Most of Verona’s student athletes have the summer off. Not Christian Duerk. The incoming Verona High School freshman is training now for two major mountain bike races: the Hudson-to-Highlands (H2H) Lewis Morris Challenge on June 30 and the cross country mountain bike national championships that will be held next month in Pennsylvania.
Duerk, who only started racing competitively two years ago, is fresh off a major in-state win. On June 9, he took first place in the New Jersey Interscholastic Cycling League’s state championship for 8th grade boys. He completed the circuit in a time of 36:08.41, just a tenth of a second ahead of the second place finisher.
“Christian had been building towards that win for sure,” says Geordie Smith, one of Duerk’s coaches on the Essex Offroad Mountain Bike Team. “He earned it.”
Essex Offroad was formed in late 2016, and it is open to riders from Verona as well as other towns in the western part of Essex County. Racers can be middle school or high school boys and girls and they typically compete across hills in northern New Jersey. Duerk was one of just three Verona racers on this year’s Essex Offroad team, along with his younger brother, Dylan, and Nicholas Fradette. (The team typically recruits new riders in October.)
Duerk got his first taste of mountain biking through the Hilltop Grasshopper, a youth race that takes place in and around the Hilltop Reservation every August. Duerk took first place in his age group last year and, while he has aged out, plans to be back on the course as a volunteer this year.
Mountain bikers compete in a variety of courses. Some are trail rides like the H2H races, while others follow steep downhill tracks. There’s also cyclocross, a combination of road cycling, mountain biking and steeplechase, as well as endurance races like those put on by the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA). Duerk had first and third place finishes in two (NICA) races earlier this year. Last year, he won the H2H series and placed second in Beastcross, the New Jersey state Cyclocross championship.
Duerk’s dad Scott says his son wants to compete at a “more aggressive level” in the future. “Biking,” he says, “is not going to stop.”
Featured photo top by Victor Chan, One Imaging Photography
