I was curious as well. I read the same article plus one in Dirt Rag (issue 166). Would be interested in knowing if there is interest in the Charlotte Metro area.

God, I would have loved to play this sport in High School.

Sweet! Keep us posted and how we can help out

I will be out of town that weekend, but please keep me informed if there is anything I can do help/facilitate the process of a local team.

Will do Keith.

Not able to make it this weekend Mike. like Keith said, I am definitely interested. we all need to get together within the next few  weeks so you can get us up to speed. Thanks, Kyle

This past Sunday I attended the North Carolina High School Mountain Biking kick-off meeting. We had a small group of interested and passionate people from across the state coming together and talking about how we can create a NC National Interscholastic Cycling Association race league. We had a great turnout from our corner of the sate.

The goal is to submit a bid this year and hopefully be racing some time in 2015. I'm not intimate with the particulars but the short answer is that we need three things. Kids who want to race, people who are willing to put in effort to make this happen and the financial support to float this league.

We decided that the best approach is for us to think State-wide but act locally and communicate as much as we can. We also thought it might be best if we named a go-to person from each area that had representation to act as a regional coordinator to help keep each other in the loop and provide whatever support necessary. I volunteered to do that task for the greater Charlotte area.

So the first step is kids. You can't have a race league without teams of kids who want to race. The core goal is obviously High School based teams but independent teams are also an option. I think we have a fair amount of latitude with how these teams are arranged as long as we stick to some core guidelines. What are those guidelines? Honestly, I'm not completely sure but I'm working to educate myself on what NICA says and there is no reason we as North Carolina can't come together and make those guidelines ourselves.

Also to all our friends in South Carolina. I did some looking around and apparently there are NICA teams in states without leagues that compete in another another state with a league. I found out that there are NICA teams in Wyoming (a state without a state wide NICA league) that have competed in the Colorado NICA races. So as we work through this process I will absolutely be sure to have that question settled for you.

So to that point, in the coming weeks we will be holding team interest meetings to begin the process of forming cycling teams. So I'd ask that if you have an interest in making this happen think about what you want to do. I'll post up when we have more info.