Mountain Biking 2009

Uplands College has had an extremely good Mountain Biking year. The highlight for the team was when they won the first Spur High Schools Mountain Bike National Championships in Pretoria. In the sub-junior girls’ race, Savannah Vosloo and Natasha Emmerick got first and second place respectively. Emily Clarke led the junior race from start to finish and came first with Liani Morkel in second place.

After this the team took the road to Clarens in the Free State and in the MTM Half Marathon race the College had four podium positions: Simon Kamstra second, Simone Vosloo first, Savanna Vosloo second and Emily Clarke third in the highly contested Junior Category.

Then it was all fun and games with the College’s third annual Adventure Race. These races started with a short run and swim through the Uplands Institute dam. Teams then had to make their way on mountain bike to Ben’s Den where they left their bikes and had to swim again. On the other side of Longmere Dam they and a short run again, swam across Longemere again and then had to do some “kettie” shooting. From Ben’s Den they had to cycle back to school along a very challenging route and had to do some abseiling along the way. The winners were Emily Clarke, Simon Kamstra and Keith Trytsman of Team Teddy Bear. Second was Team Wasp, consisting of Bruce McQueen and Dave Hall. The Rock Spiders, Declan Sidey and Wesley Batho, were third.

Three days after the Adventure Race the College Inter-House Mountain Bike race took place. This was the biggest group of riders yet for the Inter-House race with 76 participants. The winner was 14-year-old Simon Kamstra in a time of 29 min 05sec. Russel Lewis was second and Shaun Emmerick third. In the women’s race Emily Clarke was first, Simone Vosloo second and Liani Morkel third.