Club cycling performs with varsity intensity

Because it's a sport that involves going upwards of 40 mph while balancing on two square inches of rubber, crashing is to cycling what fumbling is to football, what getting stuffed is to basketball, and what a ground ball between the legs is to baseball -- eventually, it happens to everyone.

The difference is, bikers don't spend all their time practicing how not to screw up. They acknowledge the inevitability of crashing, tumbling, losing skin and, more importantly, losing places in a race. The Hopkins cycling club even practices it.

"Every now and then we'll do grass rides where we work on cornering skills," junior Cliff Smoot, the club's director of racing, said. "We hit the corners hard and fast, and since you're on grass, nine out of ten times you'll go down. You learn how to tumble and how to prepare for a fall."

Smoot said that the workouts are also good because they toughen him and his teammates up. Just in case the weekly practices at 7 a.m., the frigid winter training through ice and snow and the long rides of up to four hours every day aren't enough.

Sure, cycling isn't a glamorous sport. But that's not why people generally join the team.

"I love the team element, which most people don't even realize is there," club president Toby Weatherall, a sophomore, said. "Both in racing and training, you really get to know the guys you're riding with, and it's great to have that type of support when you're racing. It's great pushing yourself to the limit with the other guys and eventually seeing it pay off."

And, in recent years, all those cold mornings and long rides up to the Mason-Dixon Line have certainly paid off for the Hopkins cycling squad. The team won the Division II National Collegiate Cycling Championships in 2003 in the road race (a 40- to 70-mile road event) and team time trial, and in 2002, the team took home top honors in the criterium (a 30- to 60-minute sprint race on a short circuit).

Apparently, they're still waiting for their championship DVD.

"We'd all really like to be on a varsity cycling team, but even with that type of success, the school hasn't been interested," Smoot said.

In truth, varsity college teams are a rarity. But according to team treasurer Jess Chin, a junior, the difference between being a club and a varsity team would represent a financial difference, not an emotional one.

"We do treat it as a really serious sport, especially because we've been doing so well," she said. "We have sponsors, and a lot of people who really do care about how the team does in the races. So we don't want to let people down."

Chin joined the team last year as a freshman when she was still a member of the cross country and track and field teams, and said that for the committed cyclers, the work ethic is comparable to that of a varsity team.

"There's definitely the same team feeling and a similar attitude toward the sport," she said. "Maybe it's harder to be that committed to a club sport just because nobody's waving that varsity title over your head. It's very difficult to build that from what we're given."

Obviously, the time commitment that being on a nationally competitive cycling demands is difficult to manage at a tough school like Hopkins. The core group of team members who attend every meeting and go to every race tends to hover around 15 to 20 dedicated riders.

"People are usually either really serious or they decide to pull out," Smoot said. "The rest of us give up every weekend from early February until late April spending every weekend racing at a different college. It's hard to get out of bed sometimes."

But for those who are able to pull off the covers and pull on the compression shorts every morning, the rewards of being on the team become pretty obvious.

"Within half an hour of biking north of the city it gets really nice, it's all backwoods and farm country," Smoot said. "You can be out there for three to four hours on a weekend ride. You completely forget about school, you forget about everything else that's bothering you."