The coed mountain biking team capped off its season by winning the State Championship on May 11 for the second year in a row.

The team was led by sophomore Kelsey Urban and senior Sarah Ogden, who placed second and third respectively in the state in girls’ varsity, and Teddy Hayden, who won the freshman boys’ race.

Also scoring for the team were sophomores Zach Herzer, Katie Ogden, and Jordon Byck, and freshmen Viveka Brockman and Jenna Neustaetter.

Scoring 3,916 points, the Giants narrowly defeated Drake, whose team earned 3,905 points.

The race was held at the Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, a course that senior Grady Polisson said was difficult.

“There was no flat area. It was all up and down, and it was really bumpy throughout,” he said. “It was pretty bad. It was really hot, and it was all open, and there was no shade.”

Sarah Ogden said the course was known for being physically demanding, and that an especially steep section is known as “Hurl Hill.”

For the second year in a row, the team finished in second place behind Drake at the NorCal Championships before going on to win State.

Drake is the team’s main rival, according to Sarah Ogden.

“We’ve gone neck-and neck-with Drake — they’ve been the dominant mountain biking team in the state for these past six or so years, and Redwood, until last year, had always come in second,” she said. “Drake had some really strong varsity riders this year, and the points that varsity riders can score was increased [this year], so we had actually lost to Drake every season race within the NorCal division.”

Despite last year’s victory, neither Polisson nor Ogden thought the team would win State this year.

“We didn’t think we were going to win,” Polisson said. “Everyone was kind of relaxed and wasn’t worrying about racing. It was our upbeat mentality that really helped us win.”

Ogden said that she, Brockman, Hayden, and Urban had their best races of the season at the state meet. Brockman got on the podium for the first time while Hayden was involved in a close race that he won by only one one-hundredth of a second.

Polisson credited Urban’s marked growth as being a major contributing factor to the team’s win.

“Kelsey came out of nowhere,” Polisson said. “She was racing JV [at the beginning of the season.] She improved so much this year. She did well as a freshman, but this season she’s been training a lot more.”

Both Polisson and Ogden emphasized that the team was driven primarily by underclassmen.

“Typically you have varsity and JV being top scorers for the team, and you’re training the underclassmen and getting them experienced to be thrown into even tougher fields,” Ogden said. “But for states, I was the only upperclassmen who was in those top 8 scores that count for the team score, which is highly unusual. We have a lot of depth on our team, so even missing some key riders and having people we didn’t expect to score, score, we still did really well at State.”

Ogden said that mountain biking is a male-dominated sport, but more girls have been joining in the four years she has been on the team.

“Freshman year, I was told to tag along to races and got dragged to the first one because they needed another girl to finish,” she said, citing a rule that states that Division 1 schools like Redwood need at least two girls to score. “Now, we have a very impressive girls’ team in terms of size and talent.”