THE FREE PRESS SPORTS AUGUST 13, 2000 The Biggest Little Brewery inx'brewin^.i(tni 3641 -1501 Am. 562-4866 P as. wood Place \mmima. 6624880 BK Matzelle: ‘When you crash you don’t think about it, you get up and go right away.' John mckenzie/free press Heart of a Racer She might only be 11, but Lisa Matzelle races big BMX racer Lisa Matzelle has the perfect solution for dealing with any of the boys at school that tell her that a girl can’t be a good racer — she challenges them to come out to the track and find out firsthand. “I ask them if they’d like to come down and try it... but they say no,” says the freckle-faced biker. She’s decked-out in full racing regalia - pads, hard plastic guards and helmet — but the little girl still shines through when the gloves come off to reveal her pink, glittery fingernail polish. The 11-year-old began racing last year by sheer luck after she caught sight of the BMX supertrak at Carrie Jane Gray Park from one of the ball diamonds. She asked her mom if she could try her hand and hasn’t looked back since. Already Matzelle has a full sponsor in Eagle Plumbing and Hardware who outfitted her with her gear and she’s become the premier female racer in the city. There are five other girls racing at the trak, says Matzelle, but of the six of them only she comes out for every single Tuesday and Thursday race night. And of the six of them, only Matzelle has been winning national competitions. At last weekend’s national cir- cuit races held in Kelowna, Matzelle took twin bronze medals in the 11-year-old Expert category. Earlier in the summer she took twin silver medals at a national series race in Red Deer, Alberta. "I would have gotten first but I crashed on both days, but I just got up and kept going,” says the cycling spitfire who wears the number one to signify that she’s the best female rider in Prince George. This coming weekend Matzelle will put that confidence and grit to the test when she challenges the provinces’ best. The local BMX supertrak at Carrie Jane Gray hosts provincial races six and seven August 19 and 20. But Matzelle says she has an advantage over the other girls she’ll be racing at when BMXers converge on Prince George. And part of that comes from being one of the very few number of girl racers in the city. “In our town I have to race boys, but when I go out of town I race girls,” says Matzelle. “I just have to think of the people in front of me are the boys that I race.” But she’s quick to point out that there’s usually very few people in front of her and when she does race the boys in town she makes sure not to let them off lightly either. “A lot of people in my class say I slaughter them actually,” says Matzelle with complete sincerity and you know by the way she hugs the track with her bike that a lot of her male competitors have suffered defeat at her hands. That could be because of Matzelle’s rough and tumble attitude. She casually lists off her many crashes on the track, the two times she ran over a competitor’s head and the time she got run over herself on the trak. None of which phased her. “When you crash you don’t think about it, you get up and go right away.” Being a racer doesn’t make Matzelle an oddity in her family either. Her six-year-old brother Joey shredded the trak with the best of them, placing fourth in both national races, August 5 and 6. Their father, Erwin, doesn’t escape the cycling craze in the family either. He’s kept busy patching tires and repairing bikes. “He’s learning too,” says Lisa with a grin. Provincial races six and seven are August 18 to 20 at the BMX track in Carrie Jane Gray Park. Racing starts at 7 p.m. on the Friday and 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. Approximately 150 racers from across the province are expected to attend. 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