’m going to investigate that a little bit. I’m coming for you, collegiate female athletes.”

Nuss says learning the “logistics” aspect of running a team was a challenge, but she enjoys it and is happy to be able to provide other athletes with the kind of atmosphere she likes to have around herself. And when she’s retired from racing, she wants to continue in the sport as a team director, even though “you can count on one hand” the number of women that own and operate cycling teams throughout the world.

“I’m in big shoes right now, but I’m really passionate about trying to pave the way for some younger riders,” said Nuss, who is already working to involve more women in the STF Racing team. “Right now in women’s cycling, almost all the women have to work jobs while also trying to race because there’s just not enough pay. But it’s starting to change a little bit, and through my team I’m trying to help pave that pathway for some new women.” Follow Raylyn and the Steve Telford Foundation Racing team on Instagram @raylynnuss and @stevetilfordfoundationracing and on the team website, stevetilfordfoundationracing.com

Wade Welton, left, and Darren Pannier ’90 in the training room at Central Methodist.

BY SCOTT QUEEN

Country music artist Aaron Tippin is still touring and performing, singing his hit “I’m Leaving” and many others. The peak of his popularity came in the 1990s, about the same time that his midMissouri look-alike, Wade Welton, was becoming Central Methodist’s first full-time athletic trainer.

Welton is still called “Aaron Tippin” by a few friends, but mostly by his old Central roommate, Darren Pannier, ’90.

“I was with my wife at the Missouri State Fair a few years ago, and I heard this voice calling out ‘Aaron Tippin’ and of course it was Darren,” Welton said.

Pannier gave his good friend the nickname some 30 years ago while working as a graduate student at Central. Welton had just become athletic trainer and was befriended by Pannier and a group of grad students. They roomed together in an off-campus house, and the two became lifelong friends.

Welton remains at Central Methodist today, having switched over to the academic side of athletic training a few years ago. He played a big role in transitioning Central to a master’s program in athletic training.

Pannier took a job in the Sedalia School District as a P.E. teacher and ended up at State Fair Community College, where he has been athletic director for nearly 25 years. Under his leadership, State Fair has grown from two to 16 sports.

The two built a lifelong friendship that started in that little rental house on Herndon Street in Fayette. They were even in each other’s weddings. Their wives, Sonya Welton and Sara Pannier, ’95, have listened to their husbands’ countless stories about shenanigans at the old MacMillan’s Café and other locations. Eventually though, life got in the way and their visits were fewer and further between.

But they picked up just like no time had passed earlier this year, when Central and SFCC were working together on an articulation agreement for athletic training, allowing SFCC students to seamlessly transfer to Central to finish their master’s.

Their relationship made the agreement much easier, said Dr. Rita Gulstad, CMU provost and vice president for academics.

“It’s all about relationships,” Pannier said. “In fact, when I visit with student-athletes, I talk about transferring and their next steps academically. I remind them that the next step also involves building relationships. It was the best thing that Central gave to me.”

Both Pannier and Welton say their wives and children still tease them about continually getting stopped by people they know while they are out to dinner or attending an event.

“They joke that we know everybody,” Pannier said. “But it’s all about the relationships you build along the way.”

And they’re both very thankful for the relationship that started when a new graduate student befriended an Aaron Tippin look-alike.