In the 2019 season, Coaches were looking for a way to make pairs of student athletes. We wanted to do this for a number of reasons. Some of which I list below:
We wanted newer kids to have a student mentor and confidant. We remembered as kids, not feeling always comfortable approaching a coach or parent with all our questions and comments. We thought having a fellow student athlete as a friend and confidant would be a good solution to this communications situation.
We wanted to do some things in pairs, and this gave us easy access to always quick to manage pairings. There is never a time that we want the kids solo during practices, meets or rides. Not real safe.
We wanted to create a “lineage” of sorts. Have a family within our family. Have brothers in sisters within our larger organization, with whom you could share a special bond that might even carry on long after school and into adulthood.
I want to spend the most time of this post on that last bullet point:
CREATING A HERITAGE
.Besides being practical for both the student athletes and the coaches; Big & Little Gears sets up family lines.
There are 10 original Big & Little Gear family lines that were create in the 2019 season. Those riders are the “founders” of the lines. They will always be the founders of the lines, no matter how much time passes. They are recorded for posterity in these lines whether they race for all 6 years, or just one season. Hopefully, everyone will stay around long enough to take a “little gear”, but that is unlikely. However, everyone who was a “little gear” in their first year, will be offered a chance to be a “big gear” if they stay around long enough for the population of new riders to make that possible. If the organization stays strong or grows: family lines will grow and branch out. If the team stays pretty uniform and stable in size, the lines will be more vertical in appearance. Shrinking team size could make some branches of the family lines terminate.
So what is so cool about this?
Well, it’s a special bond. It’s a subset of the team. It’s someone you mentored directly as your “little gear”. It’s a form of apprenticeship. And it’s been my experience that these bonds and connections last.
This idea is stolen from fraternal organizations. It gives folks a common bond that lasts for a lifetime. These lines will exist as long as there is a team, and each member will always be reflected there. And much like Ancestry.com or 23 & Me, you can trace your “mountain bike heritage” there, and see who you might be related to in regard to future generations of riders.
Who know, maybe in 10 or 20 years, our team members will return to meet some of the young riders in their family line and maybe share a trick or two with them that they learned, “Back in the day”…when they were on the Hammers!
