{"id":97373,"date":"2018-10-22T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/high-desert-devo-delivers-with-small-team-at-mountain-bike-state-championships\/"},"modified":"2018-10-22T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T19:00:00","slug":"high-desert-devo-delivers-with-small-team-at-mountain-bike-state-championships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/high-desert-devo-delivers-with-small-team-at-mountain-bike-state-championships\/","title":{"rendered":"High Desert Devo delivers with small team at mountain bike state championships"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Cortez\u2019s
Cortez\u2019s Thorin Howell of High Desert Devo pushed hard to the finish line to place third in the sophomore boys race at the Colorado High School Cycling League state championship on Sunday on Durango Mesa.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DURANGO \u2013 A small high school mountain bike team from the southwest corner of Colorado had a big result Sunday at the state championships.<\/p>\n

Thorin Howell, a sophomore home-schooled student from Cortez, raced to third place at the Colorado High School Cycling League sophomore boys state title race at Durango Mesa Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a challenge,\u201d Howell said. \u201cThere was good competition out there. I had more nerves, and this was definitely bigger with more on the line than any other race, but I just went out and had fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fun is the name of the game in the Colorado League, a division of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association that has boomed in popularity in the last 10 years.<\/p>\n

A total of 822 high school mountain bikers made the trip to Durango out of the 1,383 athletes who participated in the regular season. That number was up from 1,262 a year ago.<\/p>\n

The league offers boys and girls races in divisions for freshmen, sophomores, junior varsity and varsity riders. The 822 state qualifiers from 67 schools were an all-time high for the league.<\/p>\n

Last year, 620 kids participated at the state championships, up from 561 in 2016. What started as a league in Northern California has now become a national sensation that has produced some of the top young mountain bikers in the United States, including 2018 world champion Kate Courtney, a 22-year-old from San Francisco who got her cycling start through NICA.<\/p>\n

\"Cortez\u2019s
Cortez\u2019s Thorin Howell of High Desert Devo paced his team as the Colorado High School Cycling League state championships. High Desert Composite, a team of riders from Cortez, Dolores and Mancos, placed 19th out of 33 teams in Division 3.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

During the weekend, the young mountain bikers conquered a 7.1-mile loop built on private land on Durango Mesa. Race length and the amount of laps depended on the category in which the racers competed.<\/p>\n

Howell went into Sunday as the south conference champion. At the previous four races during the regular season, he had three wins, and he finished fifth at the conference championship race in Eagle to secure the points series victory.<\/p>\n

Sunday, Howell completed two laps in 55 minutes, 59.78 seconds to place third. Peyton Wilkerson of Estes Park was first in 55:11.66, and Zach Footer of Evergreen was second in 55:42.22.<\/p>\n

Of the High Desert Composite team\u2019s six riders during the 2018 season, five qualified for state. Will Brown, a junior, finished 141st in the three-lap junior varsity boys race, and junior Gabe Frizzel finished 156th. Also in the sophomore boys race, Trenton Bagge finished 111th. In the freshman boys race, Nick Kamper was 129th.<\/p>\n

In high school races, every finisher helps their team score points. High Desert Composite competed in Division 3 and finished 19th out off 33 schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cThorin has inspired the rest of the team a lot,\u201d said High Desert Devo boys head coach Mike Schmidt. \u201cWhen we first started, everyone had these big enduro bikes. Thorin was the first guy on a hard tail. Everyone saw how successful he was. He rode his bike a lot more and inspired the other kids a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cortez\u2019s
Cortez\u2019s Thorin Howell of High Desert Devo helped inspire his teammates during a 2018 Colorado High School Cycling League season in which he won the south conference title.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

High Desert had one girl on the high school team this year, as Lacey Robison competed in one junior varsity girls race. A broken nose kept her out of the rest of the season. Sabina Kraushaar, the team director, said her goal is to get more girls out next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want more girls to race,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping more show up. We have some middle school girls coming up, but that\u2019s my big push.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right now, High Desert Devo has 14 middle school riders on the team \u2013 12 boys and two girls. The team accommodates riders of all abilities. Robison had never ridden a mountain bike when she joined the team, and they helped her get a bike.<\/p>\n

The team is run by eight volunteer board members who help raise money to support the team. The Colorado League comes with long travel weekends, but Durango\u2019s state championships were a welcome relief to the road warriors.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur parents do a lot to get their kids to the races,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cOur coaches are great, and Chase Wesley went to every race with the team this year. It\u2019s hard, but it\u2019s so worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howell is already looking forward to moving up a classification in next year\u2019s high school league, and he will be eager to race for another podium finish when Durango hosts state in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be super fun,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to train more and try to do better next year. Our team, we\u2019re super small, and we\u2019ve grown super close. It\u2019s a pretty sweet thing to be part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

jlivingston@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

headlines with third-place finish<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5770],"tags":[657,38,13,37,36,977,445,2343],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-cycling","tag-dolores-high-school","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-mancos-high-school","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-mountain-biking","tag-newsletter-lead","tag-sports-group"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97373"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}