School Motocross in the 70's

[gt96]

Back in '74, we had a cool music teacher that was into bikes as well as rock'n'roll. Because a lot of us had MX bikes, we convinced the teacher into organising motocross for PE afternoons about once a month.

To do this, we needed transport of the bikes and riders to the track outside Queanbeyan. So one of the kids father was into horses and had a big truck that we could fit both bikes and riders in for the run out to the track. Cost was 2 bucks each which helped to cover fuel costs.
So each month, we would "walk" our bikes from home to school, then load them into the truck. Can't even remember whether they were secured with rope or whether we held them upright during the journey. No such thing as OH&S back then.

There used to be a small track close to the main road before the short circuit track that we used to run on. It was generally a disorganised race but heaps of fun. The teacher always had a smile that wraps around his head while "supervising". At the end of about 3-4 hours, we'd load 'em back up on the horse truck and head back to the school and "walk" the bikes back home. Fantastic!

Did any one else get to do motocross as a school activity?
 

[Iain Cameron]

you didnt go to Melrose High did you ? Mboddy might remember I think we had a couple of "lessons at the track near Fishwick" . Iain

[gt96]

Campbell High

[Canam370]

I believe Drakie was known to organise riding as a 'class' back in his early teaching days!

[Doc]

My social studies school teacher Canadian John 'Johnno' Johnson came riding with us a few times at Nudgee quarry in 1976/77 onboard his 1974 Bultaco Alpina 350. The weekly school sport activities of swimming and footy etc of a Wednesday were usually given the flick in favour of riding at the quarry. Whilst it wasn't exactly an 'organized' sport everyone knew and no-one ever objected.

[bazza]

As chairman of a high school board I took a school team to Auckland School motocross Champs held each year.Kids ride for them selves and school team points.Aprox 280 riders on a top Auckland motocross track.

[evo550]

Back in '74, we had a cool music teacher that was into bikes as well as rock'n'roll. Because a lot of us had MX bikes, we convinced the teacher into organising motocross for PE afternoons about once a month.



Did any one else get to do motocross as a school activity?
 

Yep, our PE was on a Friday afternoon. We had a local MX and BMX club combined back in those days, we where allowed to ride our bikes to the track after lunch, most of us would run home at the start of lunch, hop on our bikes and be at the track in 10 mins....ride now, eat later
Someones dad would bring the bmx bikes ( I use that term loosely)out on the back of a ute and we would spend Friday arvo riding. Total chaos, but no one got hurt.

[Rossvickicampbell]

Parklands high school in Tassie - once a month we had mini bikes as an activity - would organise an empty paddock somewhere and maybe 20 of us go up on the back of an oversized car trailer.

Awesome

[gt96]

Seems motocross as a school activity was big in the US at the time (70's), but the liability issue eventually killed it like most other things.
http://www.vitalmx.com/forums/Moto-Related,20/High-School-Motocross,1073587
http://www.vitalmx.com/forums/Moto-Related,20/high-school-motocross,1232256
http://www.socalmxnews.com/page2.php?recordID=126&VolIssueID=11
http://www.vitalmx.com/forums/Moto-Related,20/Racer-X-High-School-MX,1131620http://www.vitalmx.com/forums/Old-School-Moto,22/How-fast-was-your-High-School,1054508

We never had any injuries either and the racing was basically ad-hoc and everyone had heaps of fun. Never had an ambulance waiting there either.
Bike make up was CR125s, TM125s, MX125, Hodaka, and one guy had a mk7 250 Bultaco. Really sweet bike.

[Rosco86]

Andrew Horne and myself were allowed to take our SL70s to school on a Wednesday as we had a clubs program and after doing cadets for 2 years you could get out. Andy and I picked mechanics club. One of the teachers was restoring a Morris minor and putting a 186 motor in it and he said we could do the filters, chains etc. After doing laps of the back staff car park at lunchtime we were politely asked not to bring them again. Apparently the neighbours in the well to do suburb of Glen Eira did not appreciate the straight out exhausts. Go figure!
Rosco 86

[Rusty]

High School Motocross was HUGE in SoCal during the '70s.   I raced for Bolsa Grande High School with Warren Reid on our team and we were moderately successful.  Of course in our area there were a huge number of guys that went on to become top racers - Steve Bauer, Dave Carlson, Jeff Ward, David Taylor, Marty Miller and a bunch of others.  Then you had all the other SoCal HS guys like Marty Smith, Broc Glover and a host of others.

http://www.socalmxnews.com/index.php was always eagerly awaited with most copies being grabbed within a couple hours of hitting the parts counter at dads shop.

Best memory (and worst) was the HSMX at the LA Colesium in '75.  Led the first 250 Jnr moto by half a lap until I had a brain fart and forgot a couple of very big whoops before heading up into the peristyle.  Totally destroyed my bike and limped home for 18th place.  The second moto was called to the line while we were desperately trying to fix it back up and had only just got the pipe opened up but had no time to weld it propely so it was held together with a few tack welds and a bit of bailing wire.   Had the hold the start up by riding backwards down the track to the start gate instead of the correct direction.  Managed to win that moto by a very short margin, but being 10-15% down on power made it hugely difficult.   Have a nice pic of the scoreboard which is greatly treasured and more importantly my lap times in the first moto were faster than even the 125 experts (Smith, Glover etc) and would have put me in top 10 in the pro class the following night.