The La Cañada High School mountain bike team recently had its second race of the season at Vail Lake in Temecula.
The squad of 24 racers faced one of the most technical course of the season, with unforgiving twist and turns and a colossal hill aptly named “Air Force Hill.” Sixteen riders competed on Saturday middle school races, and eight riders competed on Sunday high school races.
After two races, LCHS is ranked in eighth among Division 1 high school teams. Five middle school riders competed for the first time and were able to successfully complete their races. In total, there were four podium finishers, and eight top-10 finishes.
The team was anchored by senior Karl Kleineahlbrandt and junior Maeve Rodriguez, both in the highly competitive JV2 category. Kleineahlbrandt finished 12th, and Rodriguez came in 15th place. Rodriguez had previously placed seventh at Perris Lake.
In the other high school categories, sophomore Ella Andrews podiumed for the second time taking third. Teammate Esther Sun finished ninth in JV1 Girls. Freshman Danny Castano also podiumed again taking third. Austin Bowman, Aidan Dahya and Ace Yee rounded out the high schoolers taking 16th, 17th and 29th, respectively, in the JV1 category.
In the middle school races, seventh grader Enjolie Rinde podiumed for the first time, taking third place. Rinde was the only female racer in the middle school squad and had a successful season last year as a sixth grader.
In other middle school races, Jonathan Contes took 12th and Eric Basset 37th in the more difficult two-grade eight category. Rounding out the eighth-grade racers, Finn Ramsey took eighth, Rhodes Kavet 12th, Thomas Qin 18th, and Liam Whooley 26th in Level 1 competition. Jason Cho podiumed for a second time taking fourth in the Level 2 seventh grade category. Other seventh grade riders include Tanner Larsen, who raced for the first time with an impressive eighth-place finish. Torsten Ouwersloot came in 16th and Ronin Horn in 24th.
The team’s youngest squad consists of five boys in the sixth-grade category. Devin Ku had a strong race taking 10th place, with Nicolas Contes in 19th, Flurin Caprez in 24th, Nate Paik in 25th and Jonas Mahoney in 32nd.
The LCHS team next competes at Castaic Lake on March 23 and 24.
First published in the March 21 print issue of the Outlook Valley Sun.
