| February 13, 2006 Vol. 77,
no. 5S
 |
| AWARD-WINNING:
Matt Fritzinger received the Bay Area Jefferson Award in November
2005 for his work in creating a love of mountain bike racing
among Bay Area high schoolers and for serving its youth. The
league teaches self-confidence and self-worth, respect for
nature, and the satisfaction of working hard to accomplish
goals. (Photo provided by Matt Fritzinger)
|
In a league
of his own
ME alum runs the country’s largest youth cycling organization
The first thing you see when you walk into Matt Fritzinger’s
office at Berkeley High School is a mountain bike resting against the
wall. Fritzinger (B.S.’95 ME) is executive director of the NorCal
High School Mountain Bike Racing League, a non-profit organization
he founded in 2001 that is now the largest youth cycling program in
the country. The league includes 20 teams and 300 riders from Northern
California.
“I never imagined that I could turn a hobby into something full
time,” he
says. “Never.”
Fritzinger began racing in track and road cycling competitions as
an eighth grader. At Cal, he rode with the Cal Cycling Team. “Some
of my best college memories are from the cycling team,” he says. “I
met almost all my good friends there. I’m still really close
to some of them today.”
After he graduated, Fritzinger wasn’t sure what he wanted to
do. He decided that he wasn’t a talented enough rider to pursue
a professional career. He moved to Durango to take advantage of Colorado’s
outdoors, waiting tables to support himself. He returned to the Bay
Area in the spring of 1996 and landed a job as a mechanical engineer
for a company that built industrial cranes.
“I was a mouse jockey,” he says of his computer-driven responsibilities. “I
hated it. But I needed to make some money.” For six months he
saved everything, then left.
During this time, Fritzinger was pondering a teaching career. He wanted
a job where he worked with people and wasn’t chained to a desk.
Math was his forte, he says, and in 1997, Fritzinger was hired as a
math teacher by Berkeley High School. In 1998, he started a mountain
biking team there.
Fritzinger says he’s always dreamed of participating in Italy’s
racing circuit and, in the summer of 2000, he made it happen. There,
he observed Italians and their love of cycling, particularly how they
fostered an interest in and taught it to their children. Bay Area students
deserved the same, he thought.
When he came back to Berkeley, he founded the NorCal league. He organized
and ran a six-race series and coaxed four new teams into existence.
He convinced corporations and individuals to donate. He worked 80-hour
weeks — 40 as a teacher and 40 for the league. It was manic,
he says, but the reward was smile after brilliant smile from young,
mud-spackled riders as they crossed the finish line of a tough race.
In 2005, Fritzinger stopped teaching to run the cycling league full
time. He expanded the program to include winter workshops, summer camps,
and training for coaches. He’s working to recruit more low-income
riders and hire a part-time dietician to help riders with their nutrition.
With success in his pocket, Fritzinger says a career move back to
engineering could be down the road. But there’s that bike against the wall
and so, for now, he’ll ride.
For more information about the league,
go to www.norcalmtb.org/.
|
