BBC January Meeting Minutes

Date: Wednesday 1/28 at 7pm on Zoom

Attendees:

• James Thompson, Erin Haskell, Todd Backes, Alisa Mertens, Gary Ho, Tyler Collins, Rich Scaduto, Jon Siuta, Tory Trzyna

Topics:

• 2026 Event Calendar
  • Officers worked on the 2026 calendar this month with some high level changes:
    • Same as 2025
      • similar amount of Sunday Series (9) and Fireball (10) events in 2026 with the first/second half of season changeover happening towards the end of June
      • First half / second half of season split for both Sunday Series and Fireball, allowing one drop race per half season in each series
      • Group rides
      • We planned our club races to generally avoid USAC regional races and major holidays
    • New in 2026
      • Strava Segment Group Rides
        • We will have 2 of these this year counting towards the Sunday Series scoring as discussed at our meetings in the fall.  These will be group rides where we ride together to each of the designated Strava hill segments, blast up, regroup, and continue to the next.  Strava will log your time, and your cumulative times on all segments will be added up to determine the overall score.  This score will count towards your Sunday Series.  We are adding these into the calendar for two reasons: when we’ve done them before, we had great reception and attendance as they’re a fun way to compete and ride together, and because they’re catering to our desired new member demographic– fast group riders and segment hunters who might want to try racing.  These are open to full membership and the free group-ride-only membership.
      • Reverting to standard age categories
        • In 2025 we tried to separate out all the age categories to encourage close competition for all racers.  If we had 50 or more people at every club race, this would have been great, but since we don’t, we will go back to the following categories that we had in 2023-2024:
        • A and B categories, each featuring Open Men, Open Women, Master’s 50+ men, Master’s 50+ women
      • Club Championship Changes
        • This year, the Club Championship will be a club race instead of paired up with a USAC sanctioned race.  And we’re expanding the offerings!  We’ll have a “Club Championship Week” at the end of May, which will have the club TT championship on a Thursday and the club road championship on a Sunday.  Both A and B categories in the above age groups will vie for jerseys (which will be a separate new design this year through Jakroo!)
      • Two Man Time Trial
        • Our second Sunday Series TT of the year (which will be on July 2nd) will be a two-man time trial!  Buddy up to go extra fast on our Grand Island TT course, about 10 days before we host the NY State Team TT championship!  (Both of you will get the same points towards your Sunday Series scoring, meaning A’s need to pair up with A’s and B’s with B’s)
      • Group Ride Partnerships
        • We will again be partnering with the NFBC for Sunday rides where we don’t have a club race or other event and for their Tuesday or Wednesday Night weekly rides (TBD which day of the week)
        • We will newly be partnering with the Wayland Brewing rides in Orchard Park!  We will work on a schedule so the BBC will help promote the shared group rides and get more people riding together.
      • Skills Workshops, Group Workouts
        • These will be added to the calendar later, with a few to start the season.  We may look to add these per month as we move through the year rather than put a full year up now.  More details to come!
• 2026 Club Jersey
  • The jersey redesign committee has worked hard this month with the Jakroo designers and we have a final product!  The full reveal will happen in the coming weeks.  Our next step is finalizing the Team Store and getting members to order soon so they can have jerseys by the start of the season

Next Steps:

• Officers have various to-do items, including sharing our calendar with our group ride partner clubs, creating routes, talking with our sponsors, setting up the jersey store, and starting on the logistics for our USAC races
• The February meeting focus will shift back to rider development and marketing.  We will follow up on the Rider Development committee’s plans for incorporating group workouts and skills workshops and put those on the early part of our calendar
• We will finalize our marketing pitch and begin getting display jerseys and club registration information into our partner bike shops and other sponsors’ storefronts