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Hi folks,
As school's out, we've decided to combine our June and July issues. You'll receive your next Collegiate Update in August. We're also unveiling a few new sections this month:
1. Tip Jar: Here we'll compile your and our tips and advice on running a successful team and succeeding in collegiate cycling. Please submit anything that works for you to collegiateupdate@usacycling.org!
2. Rider Profiles: We're going to highlight some outstanding riders in this section, either for their success on the bike or achievements off it. Please nominate riders via the e-mail address above (you can even nominate yourself - we won't tell!)
3. Board Update: As is explained in the section this month (rule proposal #1), this will help to reveal the secretive inner workings of the shadowy conspiracy group known as the Collegiate Board of Trustees. We'll summarize their meeting minutes here.
Thanks everyone, and have a great summer!
-Jeffrey Hansen, USA Cycling Collegiate Program Manager
Fundraising Ideas - Submit Them!
In the next Tip Jar, we’ll be publishing a list of your best fundraising ideas and successes. So what have you done to raise money for your team? The sustained growth of collegiate cycling depends on everyone sharing their successful ideas with one another, so every team doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel year after year.
So how do you find companies that are willing to sponsor your teams? Do you have more luck with donations or sponsorships? Cash sponsorships are always the hardest: how do you secure them? What do you do to keep sponsors coming back? Have you had successful fundraisers (sorry, but bake sales don’t count…)? Send any and all good and great ideas to us at collegiateupdate@usacycling.org. We’ll publish your answers here next issue.
Team Newsletters
One way of keeping alumni, parents, administrators, sponsors, and donors interested in your team (and therefore giving money) is to send out regular newsletters during the race season. Given the sporadic nature of collegiate cycling (crazy busy in the spring, silent in the summer, etc.) and college schedules, it’s not necessary to set a regular date for the  newsletters (for example, if you make it monthly, you’ll have two during the race season with too much to talk about, and then nothing to say for July or August). Rather, send one out when you can, as often as possible (if you can send out weekly race reports during the season, your recipients will be happy to be able to check in regularly on your success). Then, during the off season, don’t worry about putting together filler issues.
Send it via e-mail so it’s less work for everyone (although a hard copy will usually have a higher chance of being read and will impress some people, despite the trees you will inevitably kill), and you’ll find that the bit of work you put into this bit of news pays off in major dividends, not just for your team, but for collegiate cycling as a whole, as it raises the profile and visibility of our sport. Keep it short (about a page with some results and other little tidbits) and always provide an avenue for the recipients to give money to the team (an address for a check and/or a Paypal account are easiest).
If you’re already sending out newsletters, please sign us up! collegiateupdate@usacycling.org would love to receive your updates, so add us to your list!
Fiber One Collegiate All-Stars
Leia Tyrell - Oregon State University
How long have you been riding/racing? I started really riding road the summer before my freshman year of college when I decided that I would ride my bike from Portland OR, to Corvallis OR to start my first year of College at OSU. I was a swimmer then, but decided that I liked cycling better and would join the OSU racing team. I started racing in February of last year (2009).
What are your aspirations for your cycling career? I would like to eventually get a contract on a pro team, and travel to races all over the world.
Was the All-Star team on your radar going into Nationals? Yes, I saw the article about the team on Velonews and thought, "I want that!" I was worried after my finish in the Road Race that I would be able to get it, but after taking third in the Criterium, I thought that I had a chance
What are your greatest cycling accomplishments? Taking Third place at Collegiate Nationals
Will you be returning to collegiate cycling next year? YES! I have at least two more wonderful years ahead of me.
To read the rest of the Fiber One Collegiate All-Stars' profiles, click here.
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Team Leader Survey
USA Cycling is a member-based organization, which means that we ARE our members (that's you). Collegiate cyclists make up a sizeable component of our membership, and it's important to understand the specific needs of collegiate cyclists, especially those that lead the teams at each university and college.
Thus, it is IMPERATIVE (apologies for the bold caps-lock tackiness, and yes we know we spelled it incorrectly last month) that all collegiate team leaders fill out this survey, to give us a better idea of how to serve you and your peers in the future. Part of our job is to make your lives easier wherever possible, and this will help us achieve that goal. So please take the 5 minutes to fill out this mostly multiple choice survey. Consider it your civic duty and treat it like the census. Except you don't even have to mail it! How wonderful is that?
Run for a Board Seat!
So you like collegiate cycling, right? Obviously. Who doesn’t? So get involved! The USA Cycling Collegiate Board of Trustees has recently expanded, and there are seats up for grabs. Here are three reasons you should run for one of them:
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The Collegiate Board of Trustees holds a great deal of influence on the future of collegiate cycling, and this is your opportunity to help shape that future. Write the rules, work closely with USAC staff, get to know the inner workings of the sport, get an all-expenses-paid trip to the annual board meetings, familiarize yourself even more with your peers, meet interesting people, see the world!
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Collegiate cycling is awesome. No one will deny that it’s more fun than anything else out there, a great learning experience, and an excellent opportunity to grow the sport we love and introduce it to new people. So why not give back to this incredible entity that has given you so much? Collegiate cycling relies on volunteers (sorry, but the board is not paid…), and it can only continue to flourish by virtue of the continued support of those that care about the sport (that’s you!).
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Looking for a job? Will be soon-ish? Then why not put “Trustee, USA Cycling Collegiate Board of Trustees, September 2010-Present” on your résumé? It shows you’re proactive, passionate, willing to volunteer, and above all, a leader.
For more information on the board and how to run, click here.
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Why are Pros Allowed to Race Collegiate?
Under NCAA rules, professional athletes are not allowed to compete in collegiate athletics, but as cycling isn’t an NCAA sport, pros are welcome. But what’s the motivation behind this? Isn’t it a bit unfair and against the ethos of collegiate athletics? Here are a few basic thoughts on the matter, which came to the forefront after a rule change proposal this year (see below) asked that Pro Cyclists be banned from competition.
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Logistics: So how does one define a pro cyclist? It’s a bit trickier than defining a pro basketball player or a pro football player. Even with the UCI Protour, the USPRO calendar, and the common-sense definition of drawing a paycheck for your riding, it would get a little hairy when it came time to enforce a rule barring pros. Especially since so few female “pro” cyclists even draw a paycheck. Between definition and enforcement alone, such a rule could easily be more trouble than it would be worth.
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Meaning in Winning: If you win a collegiate A race, and there are some pros in your field (which is always the case at Nationals, and
 usually the case on the conference level), you’ve certainly proven yourself. It’s a great moment to achieve, and it makes the win that much more valuable. If pros weren’t allowed, how would you measure yourself against the best of the best? You couldn’t, and you might easily second guess the value of your win.
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Pride: There’s certainly a great feeling to be had in racing with pro athletes, even if they’re kicking your butt. Knowing that you can at least slightly duke it out with these riders is a great source of pride for a lot of people, and it could easily take the fun out of some A races.
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Inclusivity: Part of the philosophy of collegiate cycling is to include as many people as possible, from the bottom of the ladder to the top. Why bar someone from racing in one of the greatest environments out there? Collegiate cycling is a great experience, and it’s worth sharing.
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Credibility: Given the currently small size of most college cycling teams, it’s important to add credibility and star power to any and all teams that can attract it. Think of it this way. What if Taylor Phinney were to apply to your school to get his degree? If he wanted to race on your team, would you want to let him? Or would you happily say, “Sorry, pros aren’t allowed?”
Do Conferences Have Different Proportions of A's?
Also in reaction to a recent rule change proposal, we looked into the proportion of riders in each conference that hold A road licenses, and here’s what we found:
How to read this chart:
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Red=Highest, White=Average, Yellow=Lowest
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The first column of data is the percentage of each conference’s riders that are A’s. So, 96 of the Rocky Mountain Conference’s 290 riders are cat A on the road.
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The second column of data represents each conference’s total share of all collegiate riders. So the RMCCC has 290 of the country’s 3500 or so collegiate license holders at the moment.
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The final column shows how many of the country’s A riders compete in each conference. The RMCCC, for example, has 96 of the country’s 750 A’s.
You’ll see below, though, that these percentages wouldn’t meaningfully change conference allocations. Why is that? These are pretty big differences, after all. Well, you have to take into consideration the size of each conference, too. For example, even though the RMCCC has the biggest proportion of A racers, it’s a small- to medium-sized conference, and so it has only 96 A category road riders, compared to the MWCCC’s 140. When size is taken into consideration, and auto-qualifiers are taken out of the mix, small percentage differences don’t impact the allocations as much as you might think.
Submit any questions you have about collegiate cycling to collegiateupdate@usacycling.org
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USAC Collegiate Board of Trustees Monthly Notes
This month, after holding open meetings at USA Cycling Collegiate Road National Championships for input on proposed rule changes, the board voted on many of them. You can find a complete list of the proposed rule changes here. Here’s what they resolved on each of them:
1. Collegiate Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes (submitted by ECCC)
We’ll now be including a regular (probably monthly, but there might be some off-months where not much happens, we will see) section of the Collegiate Monthly Update where you’ll find summaries of the topics at hand and what the board has been saying about them. These summaries were deemed the best route to opening up transparency of the board’s discussions.
2. Change Nationals Allocations to consider just "A" category riders (submitted by WCCC)
Because a staff analysis indicated that such a rule would not appreciably change allocations at this point, the board is going to wait for some more data and feedback before moving ahead with this one. Feel free to continue to provide feedback via collegiaterules@usacycling.org.
To read about the Board's votes on the rest of the proposals, click here.
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Pfeiffer University
In 2006, Tommie Brock was approached by the president of Pfeiffer University, Dr. Chuck Ambrose. As a licensed USA Cycling member, Ambrose had the “out-of-the-box idea” of starting a collegiate team at Pfeiffer, and Tommie signed on with the goal of finding students to start cycling as a club sport. 
He not only found eight students on campus wanting to learn how to race but he also brought with him nine licensed racers to start a USAC team under the banner of Pfeiffer Cycling. He had just retired from a career as an elementary school teacher and was ready to go at the challenge full time, so after signing the contract, he went to work with the mission to build a varsity team offering scholarships for cycling. Their first season gave them an 8th place finish in the ACCC.
To read more about the Pfeiffer University Cycling team, click here:
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Andrew Rizzo, MWCCC Director
How did you first get involved with cycling? 
How did you first get involved with cycling? My first interest in cycling was with BMX/freestyle and in high school I went on a couple bike touring trips. My first interest in racing came when the Tour de Trump passed near where I lived in New Jersey. I didn't see any of the racing in person but the coverage got my attention. That summer, I watched the Tour de France on TV; it was 1989 - possibly the most exciting Tour - and that got the interest going though it took a couple of years for me to actually race.
What about collegiate cycling? When I went to college, there was already a collegiate team so I joined up with them. I had already raced one year, so it wasn't my introduction to racing but I still learned quite a bit from the more experienced team members. I think collegiate cycling was really an integral part in my development as a racer. I raced through college and grad school.
To read more about Andrew and his involvement with collegiate, click here.
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mEET THE nATIONAL MANAGER
Jeffrey Hansen, USAC Collegiate Program Manager
How did you first get involved with cycling? When I was on the speech team in high  school, the mother of a friend of mine from the team managed a bike shop, and she hired me out of the blue (I knew nothing about bikes or even that her shop existed) based on my ability to speak and think on my feet. I did the impromptu event, where you have about 90 seconds to prepare a 6 minute speech on a random topic or quote, and then give it. So basically, I was able to BS my way out of anything, or in other words, I was a born salesman. Once I started working in the bike shop, terms like “carbon” and “XTR” took on whole new meanings, and pretty soon I was hooked on mountain biking. I got a road bike the summer before college just to fit in with all the Midwestern roadie folks.
What about collegiate cycling? Someone I knew through the bike shop had raced in college, and so I knew I wanted to go to a school with a team, or if it didn’t have one, I wanted to start one. I ended up going to Colorado College, and I really got involved with the team on our annual fall ride to Aspen. It was basically the most fun I had ever had, and I started racing road that following spring.
To read more about Jeffrey and his plans for collegiate cycling, click here.
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