The Arkansas Interscholastic Cycling League season begins this month. The organization brings together students in grades five through 12 to compete in competitive mountain biking. Terry Coddington is executive director of the Arkansas Interscholastic Cycling League, or NICA. Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis connected with him earlier this week in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio One to talk about the league. Coddington says he considers NICA personal development on two wheels.
Coddington: We basically work with kids and try to get any youth in Arkansas that wants to learn how to mountain bike, whether they have trails in their local community or not. We can teach them how to mountain bike. We are a nonprofit, and all of our coaches are volunteers that work with all the athletes.
Travis: So how did you get involved with NICA?
Coddington: I actually, so our league is 11 years old, and time is flying, so it's hard to believe. But I started the Conway Bearcat team way back when the league started, and I started as a coach. I eventually became a coach trainer, where I taught other coaches how to coach. Then I became the coaching director, the assistant director, and now I'm the league director.
Travis: So you've been around for a little over a decade now. You were telling me you've seen some growth in mountain biking in general, and it's kind of through NICA. You were telling me about this “NICA effect.” Could you explain that?
Coddington: Yeah, so we kind of coined that phrase here in Arkansas whenever we noticed how communities were changing because our mission is to get more kids on bikes. So what generally happens, we get a kid on a bike. Sometimes we invite the parent to become a coach, and we work with them through our coach licensing program. And then once you get a kid on a bike, you get a family on a bike, then the community starts to change, and that's the exciting part. So there are communities that didn't have trails at all that started NICA programs, and now they are building trails in their community because they got kids on bikes and coaches on bikes. Travis: People started asking for these trails?
Coddington: Yes, and the beautiful part is it's the kids, right? We're all doing this for the kids, but the whole community gets to benefit from getting more trails. It creates a better quality of life, quality of place, in that local community. So we've seen places that didn't have trails, like Cabot, Searcy, we've got new trails in Conway. There's so many. Harrison is a good example of trails where a NICA team started and then the trails came later. A lot of folks have this misconception that you need trails to be a part of our program, and that's actually not the case. In Conway, we just started in a city park, is kind of how we started practicing for the first few years, until we started getting trails.
Travis: So we're seeing positive impacts on these communities, but what about the kids? What are you seeing happen to these children that are learning how to mountain bike and growing in the sport?
Coddington: Yeah, so we're changing lives, kind of one pedal stroke at a time, if you will. We are grades five through 12, and it helps with self-esteem and everything. Cycling is a life sport, and while we do competitions, there's a lot of other things that we do, but we really try to teach kids life lessons, whether on or off the bike, during practices and stuff. I was meeting with an athletic director at a school one time, and it was a very small community and school, and they were concerned, they didn't want to lose athletes from other programs to our program. And my response was, I don't want your athletes. When you walk into the school cafeteria and you see little Susie or Joe or whoever sitting at the table by themselves, that maybe they don't have a lot of friends, that's who I want. We want to bring those kids in, help them find their place and find their voice, and get outdoors and off of devices, which is a huge thing right now. So many kids are just connected to their electronic device, and it's really hard to be on your phone whenever you're riding a bike in the woods.
Travis: And you're in the middle of the season, it started at the beginning of July. Is it too late for people to get involved?
Coddington: No, absolutely not. So we just started teams, just started practicing, they're able to start practicing July 1. Most don't start till later in July because of vacations and heat and all that stuff.
Travis: I used to run cross country, I know what that's like.
Coddington: So we're just getting started, and it is not too late to join. Folks can visit our website, we can connect folks with a local team. And in some cases, like when I started the Conway team, it didn't exist in June, and then I created it in July, and we started practicing, and we were at the first race in August. So yeah, it's not too late. Just visit our website, ArkansasMTB.org, and check out all the information there.
Travis: And before we say goodbye, I'm interested to hear how NICA and working with your students, your athletes, has affected you.
Coddington: I honestly, I tell folks all the time, my professional life and personal life, I feel like didn't really get started until I started giving back, and I didn't realize that. So I'm 55, almost 56, and I started this in my 40s, and I just wish I would have started this so many years ago, because my life is so enriched now because of working with the kids. And now, as a league director, I'm working with communities all over the state. So I'm blessed to have the best job in the world, I feel like. But even all of our coaches would tell you too, that they get more from the athletes than we feel like as coaches that we actually give to the athletes. So it's one of the most rewarding things I've ever done in my life, and I'm proud to be a part of it. I would invite anyone to come out. We have events starting in the end of August. We actually have two regions, and so there are some weekends we're putting on two events on the same weekend, different parts of the state. Check out our schedule, but we're all over the place. We're in Conway, Little Rock, Jonesboro, Bentonville, Fayetteville. We actually have two huge events in Fayetteville.
Travis: Awesome. And then all that is at the Arkansas Interscholastic Cycling League's website?
Coddington: Yep.
Travis: All right, well, Terry Coddington, thank you so much for being here.
Coddington: Thank you. Thanks for having me. This has been great.
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