How Important is the Team Score?

It can be a lot of fun to get on the podium as a team, but bear in mind that most teams never do.  And the riders on those teams still have a great NICA experience year after year.  So keep in mind that a team podium is a minor point of fun that sometimes (rarely) gets added to the core of a fun, challenging, community building race experience.  This page is for those that want to know how it all works, but please don't get hung up on it, it's just not that important.

Team Scoring for Composites

In general, team scoring is simple.  Your team score is made up of your four highest scoring riders, one of whom must be a boy and one must be a girl.  So the if a team's 4 highest scoring riders are girls, the team score will be the 3 top girls plus the highest scoring boy.  So in order to have a full team score, you have to have 4 riders finish, with at least one boy and at least one girl.

Composite Subteams

Composite teams can get really big, and being a big team is an advantage when it comes to the team score.  As a result, to keep the team scoring fair, NICA has rules to limit the size of any individual group for team scoring purposes.  This boils down to two main considerations:
  1. If 5 or more riders attend the same school, they'll be scored as a subteam
  2. If there are 16 or more riders on a composite team, they'll be subdivided according to territory
Subteams are for race-day team scoring only, to keep the team competition fair.  Everything else we do is not affected by these subteam rules.  If you can't sleep some evening, check out chapter 7 of the rule book for yourself. 
http://www.norcalmtb.org///wp-content/uploads/2018/11/NorCal-18.19_Rulebook_v1.pdf

BMC Subteams for 2019

​For our team of 30 riders, the rules will translate into 4 subteams for 2019.
  1. Homestead HS (5)
  2. Mountain View HS (6)
  3. Black Mountain South (6) - Bellarmine and Valley Christian
  4. Black Mountain North (13) - everyone else
This is as of 1/30/2019.  If more high schoolers join the team this year, the subteam splitting could even change this year!  

Also keep in mind that just because this is how things need to be split up this year, doesn't mean this is strictly how things will be split up next year.  It all depends on who joins the team and which schools they attend and in what numbers.  Yeah, I know - I should have been a lawyer.

Territory Details

The territory split between the BMC North and South groups is based solely on the school district of your high school's address.  For homeschoolers, this is your home address.  So any school that's located in the East Side Union or San Jose Unified district will be scoring with BMC South in 2019, and everyone else (who is not at Homestead or MTV) will score with BMC North.  Below is the territory map that has been submitted to NICA.  
  • Pins = High Schools
  • Red Stars = BMC Weekly Training Locations
  • Green = BMC North.
  • Blue = BMC South
  • Purple = Los Gatos HS, which feeds into Santa Cruz Mtn Composite