Team hopes to visit Memphis; Switzerland
Published 10:25 am Thursday, October 2, 2008
They range in age from 4 to 60, from preschool through retirement, and they all have one thing in common: They can ride a one-wheeled bicycle really well.
A dedicated team of local unicyclists, the Panther Pride Unicycle Team based at North Bend Elementary School, is hoping to raise money for trips to national and international unicycling competitions this summer.
The fund-raising challenge is daunting. With 15 riders planning to attend the international championships and some 26 hoping to attend the nationals, the airfare, food and lodging costs are steep. In fact, the total cost of sending everyone would be $35,000 to $40,000.
“We’re not even close,” said Panther Pride coach Alan Tepper, who also teaches physical education at North Bend Elementary. It was Tepper who started the team as an after-school program some 20 years ago in the early 1980s.
“If we get to $10,000 in our fund-raising efforts, it’ll be a lot, and unfortunately, [even] then all the kids and their families have to foot the rest of the bill, so it gets pretty expensive. That’s why we’re hoping [that] maybe there’s a big business out there that would like to adopt us,” Tepper said.Alternatively, Tepper hopes a local, civic-minded organization might step in and help defray some of the costs associated with the trips.
The first trip, to the 2006 North American Unicycling Championships and Convention, is planned for June 30 to July 5 in Memphis, Tenn., and will draw some of the best teams in the nation – Panther Pride included.
Some of the events at the national championship will determine who will be able to proceed to the international competition. In the expert and junior-expert categories, for instance, it will be necessary to place in the first three spots in order to qualify for advancement, although other events will simply be open to competitors who are able to attend.
The team will return from Memphis for a-week and a-half for review, practice and last-minute preparation for the trip to the 13th International unicycle Convention and World Championships (UNICON) in Langenthal, Switzerland. Located in the Swiss canton of Berne, Langenthal is a small, picturesque city in northwestern Switzerland. With the Swiss Alps nearby, the area is known for its spectacular scenery, but that’s not the reason unicyclists from all over the world will be converging in Langenthal. “They’ll be many, many countries there. It’s sort of the Olympics of Unicycling,” said Tepper.
It is the eventual goal of the International unicycling Federation, the worldwide umbrella organization for unicyclists, to have unicycling recognized as an Olympic sport. International competition is a way for the sport to develop its athletes and to help the unicycle community reach that goal. The UNICONs are held every two years, with the last one being held in Tokyo, Japan, in 2004, and the one before that in North Bend in 2002.
A variety of events will be the centerpiece of the international competition. Events such as artistic routines focusing on skill, as well as highly difficult track and field events, will be held over an 11-day period from July 23 to Aug. 2. The track and field events on a unicycle can include such courageous maneuvers as the long jump and high jump. Races at 100-, 400- and 800-meter distances, a 4×100-meter relay, an obstacle course race and a 10-kilometer marathon are planned. Unicycle hockey and basketball teams will also compete, and a downhill, off-road race will be held. Special disciplines, such as coasting, track gliding, slow forwards and backwards and unicycle orienteering will round out the competition, which is expected to be fierce.
There are several categories for the artistic events, including individual, pairs, group, standard skill and street freestyle. Standard skill is similar to the older compulsory events in ice skating or gymnastics, in which athletes have to perform a predetermined set of moves in front of a panel of judges.
“It’s a little bit different in Unicycling in that each person can make their own standard skill routine, up to 18 moves, and you can only use the moves that are qualified moves on a standard skill list,” said Tepper.
This skill list is submitted to judges before the event begins, and the unicyclist must perform the moves exactly as listed. “It’s just totally skills. It has nothing to do with music, or artistic interpretation or dress, costume, or anything else; it’s just 100-percent skill,” said Tepper.
“Unicycling, artistically, is like taking ice skating and gymnastics and putting them together, and if you watch a really good artistic unicycler, it looks just like they’re on ice … they just glide.”
That being said, the expenses of gliding in Switzerland will be made much less stressful if the team can receive more funding.
“Five hundred dollars is one airplane ticket to Memphis, Tenn., round-trip and the airplane tickets to Switzerland were $1,200 on a bargain. Normally they’re almost twice that,” said Tepper.
The team is holding two fund-raising events on Saturday, May 20, and Saturday, June 3, in the North Bend QFC store’s parking lot. They will be a combination rummage sale, bake sale and car wash, and will begin at 9 a.m. on both days.
Tepper said that if members of the general public have any quality used furniture or household items they want to donate, they would be welcome to bring them by the QFC prior to the start of the fund-raisers.
He said the team will greatly appreciate any and all support they can get.
“Like any other sport, these are children and young adults who take this sport very seriously and they love the artistic part of it, they love the off-road part of it,” he said. “There’s mountain unicycling now; there’s trials unicycling. Even though there are no scholarships, even though it’s not one covered by the newspapers like baseball and basketball and the “glamour sports”‘ they have fallen in love with it for all their personal reasons and they continue to devote themselves to it, just like a gymnast would devote himself to gymnastics or an ice skater to ice skating.
“We have a very united team. I’m proud of every single one of them and every single one of them [is] a part of my heart. It’s more of a family than it is a team, and the kids are great and the parents are great. The community is always very supportive of us and we just love doing it.”
* For more information about unicycling or the International Unicycle Convention and World Championships, visit www.unicycling.org or www.unicon-13.ch. To contact Alan Tepper for more information about the Panther Pride Unicycle Team or to donate, call (425) 831-8384 or e-mail him at teppera@snoqualmie.k12.wa.us.
