Students at Vincent Massey Elementary School traded classrooms for bike helmets and obstacle courses this week as the school hosted its annual Bike Rodeo.
The event is an annual spring tradition focused on road safety and getting children excited about outdoor activity.
Physical education teacher Kurt Gumushel said the event has been running for about a decade and continues to grow.
Students from every grade participated throughout the day, taking turns riding through safety courses set up on school grounds while learning the basics of traffic awareness, stopping at crosswalks, staying in line, and safely navigating turns on their bicycles.
Members of the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) joined volunteers from the Kiwanis Club of Saint Andrews to help teach bicycle and traffic safety skills while encouraging children to stay active outdoors.
A key part of the annual rodeo is bike maintenance. Staff from Hayward’s Bike Shop travelled from Saint John for the fifth consecutive year to repair and tune up bicycles ahead of the busy spring and summer riding season.
Owner Kevin Hayward said helping kids get interested in using bikes has a cyclical effect.
“Getting kids on bikes when they are young and getting them used to, for example, a bike shop like mine — they’ll remember that in the future, and then they can bring their own children to a bike shop.”
Gumushel said Hayward’s involvement in the Bike Rodeo has taken the school event to the next level, helping students get their bikes in good shape for the warmer weather ahead.
“Hayward’s comes down and spends the day,” said Gumushel. “You can see there are lots of bikes that need just a little bit of repair.”
The school also tied literacy into the event through a reading challenge held in advance of the Bike Rodeo. Students earned a ballot for every book they read, with six names drawn during the rodeo to win bicycles.
Four of the bikes were donated by the Saint Andrews Age-Friendly Community Committee, while two additional bicycles were refurbished and donated by Hayward’s.
Gumushel said the quality of the donated bikes helps ensure they stay in use for years, being passed down from older kids to younger ones.
“You could see bikes from last year coming back,” he said. “They get recycled, and they don’t fall apart.”
Beyond safety lessons, Gumushel said the event is also about encouraging children to embrace healthy, active lifestyles and take advantage of the growing trail network in the community.
“Now in town, we have trails we didn’t used to have before,” he said. “And there are more kids out biking. It’s great.”
Despite cloudy skies earlier in the day, the weather held off for what Gumushel said is one of his favourite events of the school year.
