Talk to people for long about cycling in Southwest Colorado, and it’s inevitable: The Durango Devo program will come up.
Through Devo, a generation of mountain biking youngsters has learned to love the bicycle. Some Devo kids are now pros, a few are Iron Horse Bicycle Classic champions, but most just like to ride.
The program was the brainchild of Sarah Tescher and Chad Cheeney, who got together in 2005 and hatched a plan.
Tescher had moved to Durango in 1999 after teaching at Berkeley High in the Bay Area. While there, she had observed the after-school mountain bike program headed by Matt Fritzinger, a fellow teacher. (Several years later, Fritzinger gathered a group to form the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, which develops student cycling programs.)
Tescher, a cyclist since her youth, persuaded her Durango employer, Miller Middle School, to let her establish an after-school mountain bike program. Around the same time, Cheeney was starting to coach summer bike camps with Dave Hagen, director of the cycling team at Fort Lewis College, from which Cheeney had recently graduated. Cheeney and Tescher met through mountain bike racing, and began to scheme.
“We should create our own after-school program that’s separate from the schools,” they decided.
One of their first meetings was with Kendra Holmes, then the Iron Horse’s director. Holmes schooled them on creating a budget for a nonprofit. “And that was really helpful,” Tescher said.
Devo started with Tescher coaching a high school girls group, and Cheeney coaching high school boys. From there they added junior practices, on 20-inch wheels, and it took off.
“Every season we’d add a program (and) it’s grown almost every year,” Tescher said in May 2022. “I don’t think we’ve ever met the demand.” Now there are more than 600 riders, ages 2½ to 18, and 100 coaches in Devo.
Gaige Sippy became a Devo board member after he was hired to replace Holmes as Iron Horse director for the 2007 event. The Iron Horse, always a supporter of both budding and established cycling concerns, has consistently donated to Devo.
Iron Horse founder Ed Zink was a Devo proponent, and around 2008 Zink and the Iron Horse gifted its spring bike swap proceeds to Devo. Although “a crazy amount of work,” Tescher said, the bike swap is now a huge success as an annual Devo fundraiser.
Tescher said she shares in the youths’ life accomplishments in whatever arena that is. There have been plenty of biking-related successes:
Levi Kurlander has gone from Devo participant to being its executive director. Nora Richards heads a cycling team in Zambia, Africa. Bryce Gordon is head coach of a high school team in Bozeman, Montana. Keenan Desplanques is a professional videographer who is teaming with fellow ex-Devo rider Christopher Blevins to form a creative platform called Stilspoke for storytelling through videos.
Ruth Holcomb, Ellen Campbell and Katja Freeburn are among the women who have had national racing success after going through the Devo program. Howard Grotts, 2016 Olympic mountain biker, was a Devo devotee and became a program coach. Blevins and Sepp Kuss, now internationally renowned pro cyclists, were both enthusiastic Devo youngsters.
“(Sepp) just loves to ride that bicycle, I tell ya,” said his father, Dolph Kuss. “He got that embedded in him by his participation in Devo.”
Tescher has stepped away from running Devo’s day-to-day operations, but continues as co-coach of the under-14 youths with Annie Cheeney, Chad’s wife. Annie was once Devo director and also was Iron Horse assistant director for a time.
The rest of the world wants to emulate Devo, because other towns see Devo’s success. So Tescher has developed “Secret Sauce Seminars,” which she delivers to other communities to help them build youth cycling programs.
Lest someone think Devo is a racing program, the co-founders quickly quash that thought. Cheeney’s motto, which has become the group’s tagline, is “never forget the feeling,” referring to the sheer joy of being on a bike.
“The best route to developing a junior cyclist is keeping it fun,” Tescher said of Devo’s overall focus. “And keeping them riding with their peers.
“The route to being a racer and the route to being a lifelong cyclist looks exactly the same.”
