You’re a 20-year-old wanna-be mountain bike pro, and the racing scene appears to be crumbling all around you.

First, your team decides to pack it in. Other national teams do likewise, causing a cascade of moves in which the other top riders land the few team spots still remaining.

The signs are obvious: It’s time to forget your dream for a while and go back to school – return for the spring semester at Fort Lewis College, continue to ride for the Skyhawks and focus on the four-year degree path.

But Payson McElveen didn’t choose that easier path. He’d had a taste of competing against the sport’s elite, placing as high as 13th in a national cross country series race in 2013. His confidence was growing. He wanted to race.

“First of all, I had to do a little bit of soul-searching and ask myself how much I really wanted to do this,” McElveen, now 21, said in Durango during a recent break from racing.

Cross-country racing splits the U.S. mountain bike world spotlight with downhill and enduro (multistage) racing. Cross country, as the only Olympic off-road cycling event, will get its quadrennial boost in prominence just before the 2016 Summer Games.

Even his college coach was leaning against it.

“At first I said, ‘You need to get your degree,’” said Dave Hagen, whose official title is FLC cycling team administrator. “I knew it’d be hard. There’s not a lot out there.”

McElveen promised Hagen he’d still get a degree. Then, with perseverance belying his youth, he did something fairly unique: In order to pursue his passion, he basically created his own team – a “privateer program” with multiple sponsors and himself as manager, travel planner, jersey designer and public-relations director. It’s not unprecedented, but it’s rare; it’s difficult to pull off.

“Kind of overnight, I had to turn myself into an entrepreneur,” the tall and trim FLC junior said.

The story goes something like this:

The last two seasons McElveen was part of the six-person Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory Durango Devo Sweet Elite racing team. But in October, that team folded. He began seeking another team, but his best offer came from road racing.

“At the end of the day, I realized my heart’s still in the dirt, so to speak, and I was going to have to come up with something on my own.”

By late October, the Austin, Texas, native thought he had several good leads on possible sponsors for his solo effort. What he needed was a title sponsor, a company that would pay the brunt of the expenses. But several times, those leads fell through.

In December, he visited with family friends who run Richard’s Rainwater, a bottling company that uses rainwater collected off roofs. He just wanted to know if they had any ideas for him to pursue. Turns out they did: They agreed to be his main sponsor.

He didn’t stop there. He continued to line up sponsors until he had 15 total, about seven of whom are local or were sponsors of his former team. (Rocky Mountain Chocolate continues to sponsor him.)

Supporters with clout

Help came from high places: two former world mountain bike champions who live in Durango.

Ned Overend, the 1990 Worlds cross country champ, enlisted the help of his sponsor, Specialized Bicycles. Also, Durango’s Mountain Bike Specialists helps out with technical support.

“He’s an awesome ambassador for the sport,” Overend said.

Then Greg Herbold, the 1990 Worlds downhill champ, pitched in with help from his employers, SRAM (bike parts, including GripShift) and Rock Shox (front and rear shocks).

Herbold graduated from FLC in five years, beginning his racing career in his final years as a student.

“He’s pretty well-grounded,” Herbold said in a phone interview from his home in Moab, Utah, where he lives part-year and tests products on the area’s rough trails. Herbold hosted the Rocky Mountain Chocolate team in his Moab basement during a camp last year.

“I think it’s good,” Herbold said. “He can take this chance. If it works out, he can still go back to school.”

By late January, McElveen was racing for his new sponsor in Texas. In the season’s first major mountain biking event – the first of the seven-race USA Cycling-sponsored ProXCT series – McElveen barely missed the podium, placing sixth March 1 at the Mellow Johnny’s Classic in Henly, Texas, west of Austin.

The high finish “opened a lot of eyes,” Herbold said.

Durangoan Todd Wells, the 2013 series champ and a three-time Olympian, was third in that race, just 1 minute, 35 seconds ahead of McElveen.

McElveen’s next two races didn’t go quite as well. He pulled out partway through an event at Bonelli Park, California. Then, March 22 at Fontana, California, disaster struck.

A tough break

He was feeling good, whipping along near the top of a descent on the fourth of six laps, when he came to a large water bar. Riders try to prejump it in order to limit their air time, but a “momentary lapse” sent McElveen flying high and too far.

His wrist broke on the handlebar as he landed, and his head drove into the ground. He was woozy, to put it mildly.

“I got my bell rung pretty hard,” McElveen said. “I wanted to get back on the bike, but it wasn’t really an option.”

Instead, he was carted off the course and received medical attention.

“It was definitely a big bummer, especially with how (well) the season started.”

Within a couple of weeks, he was back on the road bike to keep up with his fitness, and he’s mountain biking now, too.

As broken wrists go, this one came at a fortuitous time. The U.S. series doesn’t crank up again until June 21 in Missoula, Montana, followed by a June 28 race in Colorado Springs.

More immediately, McElveen is toying with the idea of either doing the Trans-Sylvania Epic, a multiday race in Pennsylvania, or World Cup races May 23 in the Czech Republic and May 30 in Germany.

Whatever races he chooses, his main goal remains making the U.S. team for the Worlds as one of four under-23 riders. The UCI World Championships are Sept. 3-9 in Norway.

Two of his competitors for those U-23 spots, incidentally, are friends and Durangoans who did find teams: Sepp Kuss is a University of Colorado student who rides for BMC Project Dirt. Howard Grotts is at FLC and rides on the Specialized team.

McElveen will return to FLC in the fall for school and college racing. His idea of skipping spring semesters may not work forever – several of the classes he needs to complete his degree in exercise science are offered only in the spring.

But so far, he’s been able to roll through the obstacles in his path.

“I’m a really, really positive person, I think,” McElveen said. “So at no point did I think it wasn’t going to work out.”

johnp@durangoherald.com