– Mawera Karetai

ON Saturday at 2am, our Whakatāne High School MTB team returned from the New Zealand Secondary School Nationals in Christchurch.

The journey to get there started a year ago, and the journey home seemed like the beginning of the next adventure with the team, rather than an ending to the last one.  

Towards the end of 2023, my son, Jack, a mad-keen mountain biker, asked me to help him find a mountain bike race he could compete in.

At that stage, there was no mountain bike team at Whakatāne High School, but the school encouraged us to start one.

Jack’s team of one soon become two, then four and suddenly we were a team of 12 driving to Rotorua every week to train at the Redwoods for the Secondary Schools North Island competition, as part of Crankworks.

The boys, all aged between 13 and 17, loved it. They trained hard, they rode hard and not one of them finished that week of riding the North Islands with any regrets.

On the way home from our last day of racing, the team talked about entering in the nationals in Christchurch. We knew it would be a mountain to climb to get there, not just to ride at that level, but also the cost to get all of us, and our bikes, to Christchurch.

The boys and their families worked incredibly hard to raise the money we needed for the trip. The boys also trained hard with our coaches, Matt Fredericksen and Tristan Haycock, to get themselves to the level they needed to be to compete.

The trip to the South Island was the first time many of our kids had been there. We left at 5.30am on Saturday morning, crossed to Picton that afternoon and checked into the Ferrylink Motel.

The boys agreed to be up at 5am so we could get on the road to the park – we had only one afternoon to learn a lot of new trails.

It was a slow start as the boys reluctantly got out of bed, until a magnitude 5.7 earthquake centred in the Cook Straight caused a stampede of teenagers suddenly “wanting breakfast”.

Everyone was quite keen to leave Picton, and we got to the Christchurch Adventure Park in time for lunch.

In all our conversations about what they should expect when we got to Christchurch, none of it really made sense until we were there. Before long, the team had a new definition for what rocky, steep, fast, and singletrack meant in racing.

What they encountered on these new trails was unlike any riding they had done in the Bay of Plenty. It did not take long, though, and they had their strategies for making it work – they made it work and they made us proud.

There were over 500 competitors at the nationals, riding Enduro, Downhill, XC and XC Relay. Our team of 12 entered four three-man relay teams.

The two Under-16 teams placed 7th and 8th in New Zealand, and the two under-20 teams placed 10th and 12th. Our under-20 riders are all only 16, so theirs is a massive achievement, racing 18- and 19-year-old riders and holding their own.

Of special note is also the performance of Aydan Hall, who finished the Enduro in the top third. This was Aydan’s first MTB race, which makes it an even more impressive result. All our boys who completed the Enduro finished within the allowed time, which is also an impressive result in tough conditions.

The drive home gave me much time to reflect on the experience of the past few months, and the progression of the team in every aspect of their lives.

American tennis player Arthur Ashe said: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” That describes the approach of our mountain bike team and their journey.

Each of those boys knows more about themselves and what they can do because of being out there and doing it.

The team is now going to take a couple of weeks off, to rest – then we start training for the 2025 North Islands at Summerhill, near Te Puke.

If you see a kid on a mountain bike, sharing trails with you as you walk, or ride, that might be one of our boys – please encourage our kids to ride their best ride.

While they sometimes go too fast, and sometimes wheelie too close, or they are where walkers don’t want riders to be, even though they are only there because there is nowhere else for them to train locally – none of that is to annoy anyone, it is just for the joy of the ride.

When you take the time to support and encourage our kids, then you become part of the story of their success.

We could not have achieved our team successes without help. We are thankful to everyone who paid us to work; to Whakatāne District Council for the event work,  to Tio Oyster Farm for their generous koha, to Amon Perry for sponsoring our shirts, to The Comm. for hosting our quiz night, to the Whakatane MTB Club for the use of the club bike trailer, to Bunnings for allowing sausage sizzles, New Zealand Manuka and Karenza Lane honey for our honey raffle, and to Full Cycle Bikes for getting our XC bikes ready to race.

Thank you to everyone who bought a sausage, a raffle, a seat at the quiz, and our baking. Thank you to the Hall, Dominick and Burgess families for travelling with us.  

Most of all we are thankful to Ben Sexton (director of sport), Renske Forsyth (sports co-ordinator), Warwick Archibald (property manager) and Whakatāne High School for not only encouraging us to do this, but also for helping us to organise everything we needed to get there.