SNMTB Southern New Mexico Mountain Biking
Grants Awarded
The youth mountain biking program aims to provide an inclusive and supportive environment for kids of all ages and backgrounds, breaking down barriers related to gender, ethnicity, and economic status. By encouraging both casual exploration and competitive riding, the program ensures that every participant has the opportunity to pursue their passion for biking, ultimately fostering personal growth and community engagement.
This program fosters a dynamic youth mountain biking culture in Las Cruces, offering training in beginner biking to advanced trails and race prep. It also promotes environmental awareness and personal responsibility. The program operates afterschool biking clubs at local schools and partners with community organizations for weekend events, like the family-friendly "Sábados" clinics. It supports the local NICA team with the provision of resources and follows the season with explorative trail rides for students. The program also plans to extend its adventure programming with camping and trail ride trips. All these efforts are aimed towards increasing participation, enriching the quality of each program, and creating lifelong bikers while leveraging strong community partnerships and their dedicated coaching team.
Our mission is to provide a welcoming and structured environment to introduce individuals to mountain biking within the southern New Mexico region. Creating riders for life by highlighting the joys and benefits of riding and the outdoors while also promoting and facilitating a path for the development of riding skills from beginner to advanced, technical mountain biking. Our biggest goal within our mission is to get as many kids on bikes that we possibly can. We have recently completed our very first 10 week youth program reaching a total of 12 students from Centennial High School’s outdoor club and of that 12, a total of 7 completed the majority of classes. These were all kids that had never mountain biked before. The program culminated in these kids doing their first ever tail ride on the OMDP monument trails in the Doña Ana Mountain’s trail system. All 7 of those have expressed interest to return next fall, along with several new students interested. We currently have 2 PMBIA certified instructors that lead classes with 6 other individuals who have committed to getting certified including the teacher heading the outdoor club.