Social distancing may be relatively easy to maintain while out on the trails, but continuing teambuilding and recruitment during a pandemic is proving to be a challenge for the Cycling Club.
President Alec Miller has seen the transition from in-person social interactions among club members to COVID-19 restricted practices the past months.
The club has had to refrain from their traditional team bonding where they would spend time together outside of rides, watching movies or having after-practice meals. Game nights and barbeques are being replaced by virtual meetings instead. The team has been calling over Zoom, a change that is not drastic for newer recruits.
“For the most part, most of our members are actually freshmen,” Miller said. “They haven’t really been to the club and haven’t seen what it’s been like in the past years.”
Miller has found recruiting more difficult this semester, not quite knowing where to start with current circumstances. The Cycling Club participated in Palousafest as they normally do with drastically different results.
“With the way the Palousafest was run this year and the times, it was kind of unfortunate we weren’t able to get as many names,” Miller said.
An event that normally would allow them to get dozens of students interested and on their email list resulted in only a few contacts this year.
To adapt, Miller is hoping to have the club table on campus and host Zoom calls for potential recruits.
As a current senior, Miller said many of his teammates graduated last year, leaving a gap in membership.
“We’re kind of in a rebuilding stage,” Miller said. “Just trying to build up the team.”
For practices, Miller has found it easy to social distance within the team. According to Miller, biking trails like Moscow Mountain’s tend to be two to three feet wide. Leaving riders to follow one at a time.
“With cycling, it’s easy to social distance,” Miller said. “It’s pretty hard to get within six feet of a person.”
The club is still doing weekly rides while following social distancing guidelines. Miller found that carpooling has become more difficult, with members restrained to two people in a car wearing masks when driving to team events.
Otherwise, practices have continued as usual. According to their page, the club focuses on cyclocross and mountain biking in the fall with road in the spring. Cyclocross is a form of bicycle racing that consists many laps on a short course featuring pavement, wooded trails, grass, steep hills and obstacles that require the rider to dismount, carry the bike around the obstruction and remount.
The Northwest Collegiate Cycling Conference cancelled their season for 2020 due to the pandemic.
The team will not be participating in any races this semester.In the spring, if the club is able to participate, competitions will function differently. Specific COVID-19 precautions have not yet been determined, but Miller anticipates changes.
“It won’t be what it used to be, where we would all race against each other,” Miller said. “It’ll be individual starts, then to see who has the best time.”
The spring season itself is still to be confirmed.
Haadiya Tariqcan be reached [email protected] on Twitter @haadiyatariq.