Sharp Racer

Allie Sharp

Allie Sharp faced some bad news last year. The 17-year-old suffered a stress fracture in her shin that kept her from running track.

The good news? The Baylor junior focused on cycling instead and in November took home the winning title in the girls' junior division of the Tennessee High School Mountain Bike State Championships.

The only girl from Chattanooga to compete in the championship, held at St. Andrews Sewanee School in Sewanee, Tennessee, she was also the first girl to finish the race with a time of 1:14:04.

"She was the fastest girl hands down. I was not surprised. I was really, really happy and really, really proud of her, but I wasn't surprised she won because I knew she had it in her," says Sharp's long-distance coach Kim Fasczewski. "She was nervous going into it because it was important to her, but when it came down to it on race day she put everything together."

With two cycling parents, Allie has an affinity for two wheels in her genetic makeup. Though they mostly road race, she got into mountain biking when a club for the sport started up at Baylor. "There just aren't road races for high school and mountain biking is a little more fun," she explains. "You have to know more skills like how to position yourself when you go down something steep."

And this year, Sharp had a goal. She wanted to race in the 2014 Tennessee High School Mountain Bike Racing Series-and she wanted to win.

So, she got in touch with professional cycling coach Fasczewski, a longtime racing buddy of her mom's, and started her training. Fasczewski used to race professionally while she lived in Chattanooga and is now back in school in North Carolina to get her Ph.D. in sports psychology.

With the help of a great coach, Allie trained six days a week for anywhere from one to three hours, doing drills and intervals, working on her technical skills with particularly difficult trails and becoming a stronger cyclist all the time.

"From my house I can bike to Edwards Point on Signal, but Raccoon Mountain is my favorite," she says. "There's just a lot of trails, and they're well-maintained.

"The first time I went there I was too scared to do anything," she laughs. "I think a lot of girls psych themselves out about mountain biking. It's not bad to get off the bike and push over something on the trail that looks scary to ride over. That's what kept me away from it at first."

"In the grand scope of cycling you need to have really good aerobic fitness and you have to have really good bike handling. Allie has great aerobic fitness, so for her it was just a matter of being confident on the bike," says Fasczewski. "She's got a lot of talent. She's very focused and very driven and it's a really good combination."

When time came for her first race in the series in Tullahoma, she won. The same happened in the second race in Memphis.

The day of the championship, Allie says, "I was stressed because it was the most technical course of the series. Also, it was super cold-like 40 degrees-and I didn't get to warm up that much right before the race because my bike chain fell off."

But her training kicked in and she met her goal. "She doesn't realize it, but I think she's kind of a trailblazer," Fasczewski says. "High school cycling is very new and is just taking off. I think there are going to be a lot of girls looking up to her in a few years."