Team Big Bear hosted their first local event of the season yesterday, and event organizer Tom Spiegel says that the 432 bikers were nearly double the amount of entrants of recent years. The May 31st Shoot-Out #1 in the Team Big Bear series also served as the second event in the Conquer the Bear series, wherein athletes compete in snowshoe, biking, paddling and running events (including the Run the Bear Marathon on September 12) for the overall title in the series. Given yesterday’s mountain bike race results, top contenders in Conquer the Bear are women Tiffany Meyers of Redondo Beach, Heather Devito of Big Bear Lake and Monique Fletcher of Huntington Beach, and men Ted Devito of Big Bear Lake, Slater Fletcher of Huntington Beach and Wes Barton of Manhattan Beach. As for the Team Big Bear Shoot-Out, which covered forest roads and single track in the Moonridge area, top overall finisher in the expert category was John Nobil of La Jolla for Bear Valley Bikes with a time of 1:38:38 and, in the women’s division, Joy Duerksen, with a time of 1:59:17 for the Pass Physical Therapy team of Redlands. Big Bear’s young riders had strong finishes in their age divisions; among those, 15-year-old Casey Williams placed second in the Expert 15/16-year-old category; 13-year-old brother Cameron Williams took first in Category 2 for men 14 and under; 18-year-old Connor McCutcheon finished first among teenagers in Category 2; 17-year-old Taylor Lamson and 15-year-old Joe Musser took top honors in the Category 3 event for teen riders; and in the Juniors division, 12-year-old Evan Williams placed first in his age group, while Jordan Romero placed second, by less than 10 seconds, in the 13-year-old group. Other top-10 finishers in their respective biking classes were local riders Steve Kinney, Dan Nielsen, Tom Sitton, David Dolezal, Emanuel Hernandez, Brett Davis, Reggi Lamson, Mike Whalen, Diane Bradley, Sean Murphy, Derek Wiese, Dillon Murphy and Matthew Kiley.
