The USA Cycling Professional Road and Time Trial Championships return for their second year in Chattanooga on May 24-26. Thousands of spectators are expected to line the routes to watch some of the nation's best male and female cyclists compete for the right to wear the Stars and Stripes jersey signifying the U.S. champion.
For most spectators, the racing is a novelty and something different to do on Memorial Day weekend. But for a few interested fans, watching the nation's best cyclists is an inspiration to achieve that level of success.
Two young cyclists from Chattanooga are using their ability and passion to ride to further their educations as varsity members of the King University cycling team coached by Dan Kreiss.
Megan Rogers and T.J. KilleleaSenior T.J. Killelea and sophomore Megan Rogers attend the Presbyterian school in Bristol, Tenn., with approximately 2,300 other students.
"My experience with King has been great, and I wouldn't trade it for anything," Killelea said. "Collegiate cycling is a little bit different from what you normally see on a club team because you're always traveling with the same people and you get to train with them all the time. Plus you're in school with them, so you're around them a lot more than you might normally be with a club team.
"In the college environment, you spend a lot more time with your teammates and you really become more like family. That's one of the things that I've really enjoyed."
Killelea and Rogers were recruited by Kreiss out of the club racing scene. Kreiss, an active cyclist himself, was asked to form King's varsity program in 2009, and he's built it from the ground up.
Killelea has impressed as one of the pioneers of the King team. As a student at Red Bank High School, he got into club cycling. "I was at a race in the Bristol area, and [Kreiss] approached me about it in my junior year of high school," Killelea says. "It was really flattering, because I didn't know collegiate cycling existed. I knew I wanted to ride in college, but I didn't know these opportunities existed."
Killelea, who also rides for the Village Volkswagen club team in Chattanooga, quickly found success at King, winning the college Category B road and time trial titles at the Southeastern Collegiate Cycling Conference as a freshman.
Rogers, from Soddy-Daisy, made the switch to cycling after years in a more traditional sport. "I played basketball for about four years, and then I took a year off from that," she says. "Then I decided I needed to do something to get active again. My dad was into cycling in college and had stayed involved in it, so I mentioned getting a road bike and he got really excited. I had a bike in about a week, and about a year later I was doing my first race in Chattanooga."
College cycling features riders designated as Category A through Category D, a slightly different format than the Cat 5 through Cat 1 designations for club cycling.
Following his freshman year, Killelea has ridden as a Category A cyclist, and Rogers has been a women's Cat A rider since she arrived at King.
"T.J. came to us as a freshman and has progressed up through the ranks," Kreiss says. "The last two years he's attended collegiate nationals with us and represented us as we were fifth in the nation. And a lot of that was due to T.J.'s efforts.
"T.J.'s strictly a road cyclist, and he's had some good wins both for us and for his club team that he rides for in the summertime."
As a younger rider Rogers is still learning the ropes, but Kreiss says that he's been happy with her progress thus far. "Megan didn't have the race experience that T.J. did coming in, but she's doing really well," he says. "Megan has been to both road nationals and cyclocross nationals with us. She's still young and still progressing with us."
Rogers has struggled with illness and injury this season, suffering a concussion in a crash during the USA Cycling collegiate cyclocross championships in Boulder, Colorado, but still managed to finish the race and help the Tornado finish fourth in the team competition despite bringing only four riders.
Rogers said that making the adjustment to college while being a varsity athlete has been a challenge, but she feels that Kreiss has helped make the transition easier.
"Dan is really easygoing about our team and understands that there are some things that have to come first as a college athlete," she says. "So it's been really helpful to have him as a coach.
"But it's been really difficult at times. There's a lot of time management that goes into it, just like with any collegiate sport, because it's very much like a job when you're getting scholarship money."
Kreiss believes his sport is on the rise. "It's definitely growing in terms of the collegiate scene," he says. "I think USA Cycling sees college cycling [at the club level] as a way to build the sport by getting students who want to be involved on teams. That obviously builds the number of people who are buying racing licenses and participating long after they finish college.
"However the varsity programs, such as King, Lees-McRae, Furman and others ... tend to draw cyclists who want to be involved in cycling in a very organized way."
As with many college sports, there are challenges. Kreiss cited the expense involved as one of the threats to the growth of varsity college cycling. "It's a very expensive sport and a very expensive sport for schools," he says. "Cumberland University is shutting down their varsity cycling program at the end of this year, and a lot of that has to do with the expense it requires. There's travel and lots of other costs for schools.
"We had cyclocross nationals in Colorado, and it cost us $3,000 or $4,000 to get there, and we've had road nationals in Ogden, Utah. For these mostly smaller schools that have varsity programs, that's pretty tough. So I hope it continues to grow and I hope there's more funding for it. I'd really hope that USA Cycling can start helping these collegiate programs who are out here doing this."
THE NEXT STEP
There are many paths to becoming a professional cyclist at the top levels for those who have the ability and desire. Many find their way to the sport from the club circuits, whereas others start as triathletes or mountain bikers, and in recent years riders such as BMC Racing's Brent Bookwalter have gotten their start as college cyclists.
Bookwalter-who was runner-up in both the time trial and road race at the 2013 USA Cycling Pro Championships in Chattanooga-was a 2003-06 member of the Lees-McRae team that won seven national titles in his time in Banner Elk, North Carolina. As a professional, he has competed in the Tour de France three times.
Kreiss believes college cycling is like any other sport, with many using it as a way to stay in shape and help pay for school while others look to keep growing and reaching further-maybe even as far as the professional ranks.
"There are some for whom college cycling will be the pinnacle of their cycling experience," Kreiss says. "But for others this could be a real launching pad because it's an opportunity for them to be noticed at a national scene where maybe they wouldn't be otherwise.
And they get a higher level of coaching and all that kind of stuff at a fairly young age. If nothing else, it provides a platform to experience a team structure they may not be able to have."
As he prepares for his final collegiate road nationals May 2-4 in Richmond, Virginia, Killelea is hoping to continue to improve in his sport after graduation with the goal of perhaps making it to the pro ranks someday.
"In collegiate cycling, there's a lot of different things you can do with it," he says. "Even though I'm graduating this year, I believe this has helped me grow a lot. I've been able to spend time with other experienced cyclists that have taught me things, and I've been able to teach them things.
"Plus, I've been able to make contacts with different companies, and I've met people from different parts of the country with different cycling communities.
It's allowed me to get to know some more people and have more connections when I'm ready to take that next step."