The Mountain View Bike Skills Park is set to open soon while another park behind Oak Creek School in Cornville has just reached full funding and will break ground in the spring.
Both projects are a joint effort between the Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District and Verde Valley Wheel Fun, a nonprofit organization that refers to itself as “FUN,” dedicated to promoting mountain biking opportunities for kids.
FUN has been operating after-school mountain bike clubs at nine public schools in the Verde Valley, including each of the COCSD schools. It was through this connection that Superintendent Steve King and FUN’s Treasurer Kevin Adams began discussion about building a bike park in Cottonwood.
COCSD just happened to have 4 acres and $250,000 worth of excavation dirt behind Mountain View Preparatory.
“We went out there, and we stood on top of the mound of dirt and just started dreaming,” King said. “And the next thing I know, they made contact and they started the process of contacting these organizations that actually build bike parks.”
Construction on the Mountain View Bike Skills Park broke ground Feb. 16. The park was finished March 18 and kids from local mountain bike clubs have already been utilizing the space. The park is located behind Mountain View Preparatory and will be open to the public in the coming weeks once signage has been installed.
Now the two entities are working on building another bike skills park behind Oak Creek Elementary School. The Oak Creek School Mountain Bike Skills Park is set to break ground in the spring and will include both a bike track and an integrated fitness track with stations for activities such as pull-ups, sit-ups and other fitness challenges.
The skills park will be built “by students for students” — by kids enrolled in the Verde Academy for Career Technical Education.
The project will cost just over $100,000 to complete at no cost to the school district, thanks to grants and donations from the Trek Foundation, the Catena Foundation, Arizona Center for Rural Health, Arizona Community Foundation of Yavapai County, Arizona Community Foundation of Sedona, the Mountain Bike Association of Arizona, People for Bikes and many private donors.
“We are trying to make every dollar stretch as far as it can go, and we are very active in writing grants and things like that. Anything that doesn’t come out of our regular budget just allows us to keep that in the classroom,” King said.
Zoe Kircos, director of grants and partnerships for People For Bikes, said the Oak Creek School Mountain Bike Skills Park had all of the key components it looks for when choosing projects to help fund.
“This project had all the elements we look for: A clear and detailed plan, strong support and engagement from the community, including the school and school administrators, and the ability to bring the resources needed together to get the project done,” she said. “We appreciated that the project would serve an under-resourced community and we loved that the students identified fitness as an issue and were taking on the fitness course as an additional, aligned facility.”
King said in the future he would like to see a bike skills park at each of the COCSD schools, as the park means more to the students and the community than just another place to recreate.
“The entire emphasis is looking at the development of healthy habits for kids,” he said. “The impact on the academics and the impact on school attendance; if they’ve got something to look forward to that they’re passionate about and they enjoy then they’re much more likely to engage in school, and that’s really my underlying motivation.”
Some of the kids involved in FUN’s mountain bike clubs have never ridden a bike and are learning for the first time. Adams said when kids learn these new, healthy habits it can make a life-long impact on them.
“These bike skills parks are more than getting students on bikes. They’re about education, access, land stewardship, movement, health, wellness, nutrition, trail etiquette and changing behavior outcomes by offering healthy alternatives that encourage healthy lifetime habits,” he said.
