North Lake Tahoe Bonanza: When the going gets wet, the tough go biking. And that was exactly the case for 10 hardy middle school mountain bikers on Friday when they showed up to pedal for cash at the first-ever Bike-a-thon for the Incline After School Organization Mountain Bike team.

"It just goes to show the spirit of these kids," said coach Scott Vaughan. "No one ever quit in a race all year and today kids came out through the adversity and rose to the occasion. They just sucked it up and went for it."

When he's not mixing up an interesting concoction in the Incline Middle School science lab or Home Ec kitchen, Vaughan is mixing up workouts as one of the IAO mountain bike coaches.

"We train twice a week," he said. "And you have to keep it fun. Instead of just sending the kids on hill climb after hill climb, we also mix in what I call the urban assault where we practice fun stuff like jumping stairs."

Vaughan said many of the bikers used their stair-jumping skills to launch some puddles at Friday's rainy event. Vaughan is assisted by coaches Mr. Wangsgard and Chris Laramore.

The team, dubbed the "Yellow Swarm" for their impressive showing in the top-10 during the six-race Sierra Youth Cycling League, showed their grit at Friday's Bike-a-thon by riding back and forth on the 3-mile Lakeshore Boulevard to raise money for the club's 2005 summer and 2006 spring activities. Bikers tallied pledges either by the mile or a total for their efforts.

Luke Laramore scored the most pledges for the Bike-a-thon, while the top-miler award went to Cody Lant, who pedaled 24 miles in 2.5 hours.

"It was hard because it was cold and my legs were stiff," he said. Lant knows about determination from racing. In this season's SYCL point series he took first overall among middle school boys and won three out of four races.

Several Incline Middle School and high school racers finished the season with high marks. For the high school girls Kayla Seager of Incline took first place with an undefeated season and Jenny Jordan of Incline took second place overall.

Incline High School racer Max Frank finished eighth overall in the series, after competing in only two races, one of which he won.

For middle school boys, Lant took first, while Joe Hill of Incline was right on his tires with second place overall. Mason Pratt of Incline finished in third place with two race wins during the season.

Other top-10 Incline finishers for the season include Chase Meredith in seventh; Robert Buergin in eighth; Steven Gard ninth; and Alex Hays in tenth.

But that's not where the "Yellow Swarm" stopped. Eric Payne finished 11th, Cody Mitchell toook 12th, Oscar Lopez 13th; Cory Fowlkes 14th; Luke Laramore 17th; Austin Young 19th; Peet van Kruyssen 20th; Ryan O'Connor 22nd; Cory Fox 24th and Justin Rose 26th.

Vaughan said the middle school team will continue racing this summer in the Northstar racing league.

Wendy Lautner
Bonanza Staff writer