Good Cycling Colleges

theoption said:

I am a highschool athlete with good talent and pretty big aspirations for my cycling career what Colleges have some top notch cycling programs?

Here in the SECCC (Southeast) the big teams are Clemson University in SC and Lees Mcrae College in Banner Elk, NC

In particular LMC is on a whole different level than the other teams in our conference. They have a lot of A riders and they win almost every race. They have good financial backing, coaching, etc. It's worth looking into: lmc.edu

Lees-McRae is a perennial contender for the national championship and I've heard that Univ of Colorado regularly has very strong teams. Of course, I have to make a shout out to my own University of Virginia, as we have the current collegiate national champion and are leading the ACCC.

Lindsey Wilson College gives out scholarships to cyclist. But it's still a private college.

I understand University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) has a long, decorated history in competitive cycling. Plus, Boulder seems to be a popular place to train and is home base for what I consider the U.S.'s most exciting, promising team, Slipstream.

Although this may just be stating the obvious, you should be aware the cycling at the collegiate level is not an NCAA sport, rather it is endorsed by the USCF. Collegiate cycling is also divided into four categories for men, "D" through "A". "A" corresponding to a CAT 1/2/3 level all the way to "D's" which are for first year racers.

The fact that collegiate cycling is USCF and not NCAA means that for many schools, cycling will not officially be a "Varsity" sport and will be given a "club" designation. However, there are schools out there that as stated before treat it very seriously and give out cycling scholarships. However, just because a team doesn't have a "varsity" designation does not make it good. I personally race for Columbia University in the ECCC conference, and here the cycling team is a club sport. However, most of the cyclists on the team treat it as a varsity sport. I personally put in between 200-300 miles a week if you include the races on the weekends, and i'm not even that good. All of the A racer's on our team race for semi-pro teams with one of them actually getting a Pro contract for after he graduates.

And just to throw in a bit of shameless self-promotion...we placed 1st out of 54 teams at the race weekend 3 weeks ago in philly.

theoption said:

I am a highschool athlete with good talent and pretty big aspirations for my cycling career what Colleges have some top notch cycling programs?

My uni is on the top of a freakin' big hill, so you could consider that good for cycling training.

But seriously, I don't think we have that sort of stuff in Australia - you guys are so lucky with twinkies, cadillacs, Oreo cookies, and now cycling programs in college.

Over here, you ride up the hill and get a meat pie and a beer at the top.