Fenton’s Witt forging his own athletic path

Football, basketball, soccer — they all passed quickly through Konrad Witt’s life.

Instead the Fenton junior stuck with cycling, a sport you won’t find on Fenton’s gymnasium banners or in its yearbook, “Highlights.”

“I don’t really care just because I still have fun and everybody at my school kind of knows I’m the cyclist,” Witt said.

He rides for the same reasons as athletes like his blossoming track sprinter sister, sophomore Sheridan — competition, enjoyment and results.

All three came into play last summer when Konrad Witt, of Wood Dale, won the 2011 Illinois Cup within his age group of Junior 15- to 18-year-olds. On Jan. 14 he was honored at the fourth annual Illinois Cycling Association Awards in Chicago.

After competing in about 35 events last year, his most intense schedule yet, Witt’s Cup win came down to the Morton Criterium on Aug. 20, the last of 15 competitions on the 2011 Illinois Cup circuit.

Racing on a closed course through a residential neighborhood — a “big rectangle probably three-fourths of a mile around,” he said — at the end Witt overtook the 2010 age group champion, Kyle Mindick.

“Really, I won it in a sprint,” said Witt, whose seven years as a competitive rider have strengthened his quadriceps to where he lifts the full 280-pound maximum on the leg extension machine in Fenton’s weight room.

Witt’s competition bicycle is a LeMond, named after three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond. Lance Armstrong, who won a record seven straight Tour de France titles, also is a role model.

“Obviously, he inspires me, but if I had a biggest hero in my life it would probably be my dad (Scott), because he got me into this whole cycling thing,” said Witt, an honor roll student every semester.

“I just liked to go fast,” Witt said of those early days. “I liked to pedal and just spin my legs around as fast as I could.”

Cycling has taken him far as well as fast.

Representing the ABD (Athletes By Design) Cycling Club and trained by ABD’s Mike Ebert and co-founder Mike Farrell — Witt does his winter training in Prairie Path Cycles in Batavia — he is headed toward professional status.

He is listed as a Category 3 cyclist, with categories 1 and 2 “considered pro,” said his mother, Sue. Last year Konrad might have reached a higher status on the points-based system had he entered a few more races, but he felt compelled to ride in the Tour of America’s Dairyland. The 11-day event throughout Wisconsin last June featured three of the sport’s components — road races, criterium (closed course) and time trials. Racing against athletes of all ages, Witt ended up third in Men’s Category 4.

He’s won state junior championships and several American Bicycle Racing national championships. In June he will be competing in the USA Cycling Junior Road National Championships in Augusta, Ga.

His first race of 2012 will be the Barry-Roubaix in Michigan on March 24. Called a “Killer Gravel Road Race,” it promises to be a wet slog.

Down the road, who knows: college and the possibility of a cycling scholarship — or attempting international competition?

Either way, Witt is geared up for it.

“It’s something that I actually think of doing later in life now,” he said, “rather than just doing it on the weekends.”

Fast out of the blocks

The National Letter of Intent initial signing date for track and field and some other sports, including football and soccer, is next Wednesday, Feb. 1.

Leave it to a sprinter to get off to a fast start.

Glenbard East senior Lindsey Rakosnik, a three-time all-state track athlete who added a similar honor in cross country last fall, will have her signing ceremony with the University of Illinois on Thursday, a week early.

Between the Illini women’s indoor track schedule and that of Glenbard East, this was the best possible time, said Lindsey’s father, Ron. They’d even considered a December date, though the letter of intent can’t be logged onto the NCAA books officially until Feb. 1.

Lindsey, who won the 2011 Class 3A 800-meter run and placed seventh in 3A cross country last November in Peoria, visited Iowa and Missouri and drew a home visit last summer from Kansas. She had also considered Wisconsin and Purdue but liked the closer proximity to home that Champaign provides. Ron Rakosnik said head coach Tonja Buford-Bailey and assistant Jeremy Rasmussen were going to make it to Lombard for the 5 p.m. ceremony.

The Illini also offered a full scholarship, not common for track.

Still calling the signals

Downers Grove South 2002 graduate Mike Cuzzone — a former all-state quarterback, he and rest of the Mustangs’ 2001 Class 8A state football championship team will be enshrined this Saturday into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame — has been hired as USA Football’s Great Lakes Region manager.

Cuzzone earned a master’s in sports recreation from Miami University in Florida. He got his bachelor’s in recreation management from Illinois State. He worked for USSSA Baseball (that’s United States Specialty Sports Association) choreographing a ton of clinics and tournaments, and before he came back up north he helped coordinate endurance races like the Miami Marathon.

All that experience will come to bear with USA Football, the sport’s national governing body and the development partner of the NFL. Cuzzone has a region that includes Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Ready to roll

The snow that wiped out last Friday’s athletic schedule also forced the postponement of the wheelchair basketball game between the Windy City Warriors and Wheaton Warrenville South coaches and faculty.

A new date has been set: 4:30 p.m. Tuesday as a prelude to boys sophomore and varsity basketball games against Naperville North. As detailed here last week, the exhibition serves to defray travel and tournament-fee costs for the Warriors, a co-ed, six-time state champion wheelchair basketball team representing the Western DuPage Special Recreation Association.

Just add vocals

St. Francis Pep Band director Bob Mamminga continues to unfurl wrinkles to one of the best ensembles you’ll see and hear at a high school basketball game.

He’s included vocalists for the past four years, males the first two and female singers the last two. Mamminga said they’ve mainly performed at volleyball games, but he’s started having them sing at basketball games.

At a recent boys basketball game, senior Julia Murphy and Anna Jurich and junior Dylan Zito stepped up to the microphone, sometimes all singing harmony.

The catalog ranged from as far back as Fleetwood Mac and Bon Jovi to as fresh as Adele, Arcade Fire and Muse. The girls all sounded better than Dylan — Bob, that is, not Zito.

Mamminga, a 1998 Batavia graduate, added that the Pep Band played as guests at Wheaton College during a recent men’s basketball game against North Central College.

On the up and up

On Jan. 9 the Illinois High School Association board of directors conducted their monthly meeting in their Bloomington headquarters.

Among the items discussed was an update on the IHSA’s Performance-Enhancing Drug Testing Program, delivered by IHSA assistant executive director Kurt Gibson.

Of the 278 athletes from 26 member schools who were tested thus far in the 2011-12 school year, there were zero positive tests.

doberhelman@dailyherald.com