No one expected Ski Club Cycling to do as well as they did in the 2014 Little 500 — especially not themselves.
A brand new team with four rookies, Ski qualified seventh and then finished seventh on race day when all they wanted to do was make it into the field. With the exception of Ashley King, who had a bit of cycling experience prior to joining the team, the sport was new to all of them.
Sophomore Megan Huibregtse joined the team just a week before registration closed. Before then, Ski had only recruited three riders. Huibregtse didn’t even hesitate to say yes.
When she called her parents with the news, she couldn’t tell them when the race was or even how long it was.
“I had no idea what I was signing myself up for,” Huibregtse said.
The four had very limited time to train. They also had never met and had to develop complete trust in each other within just a few months.
“That’s the beauty of Little Five,” senior teammate Alex Benigni said. “If you care and start right away and work hard, you can get up to ?that level.”
It wasn’t all too serious at first, though. For awhile Benigni was training with the wrong kind of bike.
“We were just like, ‘Okay, we’ll go ride bikes together. It seems to be going well,’” Benigni said.
Benigni is roommates with Natalie Laser, who founded the team last year and is now a student coach. Laser’s older brother was on the Beta Cycling team when they won the Little 500 in 2013, so her parents wanted her to be involved in the race, too.
Huibregtse said last year they went into the race nervous, but because it was a big event, not because they didn’t know what to expect. A year later, there are nerves for another reason. The expectations they’ve set for themselves are much higher: win.
Luckily, trust is no longer an issue. They’ve become best friends and teasing amongst the Ski Club riders is a part of nearly every conversation. On the day of Miss-N-Out’s, the team was on a pre-race warm up ride when they realized all this time, Benigni had the team name wrong. Naturally, they tweeted about her mistake.
Huibregtse said as difficult as practice might get, she never ?dreads it.
“We mesh really well,” she said. “I mean, I think we’re hilarious.”
Some riders have strict diets in preparation for the race. Not Ski. Benigni ate Wendy’s chicken nuggets before last year’s Qualifications.
“It went fine,” she said. “I totally forgot you’re supposed to eat healthy.”
All her teammates laughed. “No, you didn’t,” King said. “You just didn’t listen.”
Huibregtse said they’ve received some advice this year from their coach’s wife, who is a nutritionist at IU. Living on their own off campus, though, it’s sometimes hard to maintain a healthy diet.
Before every race, Ashley Williams eats two eggs, oatmeal and toast. A few others are also oatmeal fans. Huibregtse eats a bagel with peanut butter and banana slices, plus a cup of coffee.
Benigni prefers pasta, even if the race is at 8 a.m.
“I like it cold, actually, in the morning,” she said.
Whatever they do, it seems to be working. In its second year, Ski is a favorite to win the race. They finished third in Spring Series, including a win in Team Pursuit. Huibregtse had the sixth-fastest individual time trial, while King was 16th.
“We want to win for ourselves,” Huibregtse said, “not because we want to beat someone else.”
