The Spokes Of Life

Story By Hannah Goldfinger

Photos By Dirt Life Media

Wheels racing over rocks, roots and mud. There’s a group of dedicated students in the Auburn area who choose their bikes over a ball.

Jere Colley, who started the Alabama Cycling Association, said he got his children involved in mountain biking because they were homeschooled and he wanted to expand their community.

“It was important to us to have them around kids that are different than them,” he said. “… It’s been awesome. [My son is] a senior and he’s raced since fifth, sixth grade.”

The biking community is a lot like a family. Sometimes the group is traveling around the country to race with as many as 20 participants. Often, they are camping together. Meals are cooked together and the community spends time with each other.

Colley’s son has participated in several races already this year.

Pre-season practice begins in October with once-a-week sessions. Then, the season officially begins in December with a break for Christmas. There are three practices a week — a spin practice at Crunch Fitness, a practice at Duck Samford Park and then on Sundays the team goes to Chewacla State Park.

“We do races all summer; there’s other race series that we stay involved in,” Colley said.

Colley and his family joined in the team’s second year of formation.

“We were under a national umbrella that was called NICA’s, National Interscholastic Cycling Association, and they’re out of Berkley, California,” he said. “… They had some policy that I didn’t agree with, and so I started checking into it and I realized that Alabama Cycling was sending California 40 cents on every dollar we make.

“So, it was considerable. Now, we were getting back accounting services, we were getting back name recognition, we were getting back some internet platforms for kids to sign up, we were getting back a few things. But 40 cents on the dollar is a lot, so we decided to start our own.”

What that meant for the team, however, was giving back the trailer, equipment and everything else.

“We went from $60,000 in the account to nothing overnight,” he said. “So, we started it on a wing and a prayer — literally on a wing and a prayer.”

Everything had to be taken care of, Colley said, from designing a new logo, to creating sign up forms and a website.

“The pressure on us was to do not only what the previous league did, but to do it from scratch,” he said.

There were 682 children and their families watching, Colley said. Now, there are two teams, the Lee County Mountain Biking Team and the Auburn High Mountain Bike Team. Both fall under the new league, the Alabama Cycling Association.

“We started it here in Auburn; our first race was in Chewacla,” he said.

That was earlier this year, in 2023.

“Taking on the league was a huge undertaking, but they’ve given us so much that I owed it,” he said. “I had red in my ledger. It’s been really good. I feel like we have a program that can last a while.”

One of the challenges Colley said that he and the team faces is people’s perception of the sport.

“‘You’re riding bikes around in a circle,’” he said of peoples’ thoughts on racing.

The sport is challenging, Colley said, like any other. It would be difficult for an older student, say late high school, to just jump in — just like it would be with football.

“My kids like to be challenged,” he said. “My kids like to push the envelope and be challenged.”

It is a dangerous sport, Colley said.

“People that go to NASCAR to watch crashes have never seen anything like putting 50 eighth-grade boys on bicycles and saying, ‘Y’all start,’” he said.

One of the difficulties many people face in deciding to race is the cost of the equipment, namely the bikes, Colley said.

“That knocks a lot of people out,” he said. “And I can understand that.”

But to him and his family, he said, the investment was worth it. The team has fun, he said. It’s one big family.

“It’s been pretty cool,” he said. “Last race, somebody made me a hula skirt out of race tape and I stood at parking and did it in a hula skirt. It’s just something else; it’s a good, family thing.”