Meet CSU Cycling Team | Collegiate Club Cycling Team

We had the good fortune of connecting with CSU Cycling Team and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi CSU Cycling Team, what is the most important factor behind your success?
Collaboration. As a collegiate club cycling team, we are a student run program, which means that on top running one of the top collegiate racing teams in the country, our officers are also pursing their college degrees. Each year we elect 6 officers, and select team captains for each discipline we compete in so that regardless of school schedule some of us will have time to conduct team business. Our captains organize team rides during the week, while our officers organize travel to and from races, team events, and most importantly each spring the CSU Cobb Lake Road Race and Oval Criterium which serves as our main fundraiser for the year. Nearly every member of our team comes out to work as course marshals, registration volunteers, and to set up our spring event. Our members are joined every year by members of our community, without whom our event would not be possible. The success of our race weekend allows the team to pay for housing at all of our event’s year-round, as well as paying for each of our nationals trips each year for each discipline we compete in (primarily road, mountain, and cyclocross racing).

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We ‘re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Developing a consistently successful collegiate club team has been incredibly difficult, but as most of our alumni can attest to incredibly rewarding. As a club team, our university does not allow us to directly recruit high school students, so our program has relied on word of mouth and in recent years our social media presence to reach more cyclists that are interested in cycling when they go to college. We have been incredibly fortunate throughout the years that our home of Fort Collins, CO has naturally attracted competitive cyclists with our amazing roads and trail systems. The biggest challenge we’ve faced is maintaining a consistent membership roster that is distributed evenly between men and women. While we haven’t been able to completely address it, we have seen more rider retention and more women joining the team as we have diversified our officers, and organizing more team events to keep students engaged with the club year round.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Easily the most important place to spend time would be Horsetooth Reservoir, situated at the west end of Fort Collins. The first stop would be to go on a road bike ride around the east side of the reservoir to take in its size and beauty, before riding along the Poudre River bike trail through the city to old town to sample some of the amazing local restaurants. Next, we’d suggest going to the west side of the reservoir to either go on a mountain bike ride or hike up to Horsetooth Rock, to take in some spectacular views of Northern Colorado. For day experiencing the town of Fort Collins, we are incredibly fortunate to have the most restaurants per capita in the US, so you can easily spend the whole day sampling the best food the city has to offer. For the last to places to visit, Red Feathers Lake and Estes Park have to be must see, being some of the most beautiful places on the front range, with incredible bike riding to boot.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Our alumni, and most specifically our faculty advisor Dr. Alan Schenkel.

Especially in recent years as the pandemic forced our team to halt competitions, our alumni have become a crucial resource to our team leadership in understanding how to lead the team. Our advisor, Dr. Schenkel, has been with our team for over 20 years, and has been crucial in guiding our team each year. He provides a grounded outlook on collegiate cycling, guiding us throughout the year as the team navigates travel, sponsor negotiations, and working with the club sports administrators. Dr. Schenkel has also been invaluable in the running of our Spring Race, being in charge of registration organization each year,
ensuring that all +600 participants are placed in their correct categories, receive their race numbers, and ensure they receive correct results at the end of their race.

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Image Credits
Craig Huffman Photography (first photo)