Photo courtesy of John Harrison.
Members of the OMHS mountain bike team celebrate winning their first state championship.
The Oak Mountain High School mountain biking team won its first state championship, and two riders won individual titles following the conclusion of the 2023 season in early May.
The Eagles were the top squad in the state all season long, taking first place in the first four events on the 2023 schedule before coming in a close second to Hoover High School in the state championship meet at Fort McClellan in Anniston on May 6-7. Despite the second-place finish in the final meet of the season, Oak Mountain had amassed enough points throughout its meets to claim the regular season Division I title.
“It was a very successful year for us,” said John Harrison, Oak Mountain head coach. “Hoover squeaked by us by a few points in the final race, but it wasn’t enough for them to take the championship away from us.”
Additionally, Oak Mountain senior Sam Calvert earned the 2023 varsity boys championship, and James McCallister captured the eighth grade boys title. Calvert’s points championship is especially impressive considering he was recovering from a crash in the fourth race of the season at Noccalula Falls.
“Sam is the fastest mountain biker in the state, but he didn’t get to race as hard in the last race because the week before he had a really bad crash and got a concussion,” Harrison said. “He had enough points to stay in the lead and win the state championship.”
Calvert, who has been on the Eagles’ mountain biking team since the sixth grade, has developed into one of the top mountain bikers in the Southeast and signed a scholarship to continue racing at the University of Montevallo. Harrison said Calvert has been vital to the success of the team as a competitor and as mentor to the team’s future leaders.
“Sam is one of my team co-captains, and he is definitely a leader on the team,” Harrison said. “He sets a great example for everybody else, and he's been really good about helping the younger riders on the team.”
Since its inception, the OMHS mountain biking program has grown from two athletes to 49, including 10 girls, an important metric since a portion of a team’s point total must come from girls’ competitions during the season.
“We had 10 girls on the team this season, which is more than double the amount that we’ve ever had before, which really helped us a lot with scoring,” Harrison said.
Several additional members of the Oak Mountain Eagles finished strong in 2023, including Ben Walker (eighth place, varsity boys), Alana Smith (fifth place, JV2 girls), C.J. Taylor (fifth place, JV2 boys), Sarah McCallister (second place, JV1 girls), Wilson Davis (seventh place, JV1 boys), Anysa French (eighth place, freshman girls) and Nina Evans (second place, freshmen girls).
The success is the culmination of close to a decade of work to not only establish the Eagles mountain biking program, but to make mountain biking a viable sport for high schoolers and middle schoolers throughout Alabama. Harrison launched the team with just two athletes nine years ago, when his sons expressed interest in competing in the newly formed Alabama chapter of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association.
After eight years under the auspices of NICA, Harrison helped spearhead the formation of the Alabama Cycling Association. Officially launched in 2023, ACA brought more than 30 teams for the inaugural season.
Mountain biking is a club sport unsanctioned by the Alabama High School Athletic Association, meaning that mountain biking teams don’t receive funding from school athletic departments. Harrison said the team has a great relationship with Oak Mountain High School, including support from principal Andrew Gunn, who has allowed the team to use the school for recruiting, meetings and other team-related events.
The Oak Mountain team has raised its own funding over the years and relies on volunteer coaching. Harrison, for instance, is an engineer at Schoel Engineering, and all of the 14 assistants helping run the team are parents, including Tara McCalister, who has two children on the team. In fact, it was McCallister who ran the team during the last competition in Anniston, while Harrison was away for his son’s wedding in Montana.
“The state championship was the first time in nine years that I’ve ever had to miss a race,” Harrison said. “She [Tara] took over for the state championship and managed the team perfectly and brought home state championships. I'm so proud of her.”
Now with a state championship and the sport continuing to grow, Harrison said he has no intention of changing his coaching philosophy, which has always been focused on encouraging young people to get a bike and do their best, whatever their best may be.
“What I always tell them at the sign-up meetings is, ‘Every time you show up for practice, I expect 100%, and every time you race, I expect 100%,’” Harrison said. “‘I don’t care what your 100% is. If your 100% isn’t as fast as somebody else, that doesn’t matter to me.’”
“That philosophy has been very successful for us,” he added, “and kept the riders coming back and bringing their friends with them, which has kept us growing.”
