Naperville resident paves way for youth mountain biking team

Illinois may not be known for its mountains. But if you think that means there’s no place for competitive mountain biking in the state, think again.

As a national organization starts a new mountain biking league in Illinois, a Naperville team is paving the road for more youth competitive mountain biking in the state’s third-largest city.

Led by Naperville resident Paul Graham, the Naperville Composite Mountain Bike Team is open to students in fifth to 12th grade who want to compete in the sport. The team, which started in early July, will participate in its first races on Sept. 19-20. No experience is necessary to join and every member will get a chance to compete.

“I’ve always been outdoorsy, been riding my bike forever … my dad would take me and my brothers out on hikes in the woods,” Graham, 55, said.

The Lisle native said he did not get into mountain biking until about 2019 when his niece joined a team in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He was living in Madison at the time and would volunteer at races and cheer her on.

“After about a year of doing that, my brother said, ‘OK, you’re done volunteering. You’re going to be a coach now,’” he said.

Graham coached the Madison West team for six years before moving to Naperville earlier this spring to be closer to his mother. When he heard that the National Interscholastic Cycling Association — a national organization dedicated to youth development through bikes — was starting a league in Illinois, he jumped at the chance to start a new team and be the coach of it.

“Because we’re just starting the league out here, I’m really the only person in the Naperville area,” said Graham, adding that there are also league coaches in Downers Grove, Wheaton and Glen Ellyn.

Coaching, Graham said, is personal for him. Although he is married, his wife lives overseas in China and they do not have any children. He has gotten a taste of the parenting life through being an uncle, but he has mostly been living the “single bachelor life” the past couple of years, he said.

Now that he’s back in Illinois and away from his nieces, coaching kids for the Naperville team is “almost an extension of being an uncle,” he said.

And Graham is starting to see the fruits of his coaching pay off. One of his athletes, seventh-grader Pranam Shilpi, has been making real strides after starting with just a basic bicycle, he said.

“He just got a brand new mountain bike, and from the first couple of practices, he was very stiff,” Graham said.

But last Tuesday, he could see something click in Shilpi, Graham said. He was not as stiff, making right- and left-hand turns like a pro and with a smile on his face throughout it all, he said.

“Just boom, boom, left and right. To see them progress from their stiffness and worry to, ‘Oh, OK, I can do this,’ and through the coaching through those basic skills … it’s just really rewarding,” he said.

The Naperville team currently practices at Weigand Riverfront Park and Knoch Knolls Park, both in Naperville. At the former location, Graham focuses on mountain biking fundamentals. The latter is where the kids get to practice those skills on trails.

The Naperville area generally lacks the kind of dedicated, cross-country mountain biking trails found elsewhere. Graham has started working with the Naperville Park District and the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County to explore whether additional trail opportunities could be developed.

For now, though, Graham is focused on building the team one rider at a time, which is not an easy task.

With only three official riders as part of the team right now, he frequently pairs up with the Downers Grove team for practices. Since he is childless and has lived away from the Western suburbs for so long, finding more kids to join has been a challenge.

When he was a coach for the Madison West team, he was training nearly a hundred athletes. If he can get at least eight kids to join the Naperville team this year, he will consider it a win.

But beyond the numbers, Graham sees potential for the mountain bike team to grow into something much larger — not just a competitive opportunity but a chance to bring the mountain biking to his native area.

“The mountain biking community is not huge,” Graham said. “But it’s a family. It really is a very tight knit family, and I found for the most part that a lot of the people are very accepting and very, very willing to give up themselves. ‘Oh, you got a flat? Oh, I got a spare tire here.’ … Just a pass it on kind of a thing.”

cstein@chicagotribune.com