If Notre Dame seems to specialize in students who race bicycles (and other things) when they’re off campus, there is probably a good reason for it. Siblings Luke and Danielle Mullis—Luke, a senior and Danielle, Class of 2014—were named by USA Cycling to the 12-member 2015 Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) Junior Track World Championships team, which represented the U.S. in a race last month overseas in Kazakhstan. Freshman Logan Wenneshiemer has been a regular participant in sprint car and snowmobile racing since he was 4.
And last summer, then-Notre Dame eighth-grader Logan Currie bicycled 300 miles as part of the Make-A-Wish Michigan's 27th Annual Wish-A-Mile Bicycle Tour.
Now you can add junior Justin Kreger to the list.
Justin Kreger is a junior in Notre Dame’s upper division.
Last week, Kreger took first place in the MISCA series opener at Addison Oaks County Park in Leonard, Mich., and on August 15, he came in first place in the 29-and-under category at the Pando 6-Hour Endurance Race in Rockford, Mich., “one of the hardest races I have done this year.” But he also said it was a “great race,” which one would expect the winner to say.
“My fitness was much better than it was the past few races,” he said after last week's Addison Oaks race. “I made my move on the last half mile of the race and ended up pulling out a win by four seconds. And third place was about four minutes back.”
Likes mountain biking best
Kreger focuses a lot of his racing attention on the MISCA Mountain Bike Race Series, which was organized to encourage and support youth cycling in the schools and community for racers 18 years old and younger. He says he really enjoys cross country mountain biking and trains almost daily for races, some of which are six-, eight- and twelve-hours long, and can get up to 100 miles through sometimes extremely rough terrain.
Last spring, at the encouragement of his friend, NDP senior Luke Mullis, Kreger started doing some on-the-road racing, in which he’s enjoyed some competitive success. But he looks at road racing as just more training for his favored mountain biking. It appears to be working because beside his wins a Addison Oaks and Pando, he has taken overall wins at two other endurance races so far this summer, one an eight-hour race in Ithaca, Mich., in which he raced 93 miles, and another where he raced for six hours, climbing ski hills over and over again to take the win. And both races were against adults!
Bicycle racing, especially mountain-bike racing has experienced an almost explosive growth in the U.S., especially for younger racers. The first MISCA race last weekend greeted nearly 80 youth cyclists from all over Michigan, ranging from 18 all the way down to 4 years old. Kreger said he wants to further promote the sport he loves and looks to engage even more Notre Dame students in the sport he truly loves.
Comments or questions? mkelly@ndpma.org.
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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." NDPMA is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org.