It’s tough to get riders to volunteer to work on their local trails a couple of hours a month, let alone dedicate hundreds or even thousands of hours a year. Yet the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Cycling League (PICL) has done just that.
Since its inception in 2016, PICL’s student athletes and coaches have donated over 40,000 hours of their time to work on trails around the state. This impressive commitment is one reason why PICL has received a grant from Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) every year since 2020, enabling PICL to get more kids on bikes.
To find out more, Singletracks spoke to Mike Kuhn, the Director of PICL; Alex MacDonald, the Section Chief for Trails, Greenways, and Statewide Planning with DCNR; Hannah Puttcamp, a former PICL student athlete; and James Pottinger, a PICL coach.
Trail stewardship has been a pillar of PICL since its inception
Kuhn is a big proponent of trail stewardship, saying, “It’s our responsibility as mountain bikers.” When he helped start PICL in 2015, he made it one of the core pillars of the league, believing that it ties in with NICA’s core value of “Community.” Kuhn set the expectation that PICL’s student athletes would volunteer to work on their local trails.
To help encourage the league’s student athletes to participate in volunteer trail work, PICL created awareness, incentives, and rewards. Early on, the league awarded a leader’s jersey to the student athletes who put in the most volunteer hours. It also created Teen Trail Corps (TTC) captain positions. These captains work with their local communities and parks on bigger projects, much like those of Eagle Scout candidates. PICL organizes a TTC weekend annually to encourage its student athletes to get out and work on their local trails.
In addition to the leader’s jerseys being awarded to individuals, PICL now awards bonus points to teams based on how many volunteer hours their student athletes log during the season.
PICL’s Teen Trail Corps inspired NICA to adopt the idea, creating a nationwide TTC program. It is still going strong today, based on the concepts of Commitment, Culture, and Awareness.
Teams in the league have fully embraced trail stewardship
Pottinger, who is currently the head coach of the Pittsburgh East Composite team, has been a coach with the league since its inception. He told Singletracks that PICL’s TTC program is valuable for the student athletes. “It gives them a better appreciation of what it takes to maintain the trails they ride.”
According to Pottinger, PICL has done a good job of incentivizing trail work by awarding points to riders and teams who volunteer a certain number of hours on trail work during the season. He also supports PICL’s creation of the TTC program.
Pottinger’s own children have participated in the TTC program, all achieving captain status, and he likes where the program is going. “The students benefit from it, the teams benefit from it, and the community benefits from it.”
PICL’s culture of trail stewardship has made a positive impact on its student athletes
Puttcamp joined the Keystone Composite team as a sixth grader the first year PICL was formed. She went to her first trail workday that fall and loved it. “I thought it was really cool. I was very happy to give something back to the trails I rode on.”
Puttcamp went on to work on two trail projects in conjunction with the Girl Scouts during her time as a student athlete in PICL. For her Silver Award project, she helped build a connector trail to keep riders off the road when accessing trails. She also helped build a new trail and re-introduce native plants on old farmland purchased by the Countryside Conservancy.
Though she’s now a full-time college student who races in the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference, Puttcamp stays involved with PICL. As one of the coaches for the Keystone Composite team, she continues to show her commitment to volunteer trail work by encouraging the next generation of student athletes to get involved. “I love completing a project, and trail work gives you the opportunity to do that while meeting people and developing relationships.”
PICL’s dedication to trail stewardship has been noticed by Pennsylvania’s DCNR
MacDonald told Singletracks that the Pennsylvania DCNR has a robust grant program to fund all kinds of outdoor recreation projects throughout the state. “Youth engagement is a big part of what we want to do,” said MacDonald. PICL landed on DCNR’s radar through Kuhn’s involvement with the agency’s Trails Advisory Committee. Kuhn applied for one of DCNR’s Partnerships Grants on behalf of PICL and was initially awarded $75,000.
PICL demonstrated its dedication to trails to the DCNR by logging a few thousand hours of volunteer work in the first year of the grant. The DCNR was so impressed that they have continued to award a grant to PICL every year since.
PICL puts the grant money toward building teams. It pays for a league employee who goes around the state and tries to get new teams started. The grant money also helps to provide bikes for the teams. “We’ve provided over 150 bikes over the last three years,” said Kuhn.
DCNR gave PICL over $170,000 in grant money for the 2025 season. Kuhn said the grant money “has allowed us to think much differently about the work we do. We can invest in communities in need. We can invest in trail building.”
For example, PICL has started offering smaller, close-to-home events that build greater access by reducing travel time and costs, which can be barriers to participation. It is also focusing on bringing “try it out” events to schools and building teams in schools because it can impact the lives of more kids in more places that way.
To date, PICL teams have logged nearly 43,000 hours of trail work, and they’re not slowing down
In addition to the incredible number of volunteer hours teams across the league have put into maintaining trails in the state, the league has partnered with the Pennsylvania Outdoor Corps, a program that gives high school and college students the opportunity to have summer employment in parks around the state.
Kuhn also mentioned that there is now more interest in mountain biking in Pennsylvania and more involvement by the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) in the state. Additionally, the Richard King Mellon Foundation has also gotten involved with PICL as a funding source for the league. It awarded funding to PICL to create a new position for outreach and development in western Pennsylvania.
MacDonald told Singletracks that the DCNR appreciates PICL’s commitment to volunteer work. “We focus on workforce development and engaging youth. It’s great seeing PICL getting kids outdoors and engaging with nature.”
“While the kids racing bikes is awesome, it’s the clear development of the whole person through stewardship and service, through fitness and fun, and through immersion in nature in ways that can lead to lifelong love of the great outdoors that resonates with these funding organizations,” said Kuhn. “We’re a lot more than just a youth sport.”
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