Midwestern State’s cycling team is racing on to compete in the Collegiate Road National Championships on May 3 to complete its outstanding season.

The MSU riders brought home multiple titles, including which the South Central Collegiate Conference title on April 14, where the Mustangs dominated in all categories.

The trio of senior mechanical engineering Pavle Kabala, sports and leisure studies sophomore Dušan Kabala, and management freshman Carlos Maldonado crushed the Men’s A Division with the Mustangs sweeping the podium, placing first, second, and third. Another victory came from mechanical engineering senior Joaquin Traslosheros who finished first in the Men’s B Division.

The Mustangs crushed the remaining races on the women’s side as well, with exercise physiology freshman Molly Hayes winning her category in the A Division, educational leadership graduate student Brittany Bailey taking second place in the B Division and mass communication Sophomore Jacelyn Reno who secured the silver medal in the C Division.

Overall, Midwestern State outplaced teams such as Texas A&M and Texas State and finished first in team rankings, winning the conference championship title.

The cycling team has been under new direction with former Midwestern State cyclist Pablo Cruz Trochez taking the helm as the new coach in 2022.

Coach Cruz has helped the team grow to its fullest potential in the last two years, and his commitment to the team has been strongly reflected in the way his cyclists look up to him.

As Reno puts it “Pablo is the best.” She adds “He has us growing over all different ways, as better athletes, better cyclists, and better people. There are a lot of things we’ve done with Pablo that just help the team grow overall. We have a national champion, Dušan Kalaba, that won two individual races and now he is a double national champion just from last year, underneath Pablo’s wing. We also got a lot closer to each other.”

MSU’s new cycling coach also helped his team get closer to each other, while also inspiring them to never be afraid of taking on a new challenge as was the case with Reno.

While the rider from Bowie has been excelling in the BMX and mountain biking categories throughout her career, her coach she has encouraged her to expand her competitive range and participate in the road category.

Reno describes her experience saying, “I felt like a total newbie at this because I had never done this discipline of cycling, so I was really nervous going into the season, but luckily with some very good teammates and a great coach, they held my hand basically the whole way to the finish line and they just pushed me to be a better athlete overall and I ended up winning conference in the C Division.”

While Cruz played an essential role in helping Reno get ready to compete in road cycling, she has a lot of credit to give to her teammates as well.

The cycling champion mentioned that Hayes is one of the greatest resources she has had on the team.

“The biggest help for me has been Molly. Molly is a big road cyclist and, from knowing nothing, she helped me learn so much and so did the boys on the team. Molly kind of just guided me in the right direction and she is a great cyclist and I have a lot of respect for her,” Reno said.

Next season, Cruz has plans to increase the size of the team, and bring in over ten new riders, which would give the team a total of 30 cyclists. A major change in this sense will represent adding more female riders to their roster.

With a larger women’s team, Reno is ready to take on more responsibilities in leading her teammates to be successful on the track.

“Since there are going to be more girls on the team, I think it will take a lot of self-improvements if I want to be more of a leader. I want to lead these girls in a good direction and still be a good cyclist,” Reno said.

Cruz’s team has proven to be a formidable competitor so far, taking away major titles from teams such as Texas Tech, UTA and UT Dallas. 

Despite the team’s impressive results over the last two seasons, Cruz’s riders wish they received more recognition from the MSU Athletics Department, as their sport has been severely underrepresented. Cycling has been struggling to receive the acknowledgement it deserves from schools which have the program because it is not part of the NCAA. This generally makes getting publicity and funding extremely challenging.

As Reno puts it “I wish we had more representation here. We’re slowly but surely getting that, but a lot of our other sports are widely spread across the news and so are we but I think since we’re a small team and we’re not in NCAA, it’s hard to get some good recognition. For example, we are not allowed to go to the athletic banquet at MSU.”

She adds that “I wish our school would recognize our accomplishments because we do have 32 national champions here, which shows we’re one of the most successful teams at Midwestern, but there’s not enough recognition.”

The MSU cycling team is getting ready to hit the road to the Division I Collegiate National Championship in Albuquerque, NM, starting May 3.

To keep up to date with their latest results, you can follow their pages on Instagram at msu_cyclingteam or Facebook at Midwestern State University Cycling Team.