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The Piedmont Highlander

The Piedmont Highlander

Students cycle with Oakland Composite team

Students+cycle+with+Oakland+Composite+team

Everything in the park, from the clear sky to the birds resting on the branches of the trees, echoes a feeling a serenity. All of a sudden the calm is shattered by the whir of bicycle tires against the dirt path. A pack of bikers race through the woods, adrenaline speeding through their veins as they whip around corners, doing all they can to get to the front of the group.

Every week students meet up in the Oakland Hills to ride their bikes, and meet people in the biking community. This is the Oakland Composite Biking team. PHS is one of the many schools in the Bay Area without a mountain biking team, but that doesn’t mean that students can’t compete.

The Oakland Composite mountain biking team is made up of high school students from around the East Bay. In the past four years the team has grown from 10 students to over 30, according to the Oakland Composite website.oakcomposite_NathanHorstBiking_courtesyofEdHorst

Practice is three or four days a week, including a Sunday ride with the entire team around the Oakland Hills.  During the week, depending on the weather, students will bike either outdoors or indoors on spin bikes. Students ride on trails and paths throughout the Oakland Hills to practice on the outdoor terrain, which is very different from riding on a city street or sidewalk. These rides are not the only training the bikers do. Many of the competitors choose to practice on their own time as well. One of those competitors is sophomore Anders Bjork who began competing about a year ago.

“We go up to Joaquin Miller and other parks in the Oakland Hills and we ride there and ends up being probably from 9:30 a.m. to around 1 p.m.,” Bjork said.

There are four to six regular season races that take place almost every other weekend starting in March until the end of the school year. At the end of the season, if the team qualifies, they compete in the state championship. Racing is not required on the team, but it is also not restricted to Oakland Composite races. If they choose, students can race with outside organizations.

“We do cross country as a team so it’s a lot more endurance than tricks and such,” sophomore Nathan Horst said.

This year, for the first time, Piedmont is being recognized as its own division of Oakland Composite, and they hope that it will grow even more. At the moment there are only four girls in Oakland Composite, none of whom are from Piedmont. For the past few years teammates have been trying to get more girls involved in mountain biking, but it has not been too successful, Horst said.

“When the Oakland Composite goes to races they race as one, but in order for there to be a team for a school there has to be at least five people,” sophomore Conor Stoneman said.

Oakland Composite has created a strong community of student bikers. It has allowed those with similar passions to come together and compete, as well as spend time doing the thing that they love. The students who participate on Oakland Composite are always looking for other students who would want to join the team.

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