Utah Sport Bike Association

Hi All,

Sorry for jumping into this late! I accept the nomination for Vice President. You guys are awesome.

For those of you that don't know me, I'm Jerry Hicks. I started racing with the USBA at the beginning of the 2010 season as a Provisional Novice, becoming a full Novice after 2 rounds, ending the season with the Novice GTU Championship after some awesome battles with Darrel, Doug, and Austin. Near the end of the season, I heard the club was on shaky ground. That kind of spurred me into involvement, because, well, I had earned my Expert license and I wanted to use it. I attended a few board meetings to get a feeling for the state of the state and see if there were any gaps that I could potentially help fill. As I learned more, it became apparent that we needed to do something if we were going to survive through and beyond the 2011 season and that immediate something seemed to be better attention to racer outreach. So I went home and worked on the RacingExperience program. With much consultation from Dana Wilson and many revisions, we had a program we thought would be successful. We presented it to the board and it was ultimately accepted and proven to be successful this 2011 season. The other part of my outreach plan was a New Racer document. We needed to actually explain a lot of what went in to racing, so, I got to writing and churned out the "Letter to a New Racer". Again, with consultation and revision help from Dana, we got the document put together and posted on the site to help guide riders interested in racing toward a USBA starting grid.

Knowing that we've just begun to get things moving forward again after a couple rough seasons and need to maintain that momentum into 2012, I feel a bit compelled to dig a little deeper to further develop what we have, as well as work on new programs to help the club along into a sustainable future. I think, currently, we can look at the club as three different units (in alphabetical order): Racing, Schools, and Street.

Racing:
-We gotta polish up the new racer outreach and make sure we're maximizing our impact with a keen eye on relevance.
-I would also like to further develop a proper mentoring program. We talked about this last winter, but it kind of took a back seat to other matters. I feel there is potential here.
-This is a toughie: but I think we need to take a creative and honest look at how to improve racer retention. This is for sure highly complicated and totally intangible, but it's worth a look in my opinion.
-Keep an eye on Supermoto. Mark, Roger, Kelly, and the gang have done a great job and we need to support them.

Schools:
We all know the value in these, so I think this really just comes down to:
-Making sure the material and techniques are top-notch
-Defining the most effective (and cheap!) methods of promotion
-Making sure we can balance the books at the end of the day

Street:
Oh, man. This one is going to be the hardest of all, because it's hard to put any kind of dollar value on this one. Even though the board will remain mostly focused on racing and schools, I personally believe that since this is a Utah Sportbike club, we need to provide a place for all Utah Sportbike enthusiasts. It might take a few seasons to figure out, but I think we need to approach the whole thing with an open mind. I don't pretend to have all of the answers, so I do believe this unit of the club will be driven by motivated club members (like the Supermoto dudes) collaborating with the board members (I guarantee I will be receptive to all discussion regarding the Street scene)
So, big picture discussion aside, a few things I always though would be cool are:
-Spectator laps during lunch breaks on race weekends
-Allowing stunters some cop-free space at the track during race weekends
-This is going to sound crazy and I'm OK if it gets totally shot down, but a "How to Wheelie/Basic Stunts" group at a few of the ART weekends. That's considering we have someone that is qualified and would be psyched to teach it. I'd sign up.

I work in the outdoor industry in sales and account management, so I'm totally familiar with an industry that is more about passion and enjoyment rather than "responsible spending". Climbers and Skiers live for their sports and will make huge sacrifices to play the game--I believe motorcycle racers and sport bike enthusiasts come from same tribe. I also realize, in order for the club to survive, it's all about the Benjamins (that means money, top line, bottom line kind of stuff) and that we are selling a venue for the sportbike culture to thrive. We need to be sensitive to all the elements of that culture and understand success is a sum of those parts and at this time not one single component will be able to stand alone in any meaningful way.

Thanks for reading.