While the club currently has two advisors, Andrew Norton and Taylor Herron. Norton acts as the main advisor to the Mountain Biking Club. To gain the most insight into the club’s state and condition, Mr. Norton was questioned on various subjects regarding the mission statement, equipment, funds, etc. Norton’s main objective as an advisor is to first and foremost, “… keep people safe whilst doing the activity followed by making sure they have fun and better their endurance, better their mental state, better their confidence, and skills.” The students are a top priority within the Mountain Biking Club, in so much that he’s directly stated that the club, “… makes me happy because I enjoy seeing the accomplishments of the riders. I like to see the smiles on their faces when they do something that they didn’t think they could do previously and know that I could at least help them in some way, so it actually boosts my own self-confidence quite a bit.” For Norton, it benefits him in more ways than one, especially when assisting the riders.

The Nye County School District (NCSD) is known to be responsible for overseeing all school affiliated clubs. With that in mind, all clubs must propose or petition ideas to the district as to what they are able to do. Advisor Andrew Norton had several meetings with NCSD concerning the availability of each original activity, many of which were sadly denied. He states, “Originally it was an outdoor club because we wanted to focus on things like mountain biking in the fall, ski and snowboard in the winter, and the climbing and repelling in the spring and then we would sprinkle some hiking and camping. The district denied us the ability to do anything except for hiking, skiing, and snowboarding.” As skiing and snowboarding were both geographically unavailable and costly to the club, they petitioned once more. They were granted permission to participate in mountain biking due to other state schools including the program as an after school activity. With many of the originally intended activities rejected, a decision had to be made. When asked about the final decision Norton stated that it had been, “decided as a group, (they took a vote) to become competitive as far as mountain biking is concerned.” Thus the change was made, and the Outdoors Club was rebranded to the Mountain Biking Club we know today.

As of late, the club has currently 10 active members. I interviewed one of their most avid riders, Brittany Broderick, who has stood with the club since its emergence. A series of questions were asked pertaining to traveling and average club time. When asked about possible traveling she responded, “Yes we have to travel for practice but that’s not too far, right now it’s only twenty minutes away from the school, but for races, we have to travel a long way depending on where it is. Our last one was in Moapa.” As for the average time spent from start to end, she clarified stating, “Practice starts around 3:00 and goes until 5:00, so two hours and a half on average.” The time spent outside of school hours allows for riders to gain a fair amount of exercise and distance in their riding.

With intentions of pursuing overall club improvement, Norton discussed future plans in regards to the club’s funding. He mentioned, “We have been given a couple of donations this year from private companies.” When asked about current fundraisers Norton responded with, “Will we? Yes. Have we? No. Again, we started really late this year. August, September, October, November, and December, are the times in which we only ride a month together but we will fundraise at that point so that the funds are available to the riders before the season starts to help with things like uniforms, bike parts, registration fees, and so forth.” With plans for the upcoming year already in the making, the club looks forward to new members and future races.

For more information about the Mountain Biking Club, reach out to either Mr. Andrew Norton or Mr. Taylor Herron.