2023 WA Mtb School Series Achievements

As a new initiative in 2023, St Augustine's decided to field a team for the WA Mountainbike School Series. The series was run over 3 rounds and organised by Rock and Roll Mountainbiking in collaboration with Perth MTB Club.

• Round 1 - Kalamunda - Term 2 Week 2
• Round 2 - Dwellingup - Term 2 Week 10
• Round 3 - Greenmount - Term 3 Week 2

The series is all about participation and having a go at a new sport. We put out an expression of interest and had a team of 15 students put up their hands. Most of them had not ridden offroad before, so it was great to have the support from Rock n Roll Mountainbiking to help the students get to know the trails before each round.

In Round 1, there was a sea of maroon on the start line. We had fantastic competitive success, with 3 podium places, and with additional partipcation points for every student who starts the race, we earned enough points to be in the hot seat for the series.

For the rest of Term 2, we celebrated the team with a display of 'action shots' from Round 1 hung up in the undercover area for all students, staff and visitors to see. This display helped fuel inspiration and aspirations of representing the school in future bike riding events.

Round 2 in Dwellingup was a very early and very cold start, but that didn't get the team down. Seven of the team made the trek (see what I did there?🚲) into the South West forest. They all rode skillfully and with impressive confidence considering that they hadn't had an opportunity to see or ride the course at all before the event.

Before Round 3 in Greenmount, the team were so grateful to be provided with coaching from Mark from Rock n Roll Mountainbiking. He showed the team how to tackle the tricky sections which gave them a huge boost of confidence before the final round.

It paid off, because in the final round, our students placed 1st in both the U9 Male and the U9 Female events and every student who crossed the line rode a personal best amount of laps.

The way they represented the school spirit to the wider community was commendable. I could hear the U13s cheering for the U9s from across the valley! And after their own race, the U9s still had the energy to climb a huge mountain to cheer on the U13s.

The whole team showed exceptional improvement in their skills every time they rode their bikes during the series, either in training or in racing, and they all represented the school with great pride and clearly had the motto of ‘reaching for great heights’ in mind.

The intention of participating in this series was to encourage St Augustine's students to develop off road bike handling skills and to expose them to new ways to use their bikes... it achieved that and so much more. Not only did each member of the team fall in love with a new sport, make a whole lot of new friends and gain a loads of skill and confidence, but with all of their podium placings and participation points over the 3 rounds tallied together, they claimed the title of 'WA Mountainbike School Series Champions'!

It was special to be able to bring the medals back to school to celebrate the achievement to a roar of cheers from their peers. They even got a mention on the CEWA facebook page!