MICL Categories and High School Upgrade Policy – Montana Interscholastic Cycling League

Categories and High School Upgrade Policy for Montana Interscholastic Cycling Association

Category	Eligible Grades for Category
6^th Grade	6^th graders only
7^th Grade	7^th graders only
8^th Grade	8^th graders only
Freshman	9^th graders or*8^th graders with evidence of prior racing experience may be upgraded to Freshman with approval of upgrade petition
Sophomore	10^th graders or*8^th – 9^th graders with evidence of prior racing experience may be upgraded to Sophomore with approval of upgrade petition
Junior Varsity	11^th and 12^th graders or*8^th – 10^th graders with evidence of prior racing experience may be upgraded to Junior Varsity with approval of upgrade petition
Varsity	9^th – 12^th graders with evidence of prior racing experience may be upgraded to Varsity with approval of upgrade petition

High School athletes will have the ability to petition to ride in a category above their own. Petitions will be granted based on results from MICL races and any other races the student athlete has participated in, along with input from the athlete’s coach.
Upgrade petitions may only be submitted by the head coach or director of a team. Parents may not petition for their child.
In this, our first year, we will allow people to petition to upgrade after the 1^st and 2^nd races as we try to get athletes into the category that best suits them
Upgrade petitions must be submitted to the league by the Monday prior to race day in order to be considered.
If an athlete upgrades during the season they will lose any points in the leader’s jersey competition that they have accumulated in the lower category and will be starting from zero in the higher category.
Any athletes wanting to race at the Varsity level in this first year will need to petition to do so. We will be relying heavily on the coaches input and judgement that athletes are ready to race for 90-120 minutes.
In future years we will follow the NICA rulebook on upgrading riders based on the previous season’s results. Those rules can be found HERE starting on page 12 of the rulebook.