School’s Out for Summer?—Not in Morgan Hill

There were 67 Riding for Focus School Champions greeted with gusto at Specialized Bicycle corporate headquarters this past month to attend the official training for Riding for Focus program that kicks off this fall at each of their schools. The training focused around the curriculum and polishing their bike riding skills and lessons to take back to their schools, but the champions also squeezed in some fun too with a whirl-wind tunnel tour and a warm welcome by the entire staff and President and Founder Mike Sinyard. 

There are 41 new middle school grant recipients this season. With the addition of these new schools, The Specialized Foundation will now support more than 33,000 new students this year, across 130 schools, in 45 states and Canada. We are thankful to our retailers nationwide who are supporting the schools with bike builds and maintenance—it’s a winning team for the kids, the schools and the community to get more kids on bikes.

The program integrates cycling into the physical education curriculum as a means to help students achieve academic, health, and social success. In the months ahead, students will gain access to the Riding for Focus program curriculum, a fleet of bikes, a starter maintenance kit, and bike helmets to activate the program this fall.

The school champions will also attend The Specialized Foundation Research Summit at Stanford University and hear the latest research findings of Dr. Allan Reiss, the Howard C. Robbins Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science and the founding director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research (CIBSR) and postdoctoral scholar, Gavin Tempest, Ph. D. who leads the cognitive neuroscience research arm of the Riding for Focus Program.

Together with Stanford University and the Lucille Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, experts will gather from the fields of brain science, exercise physiology, child development, education, and bicycle advocacy. Ride On!

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