Competitive series puts HCC Cycling Club in gear
Feb 3, 2016
They are not the type of wheels you would expect to see doing laps around the commercial truck school driving course at Houston Community College (HCC) Northeast, but they certainly attracted plenty of attention.
Handling those wheels were dozens of racers, amateur and professional, local and national, who rolled through the track every Sunday in January to compete in the HCC Winter Criterium Series hosted by the HCC Cycling Club.
“This is great exposure for HCC,” said Paul Negrete, assistant coach and adjunct professor at HCC. “We had family, friends, and students come out here. Many were surprised by the facilities that HCC offers.”
Negrete and Armando Espinosa, Jr., head coach and former HCC student, started the club in 2007, participating in MS 150 rides. The team recently became competitive and is now affiliated with USA Cycling.
“We finally have a nationally-sanctioned race,” said Richard Lowell, HCC Cycling Club president. “The HCC Winter Criterium Series for USA Cycling earns points for us to get better and more competitive.”
Team members worked for two years with promoter Local Bike Racing and several sponsors including: Honey Stinger, Bayou City Cycles, RC Specialty Meats, and Bike Medicine to bring a crit series, which is a closed circuit race, to an HCC campus. Registration fees raised $1,250 for the HCC club.
“To have these racers of this caliber come here shows a lot of respect for the cycling team and the campus,” said Espinosa.
Troy Jefferson, program director for Recreational Sports & Student Activities at HCC believes sporting events like cycling tours are great recruitment tools.
“This opens up HCC to segments of the population who might not have thought about HCC before,” said Jefferson. “Now people can associate HCC with cycling, and not just any cycling, but an event selected by USA Cycling.”
The ultimate goal of the HCC Cycling Club is to have both club and elite teams. The club team participates in non-competitive rides such as the MS 150. The elite Team would race in competitive sanctioned USAC Cycling Road, Mountain, and Cyclo-cross races. Espinosa and Local Bike Racing are working on dates to bring the criteriums back to the truck driving school course this year.
“The quality of the track makes it a good playground for bike racing; we want to utilize this space as much as possible,” he said.
To learn about the HCC Truck Driving program, visit hccs.edu/truck.