It’s been almost a decade since NICA took high school mountain bike racing national—and it’s making riding better for all of us
When the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, or NICA, was founded in 2009 to help high school mountain bike teams across the country get up and running, no one knew what a phenomenon it would become. The number of Americans riding bikes decreased by 8 percent between 2000 and 2010; and for kids ages 7 to 17, the decline was a precipitous 21 percent. The sport of mountain biking, too, had been struggling to grow, never quite regaining its mid-1990s glory.
Today NICA is one of cycling’s greatest success stories. There are high school cycling leagues in 18 states, some of which—such as … More