UTM professors establish Cycling Club

A new fitness club, the Cycling Club, will be headed to UT Martin campus in the near future and will be organized by UTM professors John Glass, Chris Hill, Dan Nappo and Scott Pun, who are all cyclists and ride together. 

This club gives students who are intrigued with this sport an opportunity to ride on campus and around the region. This group is not exclusive to collegiate athletes, however. They welcome anyone on any level of expierence and ability who is intrigued about learning more about cycling. This club will give students an oppurtunity to connect with other cyclists who enjoy this sport while learning and training for specific events. 

The short term goal for this club is to make it an official UTM club, hopefully in the spring of 2013. The long term goal for this club is to make into a team, related to what other schools in the UT system have. With this long term goal, students will have the chance to participate in competition with other schools in different categories of biking: mountain, track, cyclo-cross and road. 

“While [becoming an official team] would be a nice long-term goal to achieve, at the moment, we are officially four professors who think we have a good idea for a club,” Glass said. 

The idea of having a cycling club here at UT Martin is just a small piece out of a bigger picture. Also, the idea of making the club broader has been tossed around. Pun suggested that if the club takes off in a good direction, it could expand into an organization that could serve as an outdoor adventure club. This idea of an outdoor adventure club could involve hiking, mountain biking and kayaking; it all depends on the interest of the students. 

Glass, Hill, Nappo and Pun hope to see interest in the club grow. 

“I hope that students will be interested because they love riding bikes and want to ride together,” said Glass. 

There are expierences you can not obtain from cycling in the Rec Center but can expierence from the outdoors. 

“Being out for an hour or so, especially after a day’s work, is the best stress-relief and energy-builder I can think of,” Glass said. 

The intended idea of a cycling club was to gather students who have a passion for cycling to become an organized group and grow from there into a successful club and potentially a UT Martin cycling team. 

“If there is enough interest generated among students this semester, then perhaps by the spring, the University can have an official cycling organization that’s ready to crank up in the fall of 2013,” said Glass. 

This fun idea can become a reality once students who are interested get in touch with any of the four professors, so they can set up a meeting and see where it goes.