On Saturday, our juniors said it was pretty much business as usual out there with the kids on this other team saying the normal stuff. Just bullies commenting on anything and everything just to try to get a reaction. Color of handlebar tape, that they are "gay", etc. But what really got Noah and our boys fired up is when when of these other riders called me an asshole.
I posted it up to Facebook that the incident happened, not mentioning names or even the team name, but it wasn't really necessary to do so. Anyone that spends time around junior racing (I think that at last count that this maybe all of a dozen people) in Texas knows who I'm talking about. But what amazes me is that some of the parents and people in the club claim that they had no idea that this behavior was going on.
In the past 3 or 4 years I've brought it up to their coaches and folks within their club. They seem to not recall these things, though at the time they assured me that they'd take care of it. Noah's been crashed twice, and both times the boy who caused it said he was going to do it, and then followed up, and then bragged about it. This isn't hearsay--I was standing right next to them when he said it.
So I have to ask, is anyone from this team watching these kids or listening to them talk? Because from the side of the road or course I can hear them say this stuff in the races. I hear it around the table at registration. I hear it around the parking lot. And I'm not the only one.
Yesterday (sunday) at the races, one of their parents says to me, "If my son said anything, you let me know, and I'll handle it." Honestly, I knew he was the parent of one of their kids, but I didn't know which one, and not all of the kids on this team are like this. My response was that the kids have been doing it for awhile, that this wasn't an isolated thing, and that *I'm surprised that anyone is making a thing about it at all now since it had been a thing for a long while and brought up to the parents and club previously.
Then he laid it out there heatedly, "Your son does it too. I've heard the stories. He talks as much trash as the rest of them." Which is rather funny, because moments before he wasn't aware that his boy did it at all. Turns out that he is the father of the kid who called me an asshole! And then he got loud with me about it telling me my kid is just as guilty...
While I don't want to be one of those parents who says, "Not my kid. No way" and then be surprised to find that they do drugs, collect stamps, or buy Nickelback CD's, I'm reasonably certain that Noah has never called this kid's dad an asshole.
But I think this guy was trying to say that Noah talks trash in races just like his kid who he didn't know was doing it. That is a math problem I'm having trouble solving.
Anyways, Noah was sitting with me when I posted up to Facebook that he could no longer race because of his trash talk. He laughed.
He laughed because he wasn't concerned about it being true. I suppose those who don't know him/us well would think it was because I wouldn't actually take racing away from him. What with what I do for a living and all that. Not so.
If I heard Noah cuss in a race at anyone or even about anything, he'd be done racing for a good long while. If I heard him talking the kind of trash I hear and picking on kids the way I hear them do to him and our other juniors (Imari puts up with a lot of crap too), he'd be done racing for a long while, if not for good.
Noah was once grounded from racing for two races because he didn't shake hands with a competitor after a race (yes, from that team). He insisted that he'd tried and that the boy just wouldn't let him. Convinced Noah was lying to me, he paid the price. That was a long drive home for him, and any time in the next week that I thought about it, my blood would boil in thinking that I had a kid who would not only lie to me, but do so over something like this.
He implored me to let him race. Offered to do chores above and beyond and below his pay grade. He promised that he did congratulate this boy, which would just make me madder.
That race weekend passed, we didn't even ride for a couple weeks. At the next race he asked me to watch what happens post race. Sure enough, when Noah tried, the kid pulled back and said, "Fucking loser" (or something similar to that effect. I wasn't close enough to hear the exact verbiage, but that first word was there). Noah ended up losing overall rider of the year that year by 18 points. That's less than what he'd get in one race. I no longer insist that Noah do the "good game" with them after the race.
Two years ago, Noah brought home a progress report that showed he had a B in a class. He was grounded from riding until he had a note from his teacher that it was brought back up to an A. Not once did we talk to the teacher about it. Noah had to take care of it himself.
So, when I hear that Noah is doing the same thing as these other kids, I may be in denial, but unless Noah is trying to passively quit racing, that just isn't happening out there, because the axe does fall hard when he gets out of line. Heck, it's fallen even when he didn't get out of line.
BUT, when they are mocking him in a race, and they ask, (use the tone of a sardonic teenager) "What is your strategy now, Noah?" and Noah responds, "I'm going to attack and try to drop you", that is not trash talk. That's a fact.
*ok, I'm not really surprised. I posted to Facebook as an experiment to see if it got a reaction. I learned something about our junior program that is different than this other one. They are concerned about how their team is perceived. I'm concerned about how our juniors actually are. If I was worried about perception, I wouldn't be running up and down the road hollering "Hit it" "go" "attack" "get a gap" "do it again" "and again".
our race strategy for darn near every race is simple and invariably the same. it isn't a secret. Attack. Attack. Attack. If we get caught, attack again. Repeat until we are gone and continue to make the other team(s) chase. And then attack that chase. We attack ourselves right out of races sometimes, but our kids are preparing to race at higher and higher levels, and they ride as a team to do it. They genuinely don't care who wins.Noah didn't win a race this weekend, and he's as pleased as I've ever seen him post-race. He had a weekend of mixing it up with his teammates, and there were a couple of older, higher category juniors in there, and Noah was competing with them and holding his own. Sean picked up his first win in a "Cup" race. Imari continues to build upon his lead in the 10-14 Texas Cup. Hunter was out there riding apparently without pain sensors in his legs. It was summed up post-race when I asked, "What could you have done differently or better?" Everyone went to their limit. How we rode and performed was the best we could do this weekend.
Alright. This whole thing has now been purged from me. In the big picture, this is such a non-issue, but when I saw Noah vacillating between wanting to kick ass (with fists) and quit bike racing, it was worth doing something to try to put things closer back to center. I haven't seen Noah so ready to open up the throttle in a long while. This is going to be fun.
It's raining this morning. Noah thinks this is awesome. When it is raining, many others won't train, so it's like getting twice the benefit (if I could get him to clean the bikes afterwards, this would be so much better for me too).
Don't get me wrong, because if he wants to quit, I'm not going to stop him. Really. I mean, he's got some bike gear that I can use, and he just got new shoes that fit me too.
