Ellington

There wasn’t much to be said about competitive club cycling at Washington back in 2008.

The team, which consisted of about a dozen racers, didn’t win a lot and didn’t have much notoriety. Yes, the program had reached some success in the past, but those days were gone, and the program seemed mired in mediocrity.

That is, until former director of Husky Cycling Danny Koski-Karell had something to say about it.

Koski-Karell recruited tirelessly and built the program from the ground up, promoting an inclusive atmosphere that welcomed bikers of all levels.

Fast forward to 2011. Husky Cycling is now a regional powerhouse with more than 30 racers. They just swept their conference — the Northwest Collegiate Cycling Conference — with both a record number of points scored and a record margin of victory. The team score more than doubled second-place Whitman College, the defending national time-trials champion.

But none of it would have been possible without the groundwork put in place during those lean years in 2008-2009.

“[Women’s team captain] Kamila Gwiazda and I are both products of the work they did in 2009 to recruit more women and make a bigger team,” said Gennie Gebhart, current Husky Cycling director. “We came in during that watershed year in 2010 when we won … by a pretty significant margin in a big upset.”

That work involved getting out the word about Husky Cycling and tireless recruiting. Although that group in 2008 only had about a dozen committed members, that small group laid the structure for years of success.

“The difference was starting with a small group of people, making them really committed and building up the core,” Koski-Karell said. “It motivated other people to come and provided stability.”

The idea was bulk recruitment, and Husky Cycling wanted to create a big team that would attract the best.

“Anyone who came out, it didn’t matter if they were already good, fast or interested in racing. … He was just really into getting people that liked to ride,” Gwiazda said. “Of the people that are core racers, twice that number is people who just show up occasionally.”

Now that Husky Cycling is rolling again, the challenge is to keep it that way. The team had been good in the past and knows just how quickly its fortunes can change.

“We had a group of people that were pretty good; a few of whom went pro,” Koski-Karell said. “All those people graduated at once; it kind of cut the rug out from under our team.”

It was all the more reason to go about building up the team the way he did. By creating infrastructure and a large community rather than just relying on a few talented individuals to carry the team, Koski-Karell has built a program that can last.

The team also runs the website Huskycycling.net in order to reach out to current members, as well as to attract new ones.

“As a club sport, you’re often not going to be able to have cuts or anything like that,” Koski-Karell said. “But having a huge team was a big deal, and I knew that would enable future success. My goal was to have a great race team, but I knew I’d have to have a foundation among all types of cyclists.”

Part of keeping people coming back is making sure they have a good time. With that in mind, the team does everything they can to make being a club member fun.

“We try and do a lot of cool team-bonding and off-the-bike stuff,” Gwiazda said. “We had a training camp this year where we went down to California.”

Even the races are meant to be fun, especially for the majority of racers that aren’t necessarily competitive.

“The races themselves are very laid back,” Gebhart said. “It’s like a road trip with a bunch of your friends with bikes.”

Another reason people keep on coming back is that joining requires a fairly significant investment, so it’s less likely for a person to put money into the team and only sporadically participate. While the team does have some sponsors to help pay for things like uniforms, as well as subsidizing some travel expenses, racing is a very “gear-heavy” sport, and team members cover a lot of expenses out-of-pocket.

The Husky Cycling program has had a meteoric rise these past couple of years. If it can keep its current level of enthusiasm and continue to recruit at a fever pitch, it could be another sport the UW continues to dominate for a long time.

Reach reporter Jacob Thorpe at sports@dailyuw.com.