Kane County Forms Bike Club For Kids! (Get Fit And Win Fabulous Prizes!)
The Kane County Division of Transportation and the Kane County Health Department have partnered to bring an exciting new program to the youth of Kane County!
The new program, the Kane County Cycle Club, will offer prizes to students in grades K-8 for riding their bike during the program. The Cycle Club will also be providing bicycles to participating students that don’t have access to a bicycle, thanks to community partners and bicycle donation drives.
The program, which will begin in mid-April 2020 and conclude in mid-May 2020, is a fitness program giving rewards to students who choose to take part.
The program will set time-based biking goals for each student based on their grade and their biking experience level. Older, more experienced students will have higher biking goals than younger, less-experienced bikers.
Each student who accomplishes his or her goal will be given a ticket to a Kane County Cougars baseball game (Geneva) and a ticket to a Windy City Bulls basketball game (Hoffman Estates). Students who accomplish the goal will also be eligible to enter drawings to receive one of the many excellent raffle prizes donated by local sponsors.
Some of the participating sponsors that have donated raffle prizes, include:
- Kane County Cougars (Geneva)
- Windy City Bulls (Hoffman Estates)
- Fox Valley Ice Arena (Geneva)
- Color Me Mine (Geneva)
- Fox River Trolley Museum (South Elgin)
- Painted Penguin (Bloomingdale & Vernon Hills)
- Paramount Theater (Aurora)
- Ultimate Ninjas (Aurora)
- All Spoked Up (Batavia & Aurora)
- The Bike Rack (St. Charles)
- Working Bikes (Chicago)
- Village Pedaler (South Elgin)
For the first year, only five Kane County schools will be chosen to participate in the Cycle Club. Schools will be chosen based on their participation in past and future biking safety classes/curriculum, class sizes, and number of grades within the school.
All public and private schools within Kane County are eligible to participate.
To register, one representative from the school must complete the registration form available at the KKCOM website. Registration and participation in the program are completely free.
Schools are able to apply until the deadline of Dec. 20, 2019. The five schools chosen to participate in the program will be announced on Jan. 6, 2020.
As part of the program, staff is working with local bike shops and non-profits to provide bikes for students that do not have access to a bike. Working Bikes, a non-profit in Chicago, has agreed to donate 15 bikes for the program.
Staff will be organizing bicycle donation drives leading up to the start of the program during the winter months. Local bike shops have offered to collect the bikes and repair them before distributing them to participants in the program.
Donation sites will be announced at a later time. When registering, parents will have the opportunity to indicate that their child does not have access to a bike.
Parents/guardians from the participating schools will be responsible for registering and tracking the progress of their children during the program. Progress forms will be sent to parents, in English and Spanish, following the completion of their registration. There is no cost for students to participate in the program and there is no maximum number of participants.
The main goal of the program is encourage residents of Kane County, especially younger age groups, to choose healthy, sustainable forms of transportation that not only keep them healthy and fit, but help to keep our communities healthy.
Biking has shown to have great benefits, including relieving stress, exercising cardiovascular muscles, enhancing social skills, and strengthening emotional wellness. It is the hope of KDOT and the County Health Department that this will encourage students, and their families, to choose to bike more often in their free time.
For additional information about the program, please refer to the program overview booklet! If you have any questions about the program, please contact Ryan Peterson at 630-444-3143 or ryanpeterson@co.kane.il.us.
SOURCE: Kane County Division of Transportation news release
Click This Link To Register Your School!
