Tag Archives: Northfield Shares

CROCT seeks grants for a modular, portable pump track

At the August CROCT board meeting, we discussed conducting a fall/winter fundraising campaign. What do we most need? Our experience with summer youth group rides led us to discussing the feasibility of constructing a dirt pump track somewhere in a city park. But after hearing about the labor-intensive challenges to maintain them, the discussion turned to considering the pros and cons of a modular, portable pump track, for example:

We liked that a portable/modular pump track could be moved from park to park and school to school several times over the course of a season, introducing more kids and their parents to its fun and benefits. And if funded, we could partner up with Community Services again for some programming with it (clinics, ride nights, etc). At the September meeting, the board voted to pursue two grants to initiate the fundraising.

In early October, CROCT member Christopher Tassava wrote a grant application to Northfield Shares. And three Northfield High School mountain bikers — Ellis Orjala, Patrick Welch, and Christof Zweifel — teamed up to apply for funding from the Northfield YouthBank, thanks to an alert about it from another Northfield High School mountain biker, Cole Trebelhorn.

Christopher and his two daughters got their first taste of a pump track in the town of Cuyuna when CROCT traveled to Cuyuna Lakes in August for our overnight youth group ride:

Christopher Tassava

Brian Welch and I took the boys to the Cottage Grove Bike Park a couple weeks ago for their initiation:

L to R: Christof Zweifel, Griff Wigley, Ellis Orjala, Patrick Welch, Brian Welch

Ellis Orjala

Christof Zweifel

Patrick Welch

We won’t know the outcome of the grant applications till some time in December. If we’re successful with either one, we’ll launch a round of community fundraising to supplement the grants.