After months of setting up informational meetings, tires are finally rolling as the effort to start a high school mountain biking team kicked into a higher gear.

Though only three students attended, Wednesday’s tryout was a start.

“It’s awesome, great,” said coach Spencer Salmon. “We have more interested than what’s here.”

Anna Mitchell, a 12-year-old Pacelli student, was the first to try out Wednesday night behind Riverland’s west campus where Josh Kleve, league director of the Minnesota High School Cycling League, had set up a trailer with bikes.

Mitchell has been interested since the first informational meeting she took part in.

“I just really liked biking,” she said. “I thought a team would be great, neat.”

Kleve said that getting a team is always one of the hardest things about the mountain biking circuit, but the goals of the league are simple.

“The biggest thing in mountain biking is that it’s a life long sport,” Kleve said. “This is an opportunity to get kids involved in biking.”

Kleve said that the state numbers reflect the growing interest in a sport the league sees as all inclusive.

When the league started two years ago, the total number of competing riders was 151. That more than doubled last year with 325 riders.

He further pointed out that first year where only Rochester had an out-state team. Now there are eight total out-state teams.

“The hard part is getting those first couple kids,” Kleve said citing that numbers grow when kids talk to each other. “After that it grows from there without much influence.”

There’s plenty of time in the future for things to grow, but for now Salmon is happy for this start.

“We have the kids,” he said. “Now we work on scheduling practices.”