Hitting the road in PA

Mar 28, 2017

3 min read

The Killington Mountain School Cycling team is back on the road, and traveled to Pennsylvania for the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference at Penn State over the weekend. Coach Brad Ramsay shared an update from the weekend: "It was an epic two days of racing against many of the colleges and universities in the Northeast region of the United States. Among 30 collegiate schools, KMS Cycling, the only high school team in the conference, finished third in the weekend Omnium!

The first event of the weekend was the Team Time Trial. Though only nine miles long, teams red-line it the entire way, taking short pulls on front before rotating to the back of the line. The men’s and women’s A teams are scored on the third rider to cross the line, while the rest of the fields are scored based on the time of the second rider. The KMS Women’s A team, consisting of Turner Ramsay, Aliza Tobias, Kira Payer, and Maddy Smith finished third. Racing in the Men’s A category (Vivien Rindisbacher, Johannes Stromski, Josh Chu, and Chris Welch), KMS finished eighth, Racing among Collegiate Category B teams, (Leo Kirpatrick-Baird, Jack Lynch, and Arturo Johnson), KMS rode to a nice fourth place finish.

Moving on to the grueling Black Moshannon Road Race Saturday afternoon, notorious for tough climbs and crazy descents, Chris Welch followed an early attack that pretty much blew the field apart on the first lap. Chris is just returning to racing after a life-threatening accident last summer, and continued his trend of amazing his doctors, coaches, family and friends by riding to an impressive sixth place finish in the Men’s A race.

The men’s B division will be fun to watch this year. They proved to be relatively well matched as the only field that was able to stay together the entire first lap and most of the second. It broke up a bit in the final climb with KMS Riders Josh Chu, Jack Lynch, and Leo Kirkpatrick-Baird all posting strong mid-pack finishes.

The women’s A and B fields raced together, and were completely surprised (and shattered) by a West Point Cyclist, a triathlete who decided to throw her hat into the road cycling ring to see how she could do. Though her inexperience (Number of Race Starts) forces her to race in the Women’s B category by rule, she conquered Black Moshannon and left the next closest rider more than 10 minutes behind! That said, Maddy Smith raced very well and finished an impressive third among the women’s B racers.

Sunday’s Criterium was an exciting cap to a great weekend of racing. In the Women’s race, Turner and Aliza both attacked early, and all of the KMS women earned sprint points with Kira ultimately taking the third spot on the Women’s A Podium, and Aliza and Maddy taking third and fourth respectively among the Women’s B cyclists.

Returning from a nagging knee issue, Vivien Rindisbacher jumped immediately into the fray and burned off some pent-up frustration as he attacked multiple times and helped to keep the Men's A field strung-out and fast. Vivien was among those taking sprint points and blew by a number of riders crossing the line almost simultaneously with the third, fourth, and fifth place riders to take sixth in an exciting photo-finish final sprint.

From a coach’s perspective, the Men’s B Criterium was one of the most exciting of the weekend. KMS Cyclists Josh Chu, Johannes Stromski, Jack Lynch, and Leo Kirpatrick-Baird rode beautifully as a team. The attacks and counter-attacks were almost as constant as the KMS Green jerseys in the front of the field! All four picked up sprint points as they kept the race fast and exciting. In the final sprint, Johannes crossed the line in fourth, Jack fifth, Josh tenth, and Leo 14th, after what was probably the finest display of real team work all weekend!

Great job by all and a nice start to the season. Next up the squad stays close to home for L-Enfer du Nord, the northern-most ECCC Race Weekend co-hosted by UVM and Dartmouth College."

Best of luck this season to all the cyclists!