When I look back on the experiences that most shaped how I think about coaching, leadership, and learning, the BIKES program stands near the top of the list.
The BIKES Project — Bicycle-Inspired Kinetics in Elementary Schools — gave me far more than an opportunity to speak to students about cycling. It gave me a framework for understanding how young people learn, what actually inspires them, and how meaningful coaching is built through consistency, curiosity, and trust. What began through supporting school bicycle rodeos in Walla Walla and then sharing monthly updates with students gradually grew into a broader youth speaking and engagement project that reached more than 1,500 students across British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, and Georgia. Along the way, it shaped me just as much as I hoped it might help shape others.
One of the most important coaching principles I came to appreciate through BIKES was that failure has to be treated as a teacher, not as a verdict. The project itself evolved through experimentation. Some ideas worked immediately. Others needed revision. Some messages landed well with students, while others needed to be simplified, made more visual, or connected more clearly to their daily lives. That experience reinforced a lesson I have continued to value ever since: progress in coaching does not come from pretending to know everything. It comes from listening, adapting, and honoring lessons learned through failure. The BIKES page captures that idea well: failures are not things to dismiss, but tools to be cherished.
A second principle was learning how to connect dream goals to daily goals. As an athlete, it is easy to focus on big outcomes. As an educator or coach, you quickly realize that large goals only become meaningful when they are translated into manageable steps. In BIKES, that meant helping students connect imagination with action: dream a little bigger, but also identify the small goals along the way. That philosophy mattered for the students, and it mattered for me. It helped me see that motivation is not something we simply “have” or “do not have.” Motivation grows when people can picture a future they care about and then see a practical path toward it.
The third principle I learned to value was the importance of creating recess — not just for children, but for people of all ages. One of the most thoughtful ideas from the project was that creativity, collaboration, and health need space. They do not thrive under constant pressure. Students responded not only to performance stories or cycling results, but also to invitations to reflect, draw, imagine, and share what made them feel energized. That reminded me that good coaching is not only about structure and discipline. It is also about creating room for joy, exploration, and recovery.
BIKES also deepened my appreciation for interdisciplinary learning. Over time, the project expanded beyond cycling to include stories from professionals working in areas such as tropical biology, sports photography, human physiology, and earth sciences. That broadened the message in an important way. Coaching was no longer just about teaching technique or physical literacy. It became a way to help students see connections between movement, curiosity, identity, and the wider world. I began to understand that the best youth programming does not reduce learning to a single lane. It invites learners to see how sport can intersect with science, creativity, community, and future possibility.
By the time I began working at Cycling BC in 2015, those lessons had already prepared me more than I realized. The transition into helping create and implement youth and school programming, including iRide, felt like a natural next step because BIKES had already taught me several habits that mattered in practice. It taught me to communicate clearly with young learners. It taught me to think about engagement, not just instruction. It taught me that programs succeed when they are designed around the experience of the participant, not just the intent of the organizer. And it taught me that inspiration becomes far more powerful when it is paired with access and structure. The BIKES Project page notes that those experiences were instrumental in the success of that posting at Cycling BC, and I believe that is exactly right.
What I appreciate most now is that BIKES helped me move from simply sharing stories to thinking more carefully about facilitation. There is a difference. Sharing stories can spark interest. Facilitation helps turn interest into learning. Through BIKES, I began to understand that a coach is not only someone who instructs. A coach is someone who helps create conditions in which confidence, reflection, and action can take root.
That lesson has stayed with me ever since.
If I were to summarize what BIKES gave me, I would say this: it helped me understand that effective coaching is human before it is technical. It requires empathy before authority, structure without rigidity, and ambition grounded in daily practice. Those are the same principles that helped me begin my work at Cycling BC in 2015, and they are still the principles I return to today.
Failure is useful: lessons from mistakes should be examined and retained, not hidden or dismissed.
Big goals need daily steps: dream goals become achievable when broken into consistent, practical actions.
Recess matters: creativity, collaboration, and health need time and space, regardless of age.
Engagement beats one-way instruction: students responded to stories, reflection, art, and real-world examples, not just information alone.
Interdisciplinary learning strengthens coaching: connecting cycling to science, creativity, and professional pathways made the experience richer and more relevant.
Participant-centered design improves programs: BIKES helped build the skills that later supported my success in youth and school programming at Cycling BC