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Matt Fritzinger (B.S.'95 ME)

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 could work 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, and particularly how they fostered and taught it to their children. Bay Area students deserved the same, he thought.

When he came back, he founded the 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 things full-time. He expanded the program to include winter workshops, summer camps, and coaches training. He's working to recruit more low-income riders and even hire a dietician part-time to teach riders about nutrition strategies. The league continues to grow.

With success in his pocket, Fritzinger says an engineering career 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/

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