SLICE OF LIFE: McCall Area Composite Youth Mountain Bike Team

McCall Area Comp! Let me hear you stomp! We’ve got grit, We’ve got pride, 1-2-3, let’s ride!

Photos courtesy Melissa Shelby Photography

Hands clapping and feet stomping, this group cheer begins any gathering of the McCall Area Composite youth mountain bike team. With more than 80 studentathletes in 6th through 12th grade expected for the 2020 season, the team’s success and growth have begun to garner attention. The 2020 season will be the team’s sixth year in existence, and today the team is thirteen times larger than when it started with just six kids in 2015. In fact, the McCall program is now one of the four largest in the state.

As a composite team, McCall Area Comp draws its athletes from McCall, Donnelly, New Meadows and Cascade. It is one of 28 teams in the nonprofit Idaho Interscholastic Cycling League (IICL), a statewide

organization that is part of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, or NICA, the overseeing body for most school-aged competitive mountain biking teams in the U.S.

During the season, which runs from July to mid-October, more than 1,000 student-athletes from across Idaho gather at a series of five regular season races, with each team competing at four of them. The season culminates in a state championship attended by all teams.

In 2019, the McCall team earned second place in Idaho for the season and won the State Championship race with the most points at that individual event. The wins were against large teams such as Boise and Eagle High Schools.

At the core of the team’s culture is a focus on community, character development and personal improvement. Whether at a race or at one of its thrice-weekly practices, team pride and connection ring out loud and clear – as heard in the team cheer but also seen and felt in the coach-athlete interactions, the family involvement, the group camping at away races, and the way teammates cheer for each other.

At the helm of the program is Head Coach and Team Director, Dean Cromwell, a semi-retired mechanical engineer who now devotes a large part of his time to organizing and leading the team – all on a volunteer basis. A former amateur road bike racer, Cromwell jumped aboard to help when the program first formed in McCall. By the team’s second year, the original founders were ready to move on and he took over.

Cromwell's commitment, leadership, thorough communication, and meticulous organization are widely known in the community as the foundation of the group. Any parent and coach you talk to says that Cromwell’s devoted time and effort are invaluable. The tireless presence and support of Cromwell’s wife, Amy, is also noted by all involved, including Dean. And after five years of work leading the group, Cromwell’s 6th-grade son is finally old enough to join in 2020. His 9-year-old daughter will follow soon.

In addition to Cromwell, more than 35 volunteer coaches (many of whom are team parents) donate several hours a week to attend practices and assist with team planning.

All coaches—for any NICA team across the U.S.—must attain Level 1 certification, which includes a background check, risk management and athlete abuse awareness training among others. The head coach or team director of each program must have NICA’s Level 3 certification, which requires quite a bit more time and effort.

The McCall coaches run the gamut from highly experienced to enthusiastic but less skilled. They are united, however, in their goals to promote healthy, active lifestyles for kids and to foster a positive and encouraging environment that rewards hard work.

“We really try to focus on trying your best and giving it everything you have. We want to celebrate the effort, not the result,” Cromwell says.

“The level of improvement we see in kids from a skills and fitness perspective is just amazing.”

Incoming sophomore Jamison Greaves, 14, experienced that firsthand. “When I started, I was out of shape and it was really hard. I was always in the back of the group. But everyone was always cheering me on and I felt welcomed. It was super positive," says Greaves. He has seen self-improvement in many areas, he says, including his riding and his social skills.

“The team culture is the best part of the program,” says coach Matt Galyardt, whose son Gavin is in his fifth year on the team and was the Idaho Freshman state champion in 2019. “It’s a lifelong sport the whole family can enjoy together. It creates an inclusive environment where folks get to know each other better – student-athletes, coaches, and parents alike.”

Galyardt says the key is keeping fun at the center of everything, but he also credits the mental toughness that the coaches instill. Cromwell agrees that the hard work the kids put in at practices is important.

“We want kids getting out of their comfort zone and maybe working harder mentally and physically than they have ever experienced before. There’s great value in building that grit and determination,” Cromwell says. “These are lessons that hopefully these kids take into the life ahead of them and know that when things get hard, as they invariably will, that they are a little more prepared to handle that struggle or those difficulties.”

“The culture of the team is the most important thing to me and something we’ve really tried to foster and make better and better,” says Cromwell, who along with wife Amy also runs a nonprofit, the Payette River Bicycle Movement, that refurbishes and donates bikes to local children. “We’ve really started to see some success from a racing perspective the last couple years, but I feel like that’s just grown out of the culture.”

NICA helps steer this culture as well. It is focused on being a youth development program using mountain biking to achieve its goals, not the other way around. It is also a strong proponent of service projects and positive youth activities and has begun to organize programs beyond racing such as its Teen Trail Corps. The McCall group organizes several of its own trail service days each season and won last year’s IICL award for the team that logged the most community service hours.

NICA, IICL and the McCall team also recognize that there can be barriers to entry in the sport of mountain biking and want every kid to have a chance to ride, so there are loaner bike programs as well as scholarships available.

Another NICA initiative that the McCall team participates in is GRIT (Girls Riding Together), which sets time aside for female team members and coaches to ride together in their own groups. McCall Area Comp was 40% female in 2019, which was the second highest percentage of all teams in Idaho, according to IICL Director Eddie Freyer.

“As we grow, we become a more and more diverse group, so it’s important we maintain our values on the team,” says Cromwell. “We want the new kids in the program to be just as stoked as the advanced kids who are winning races.”

The team spirit department is often headed up by coach Sidney Bateman, who can usually be found at the center of the team cheers. She and her husband, Dave Bingaman, who is also a coach, have two daughters on the team. Bateman says she loves the relationships she forms with the kids and seeing them progress and grow.

“I can’t tell you how incredible it feels to have helped build these timid young kids to confident, independent individuals. They go from terrified at races to not being able to get enough,” says Bateman. I’ll do whatever I can to coax them to that starting line because I know that one race—that one challenging and intimidating experience—will benefit them for the rest of their lives.”

She says the coaches are constantly evaluating the quality of the program and trying to improve, especially with how quickly it’s growing. “It’s NICA’s philosophy that we want kids to fall in love with the sport and carry it on for a lifetime, and we see that happening every day on the team,” she says.

Cromwell says one of his favorite things is to hear the community feedback he often gets about how polite and helpful the team is out on the local trails. “I’d rather hear about that than about how great a kid did in a race,” he says. “If we’re learning how to be better humans on this team, that’s the most gratifying thing.”