BENICIA HIGH mountain bike racers (from left) Emily Radtke, Chris Thatcher and Hunter Dean made the trip to the California State High School Championship in Los Olivos last weekend.

Benicia High’s mountain bike ream wrapped up its second year of competition at last weekend’s California State High School Championships in Los Olivos.

Four members of the BHS team qualified for the championship, with racers Emily Radtke, Chris Thatcher and Hunter Dean making the trip to Southern California. The State Championship attracted 112 high school racing teams from throughout California featuring more than 800 racers – the largest high school race ever.

Run on a rugged 6.2-mile loop on private property, the Panthers improved their performance by 10 percent over last year, with a final placement of 53rd out of 89 teams in their division.

“Mountain biking is growing exponentially across the country as a high school sport,” noted Benicia coach Mark Dean. “There were 15 more teams in our division at the State Championship this year and they are talking about expanding to three leagues in California.”

Benicia also performed well in late April at the NICA NorCal league finals held at the Boggs Mountain Demonstration Forest north of Calistoga. The Boggs Classic course took the racers under a forested canopy as they completed a 6.2-mile loop with an 820-foot elevation gain for each lap.

Hunter Dean and fellow junior varsity sophomores Thatcher and Spencer Cromer completed a course of three laps for 18.6 miles while Radtke and freshman Taylor Mari completed a course of two laps for 12.4 miles. Radtke finished fourth in one race and fifth in another while Thatcher and Dean placed in every race.

“It was a great season,” coach Dean said. “We now understand the league and the race courses and it showed in how all of the racers improved over last year. The other teams know who we are now. We even have some of the other riders setting a goal of beating our racers.”

Overall for the season, Radtke finished fifth for sophomore girls while Dean finished ninth and Cromer 17th for the Division II sophomore boys. Thatcher was in 15th for the JV Division II Boys and Mari finished 30th for Division II freshman boys.

Benicia High’s mountain bike team was able to compete with the sponsorship of several businesses, including Gold Key Realty, Bicycle Trails Council East Bay, Pacifica Pizza, All Star Home Inspection, Scott Overfield and Kathy Nelson of the Benicia Bicycle Club, Aloha Saw and Mower, DST Controls, Norcal Spinners, and Cytosport. They also received the maintenance support of Wheels in Motion.

Anyone interested in sponsoring or learning more about the team can contact them through their website at straitcircle.org.

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