I've been racing road & MTB for the last 5 years, cycling is my passion. My jaw almost hit the floor when my 15 year old son said he was going to join the local MTB team this year :shock: For those of you with teenagers you know what it's like to be your kids hero then overnight around the time they turn 12, you become the biggest moron on the planet. :roll:
Now that his friends think bike racing is cool he wants to do it. I had to laugh when I was on a MTB ride with his friend and was told I have " Mad Skills" :o
Now were going to Sea Otter and a bunch of other races together. I'm doing my best to keep my mouth shut so he can have as much fun as possible and get hooked like his old man!

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2007/mar07/mar29news

http://www.txbra.org/events/event.asp?EventID=1452

What NorCal is doing is very cool. So much so that I'm probably going to have to figure out how to start a team when my son goes to high school (no mtb teams in San Francisco yet). But wouldn't it be great if the same thing could happen with road racing? You could sort of model it on collegiate cycling--have all the major juniors teams (Davis, Discovery, Tieni Duro, Team Swift, Spine, Los Gatos/San Jose, uh, who am I forgetting?) host a race devoted to juniors races with reasonable start times and the guarantee that each team would bring a reasonable size team. Of course it would take a ridiculous amount of parent/volunteer effort and planning, not to mention money. Hmm, maybe it is just easier to get up at 3 am to drive to Snelling.

The Locations of the 6 races in the series for this year are

Fort Ord
Folsom Lake
Salinas
Angles Camp
Grant Ranch ( San Jose)
Boggs Mt ( north east of Santa Rosa)

I know in the past some of the races had at least some of the teams camping out overnight before the race. The Folsom Lake race had the first riders starting at noon though.

I think the fact that there are organized teams of kids at the same school helps the NorCal league a lot. That and most kids probably already have some sort of mountain bike they can start on. And my guess is the races don't all start at 8 am in Merced or some equally remote place. You've got to be pretty dedicated (and have somewhat fanatical parents) to be a junior road racer in northern CA (or probably anywhere). Just look at the start times for the first 3 races in the junior points series.
Cherry Pie: 7:40 am (for 10-14s)
Snelling: 8:23 am
Merco: 7:30 am
This is not intended as a negative comment on any of these races. As the parent of a dedicated junior racer, I appreciate all the points series promoters and any promoter who includes a juniors race, no matter how early or far away. But sometimes my son and I wish it was easier to get some of the kids who aren't so fanatical about road racing to show up for races.

The NCNCA Junior points series does award 1 point for every starter in the series events. This year we will have a best new rider as part of the series with the top 5 new riders getting separate recognition in the top 2 age groups.

On the road, are there ever junior races with "handicapped" starts by age group/sex?

It takes someone with passion, energy, talent and abilities to build one of these successful programs. It helps a lot if it is one's job and one is not trying to squeeze the work of it into one's spare time. The junior road scene is not going to grow spontaneously, as it is we build it on the backs of dedicated parents and volunteers.

Other things we could potentially emulate from the MTB league:
-have a points system that rewards participation/finishing in addition to doing well with a focus on team placings for overall instead of individual performance
-have more junior only events to permit as many different types of junior classes as possible

Some of the things that make MTB racing different and harder to emulate
-pretty much closed courses for everything
-MTB racing has the field strung out after five minutes for the most part, then it's a time trial for every one except the contenders for the top, this makes scoring relatively easy for officials
-crashes *generally* speaking are much less severe

but at the same time, the league is building from the bottom up (ie the individual teams and the many volunteers involved with each of those teams).

I coached a HS team last year and I see a couple of differences:

the league is run with a HUGE emphasis on teams. each time there's a new team, the league grows. each time a team expands, the league grows.

the teams are almost 100% "sponsored" by the schools. this legitimizes the sport and in some cases offers PE credit for the students. this is also a great way to get information out there to the students.

the league offers a "destination" (like track or BMX). there's a short season with a set schedule and that's easy for parents and volunteers.

the commitment for racing is small. training commitments vary from team to team.

I brought the numbers up a couple of years ago when talking to Steve Ryan about the state of juniors in track cycling here versus the hotbeds of track in the US, T-Town and Alkek. The biggest difference I can see is the they have *employees* building the program over the years from the top, not volunteers, which is something that is shared with the Norcal MTB league.