High Desert Devo is preparing for its upcoming fall season, which is set to start Aug. 19 in Cortez. The season will run until Oct. 12.
Children from kindergarten through high school can be part of the team and learn the skills of devo riding. Kindergarten participants must be 5 years old by Aug. 1 to be eligible.
High Desert Devo is a “youth cycling club with a focus on helping empower the youth in our communities to develop a lifelong passion for cycling,” coach Chase Wesley told The Journal.
Over the course of the year, around 160 children will participate in High Desert Devo’s program.
Wesley has been involved with the cycling program since 2018. He is also a special-education teacher and transitions coordinator at Montezuma-Cortez High School.
Practice for students in grades 7-12 will be on Tuesday or Thursday nights, and practice for kindergarten through grade 6 will be on Wednesday nights.
Riders in grades 9-12 in the Tuesday and Thursday sessions will be eligible to be part of the Montezuma Composites. The Montezuma Composites will travel to various locations across the state over the course of the season to compete against other high schoolers.
Younger participants will be divided into smaller groups of kindergarten and grade 1, grades 2-3 and grades 4-6.
After the fall season, a spring session takes place after spring break and until the end of the school year, followed by a summer season in June and July.
High Desert Devo’s goals is to foster a love of this “lifelong” sport, Wesley said.
“We want to give students in the community another sporting option,” Wesley said. “We have probably over 150 miles of world-class single track options, and biking is becoming a huge sport because it’s a lifelong sport. Kids can learn as a child, and then as an adult in the 20s, 50s, 60s and 70s they could still be mountain biking.”
The sport also teaches kids valuable lessons.
“It’s a great lifelong sport, and it teaches a lot of great life lessons,” Wesley said. “We see a lot of riders come away with increased confidence or compassion, patience, the ability to regulate themselves better and they overall feel more focused and confident. They can and they know that they can do hard things, which we find is a very critical thing to teach kids these days.”
Registration is open until Thursday, Aug. 15. Those who apply for a scholarship must have the application submitted by Friday, Aug. 2. Registration fees are due by Monday, Aug. 19.
The scholarship can be used for registration fee assistance or to help cover gear such as helmets, gloves, water bottles, backpacks and other necessities needed to get started in the sport.
Those who need a bike can utilize the group’s bike loaner program.
“We have a few bikes around each size, around common sizes that we can loan out to students to ride for the duration of the season,” Wesley said.
Those who wish to learn more and register for High Desert Devo can do so on the group’s website www.highdesertdevo.org.
