Cycling Whole Life Coaching for @Risk African Kids

Junior cycling 

In the third term of 2024 we’ve had a significant growth in new young riders joining the program. These includes a lot of female riders. This growth is mostly due to one of our champion female volunteers who has a very big passion for the younger children and to motivate the girls to participate in the sport. Many of our female riders are also encouraged to train harder and push their own limits and to grow in the potential they have. Passionate volunteers make a world's difference and we honour them. 

Wet-wet winter 

This past winter season was a record-breaking season for rainfall figures as well as for low temperatures.It was the wettest and coldest winter ever recorded in the Western Cape. This caused regular flooding and difficult training conditions. There we also many severe windstorms associated with these conditions and more trees and other structures were damaged than probably in the past three years combined. Cycling trails were closed for big portions of the season and our training schedules were often disrupted. We are all very pleased with spring's arrival and anticipatemany more opportunities and favorable conditions for training. 

Events/races 

After many disappointingpostponements and cancelations of the local school's mountain biking league events, due to the bad weather and trail conditions, we finally partook in the last event of the league on the 14th of September. This event took place at BloemendalWine Estate near Durbanville. Seventeen children from our team participatedon the day. For many of the children it was their first cycling race, and they were filled with excitement to be there. The children achievedquite impressive results, as six of the team members ended up in the top fifty percent of their age group. 

Mentoring and cycling lessons 

We’ve been working through the Lead-Today book in our mentoring sessions. We’ve also done weekly reflection on the Counterculture series and training they received at our youth events. From the Lead-Today book we focused on the topics and character traits of: Influence, Vision and Integrity. We’ve been empowering our riders through these topics to understand their critical importance in life to shape the success of their future and how it remains relevant right through their whole life. Weekly tapicreflections on the Counterculture series included:True Friendships, a True vs FalseView of Success, Humility and Selflessness.  

Through the abovementoring sessions, riders were equipped with inner skills to empower them with a platform to harness and leverage their talents on an outer level towards better success in all other areas of life, including cycling. Our model aims to develop the five key areas of every person's development, being social, emotional, spiritual, intellectual and physical. Our mentoring sessionsincludea fitness component, before moving on to the main topic. Each topic is aimed to motivate the individuals and the collective team to improve their sport performance, academics, behavior, discipline and interpersonal relationships. 

Success Story 

We are celebrating with great excitement one of our senior riders who was successfully accepted into a full bursary scholarship program throughEndurocad at Stellenbosch Highschool.The program is a very well-run academy, started and lead by ex-Olympic and world champion athletes. This is a dream come true for our young rider and it opens up a world of opportunities to maximize his talents.  

Thank you for supporting our work to make these stories a reality. Keep using your power to empower. 

The year 2024 has been a period of significant progress for our cycling project. The first five months have been marked by a series of notable achievements, including improved performance, a growing number of riders, and several breakthroughs. Additionally, our team has embarked on a rewarding spiritual journey, further enhancing our collective experience.

Lesson topics/Themes

With coaching strategies from the book “Together on the Road Less Travelled”, the Prochorus cycling team has been introduced to a 3 step-change model. This equips the team with the ability to adapt to change, especially when it comes to very unpleasant changes. The process comprises 3 steps: Unfreezing, Movement and Refreezing. This guides our riders to recognize the need for change, design a new way, and experiment and implement the change. Reinforcement and stabilizing the newly introduced change thereafter, to see how effective it is. This process applies to life, sport, and planning for the future. We live in a world that is constantly changing, and with the help of this coaching strategy, we can equip the young generation to adapt to change more easily.

Riders have also been equipped with knowledge of understanding the love of Our Father, a recurring series from the book Our Father by Sias Le Roux. This gave motivation to the team to deeply care for each other and helped them understand the concept of teamwork and how we’ve been called to work as a unity, even though, on most occasions, cycling is a single-person-orientated sport.

Testimonies

In the second term, we were blessed with Psychologist volunteers. Two of our riders who had emotional, spiritual and physical challenges decided to go for counselling sessions. Through the psychologists connecting with them and learning about their backgrounds and struggles, strongholds were broken. Cycling is somehow also very therapeutic, but these therapy sessions allowed them to be vocal about feelings and brought much healing to them. The visible results are very positive. It is wonderful to see the joyfulness that now fills these riders and how they are now walking free of what was holding them back before. The team now witnesses a lot of smiles, less bullying and more care from these riders. This brings hope and encouragement to other team members who are hiding their struggles and things which they find hard to share.

Events and Outings

February started off with a great performance and two victories. Our teams achieved first and second place in two different categories of the X-terra triathlon event at Grabouw Country Club. Our team partnered with a group of volunteer swimmers and runners. One team achieved third place in the X-terra full marathon, while the other ended in first place in the X-terra sprint. What a great team effort!

This was followed by one of the Western Cape’s most loved events in March, the XCO SA Champs, which took place at the wonderful trails of Spice Route near Paarl. The team had an opportunity to compete with the country's best riders of the same age. This event inspired the team as the young riders watched their older teammates compete with some of the world's best cyclists in the elite men category. International Teams and riders from Cannondale Factory Racing and Toyota Specialized were among many present on the day, from this level of competition.

The intermediate and junior phase groups grew greatly this year, and interest has been big in joining the cycling project. It is also a privilege that we had more volunteers interested in coming and teaching the young girls and boys how to ride a bike and do mentoring. It started with fixed-gear bikes and they grew fast in confidence and were able to get to mountain bikes within a short period of time. It didn’t stop there. They were gaining more confidence to take it to the mountains, and after such improvement, the team of young riders was getting ready for their first event. On the 25^th of May, the high school and primary school riders took part in a school race that was also held at the Spice Route trails. This opportunity introduced the team to a new cycling experience. The team performed well even though most of the riders were participating in an event for the first time.

Six of our youth are applying for a cycling and school scholarship program at a local sports academy. Those who are successful will attend a prestige school, form part of the school academy cycling team, and receive intense talent development training presented by the Academy. For the children from our project, this would be a dream come true, and it could dramatically alter the trajectory of their future, in a positive way, of course.