The Taos Composite High School Mountain Bike Team opened its 10th season of cross-country mountain bike racing in the Colorado League with 14 riders traveling from Taos to Leadville Saturday (Aug. 24).
The Leadville course features 12.4-mile races, with the varsity category going up to 18.6 miles. The league saw over 1,500 riders competing Saturday, divided into four categories: freshman, sophomore, junior varsity and varsity (qualified juniors and seniors only). Only the top 5 percent of the boys and the top 10 percent of the girls from the previous year met the criteria for the varsity selection.
Scoring was team-based, with athletes needing to earn points toward the collective. Taos has a small team that competes in the Crystal region of the High School Colorado Cycling League and finished second as a team on Saturday.
Varsity athlete Keaton Verswujver secured a third-place finish in his race. On the final lap, Verswujver attempted to go with the leader and was able to secure the podium, a first for the Taos Composite team. Five freshmen riders from Taos placed in the top 10. Abby Thornton and Bernice O’Reilly finished seventh and eighth, respectively. Last year, Thornton became a state champion as an eighth-grader, bringing experience to the squad.
For the freshmen boys, Silas Conn finished second and Vincent Brady followed in third. In the same race, Col Cassily finished ninth after returning from an injury.
In the girls sophomore race, Eleanor Breier brought home an 11th-place finish, an improvement from her second season. This year, she raced two laps and finished in the same amount of time as it took her to complete just one lap last year, according to Fiore. Breier is also dealing with injuries sustained from winter 2023.
Sophomore Dusty Elsasser competed in his first cross-country mountain bike race and finished 46th overall, passing 20 riders. For the junior varsity boys, Luke Rand moved up 40 places to finish 21st; Ryan Edmonds moved up 30 places to finish 45th; Rowan Higdon finished 59th; and Rowan Hennelly moved 40 places to finish 63rd for his first time racing. The team’s lone senior, Rocco Seigle, finished 83rd.
“The fact that Rand, Edmonds, and Hennelly moved so many places will give them much better starting positions in the next race,” coach Cassily said.
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