April 19, 2021 at 12:36 p.m.

Racing back to normal

Hodag BMX preps for a full 2021 season
Racing back to normal
Racing back to normal

By Jeremy [email protected]

Robbie Deede has spent the past couple of Saturdays on an ATV, creeping at a mile or two an hour, massaging every bump and jump at the Hodag BMX track.

In a couple of weeks, kids and adults will be racing their bikes over those same bumps once more - at a significantly higher rate of speed.

After cancelling its 2020 racing season due the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hodag BMX Club is set to return this year with a full racing calendar that will include one-to-two race nights a week from May through September, as well as a tripleheader race weekend in July.

Before anyone can set out on two wheels through the series of rollers, jumps and three high-banked turns, the track needed to be groomed back into shape following the winter. That's where Deede, the track's operator, and a handful of volunteers stepped in. It's a process of removing stones here, recontouring a jump there, to make sure the track is ready to go in time for the May 7 opener.

"It definitely makes you appreciate it that much more, being out here, how much you miss shoveling, scraping and scooping dirt - basically putting together a dirt playground for the kids in the community," he said.

The BMX community hasn't been able to race at the track, located inside the City of Rhinelander's West Side Park, since the fall of 2019. The club delayed the 2020 racing season due to the pandemic, before deciding to pull the plug on the season all together in early July. The only activities the club had were some weekly, small-group practice sessions throughout the summer.

Distance, it seems, has made the heart grow fonder.

"Last year was pretty tough, but we looked forward to what we wanted to do this season," Deede said. "While it was tough, it was also somewhat refreshing for some of the families to put in perspective, and really see how much they appreciate this place."

When the club's board voted to cancel the season last July, Deede said a number of factors went into the decision to not race in 2020. Among those factors were the local and state COVID positivity rate, varying opinions from club members as to what safety protocols should be enforced as well as concerns about the ability to solicit the donations needed to fund the season due to the economic effects of the pandemic.

At the time, Deede said the club's attention began to pivot toward a return to racing this spring.

"It's still going to be different than it was in 2019, but we're trying to basically race back to normal, race back to what we love to do," he said. "The biggest thing for us is finding the common ground in racing and recognizing that there's going to be people with different comfort levels, and to try to meet everyone where they are so they feel comfortable being here."

According to Deede, one of the biggest changes racers and families can expect to see this year will be more high-tech solutions to registration, concessions and posting race lineups. Those areas are typically where the track sees the highest concentration of people on race nights. Having the ability to make some of these aspects contactless serves a couple of purposes.

"We're trying to cut down, basically, lines," he said. "I think that that's something that's nice, whether it be COVID or not, people don't like standings in lines. So if we can cut down lines at registration, cut down lines in concessions, cut down lines at the moto board, those are the things we'll try to do."

Deede said he's unsure yet how the track's rider count will rebound following a year off. The answer will begin to pan out once race nights roll around. However, Deede said the anecdotal evidence from other BMX facilities that have reopened indicates a positive trend.

"There's a huge bicycle boom right now, almost like a bicycle renaissance," he said. "Kids are falling in love and families are falling in love with bikes. There was a big dynamic shift last year. People got out, rode bikes. It's hard to buy a bike right now. I can tell you about the woes of tying to buy a new bike this year for myself. People have kind of fallen in love with two wheels again and it's showing around the country.

"At national races, they're having bigger moto counts than they've ever had. It's definitely something we're going to navigate through, but we're excited to do that and have kids stoked on bikes."

At the local level, Hodag BMX alumni have had a history of excelling in other sports as well. Raven Sturtevant was a WIAA state qualifier in gymnastics. Brothers Brock and Trevin Walkowski ended up on the podium in the 4x200-meter relay in the WIAA D3 state track meet in 2019. Travis Towne was an all-conference award winner in both football and basketball for Rhinelander this year. Before staring at the varsity level, all of them were among the those making laps around the Hodag BMX track.

"The kids down here, they're athletes," Deede said. "They go into their fall sports in better shape than other kids because they've been working on that fast-twitch muscle. They really never stop doing athletics. They didn't sit on the couch all summer long and they're ready to rock and roll come fall.

"(We're) helping to develop strong, educated, hard-working young men and women. That's really our over-arching goal."

The club is scheduled to race every Friday night in May and September, and every Monday night in June, July and August with some occasional Friday night races mixed in. The Club's 500-point weekend, which features the Race for Life fundraiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, a Badger State Games event and a Wisconsin BMX state qualifier, will be held July 23-25. That tripleheader weekend attracted more than 230 riders from around Wisconsin and the upper Midwest in 2019.

The club, which is operated by a group of volunteers, is currently soliciting sponsors and donors for the upcoming season.

"The board and the volunteers that we have are absolutely great," Deede said. "They absolutely love cycling. They love the community that they live in and they love helping raise the local community through cycling. We're really appreciative of all the donors and sponsors and volunteers that have been involved with us. This would have been our 23rd season, but we postponed last year. We're so grateful for everything this community and our donors do, to basically give us a place to be kids."

More information about the Hodag BMX Club can be found on its website, HodagBMX.com, or on its Facebook page, www.facebook.com/Hodag.BMX.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].

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