Mountain biking senior takes on expanded role

Port Washington High School senior Emma Kasza-James has a bigger goal than winning Wisconsin Interscholastic Cycling League races this season.

She is training for the 50-mile USA Cycling Marathon Mountain Bike National Championship in Maryland on Oct. 23.

“It’s all building up to that,” Kasza-James said of her year-round training.

Much of her work has been on-road training, despite the race being on an off-road course.

“That’s where I build all my power and endurance,” she said.

“Trails are for secondary skills.”

Kasza-James likes her chances in the race. Only four people in her age category — 19 to 29 — competed last year.

As a result of training for the national race, she is missing a couple of state races this season.

Her role on the Port Washington mountain biking team has broadened. The veteran racer, whose father Anthony James is the team’s coach, has turned into an ambassador for the sport.

“This year is about building up young girls,” she said.

After six years mountain biking, Kasza-James said she knows the benefits of the sport.

“It has been the learning experience I needed to grow the comfort on my bike,” she said.

“I know how to handle myself when things don’t go according to plan.”

Kasza-James takes every opportunity to spread the sport. She talks with her coworkers at Cedar Creek Outdoors or on other jobs.

“Emma was my babysitter,” Thomas Jefferson Middle School eighth-grader Vera Harris, who is in her third year on the team, said.

Before meeting Kasza-James, “I never even touched a mountain bike before,” Harris said.

Asher Kagamba, a seventh-grader at Eastbrook Academy who lives in Grafton, got involved when he saw the team pedal by as he and his mother were walking on a trail.

He mentioned his improvement from his first year to his second.

“You’ve got to think fast. I started with crashing into trees,” he said. “I don’t do that anymore.”

Last weekend, Kasza-James won the varsity race in the rain and mud at Minooka Park in Waukesha.

Caleb Butler of the Grafton team was fifth in the seventh-grade boys’ race. Other top-15 finishes were: Leena Suddendorf of Port, ninth, eighth-grade girls; Samantha Madden of Ozaukee County Composite, 13th, seventh-grade girls; and Beckett Schuster of Port, 15th, sixth-grade boys.

Shuster, Liam Hoctor and Lilana Jansen completed their first National Interscholastic Cycling Association race.

Port finished 11th of 38 Division 2 teams.

The next race is Sept. 18 at Fall River.