Adventure Schools
EXCERPT FROM BLUE RIDGE OUTDOORS MAGAZINE ARTICLE by Jess Daddio
In recent years, the experiential education movement has surged in popularity. We looked to our literal backyards of Charlottesville, Va., and Asheville, N.C., to see how the movement is providing more outdoor opportunities for middle and high schoolers and what that’s doing for the next generation of leaders.
Pulling into the Miller School of Albemarle (MSA) campus outside of Charlottesville, Va., I get the distinct sense that I’ve entered the real-life equivalent of Hogwarts, except this is a school for cyclists, not wizards. Palatial brick buildings sprout from manicured lawns. A bell chimes overhead in a stately clock tower. Purpose-built trails beckon from the forest’s edge. And there, just beyond the swimming pool and the baseball diamond, rise the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“It would have been like having a school on the North Shore of Oahu and someone saying, maybe we should start a surf team,” says MSA Dean and Endurance Team founder Peter Hufnagel. “We’re sitting here with 1,600 acres of beautiful land perfect for trails, we have endless country roads surrounding the campus. The setting really lent itself to this program.”
Nearly 10 years ago, Hufnagel started the cycling program with the assistance of his wife Andrea Dvorak, who was racing bikes professionally at the time. That first year, Hufnagel was able to coax just a few off-season cross-country kids into riding some gravel roads, but from those humble beginnings has grown an internationally recognized program that now supervises 28 student-athletes from around the world.
The clock chimes. It’s 3 p.m., and the bike rack outside of the Endurance Team building starts to stack up with Specialized bikes. Dvorak and Andy Guptill, the Endurance Team Director, confer with students as they don pink kits and top off tires. Lucas Mariutti, a junior from São Paulo, Brazil, is ready to roll. He tells me he tried lots of sports—soccer, swimming, even BMX—but none resonated so much as road and mountain biking.
“It’s a lot of suffering, but it’s fun,” he says. “It’s taught me to never give up, cliché as that sounds. That’s what cycling’s all about. Just keep going, even if it hurts.”
Mariutti doesn’t have ambitions to go pro with his riding, but his teammate Katie Clouse is already riding professionally. Originally from Park City, Utah, the 16-year-old is one of the most decorated junior cyclists in the country. She has 21 National Championships under her belt and is consistently a top 10 contender in all three cycling disciplines—cyclocross, mountain, and road.
