Our Youth Section – We meet on a Monday evening between 6 pm and 7 pm, and are open to 6 to 17 year olds for both male and females. We usually meet at Risca Leisure Centre, however, we also use Sirhowy Valley Country Park and Cwmcarn Forest Drive amongst other local areas. This is to ensure that we can offer many different aspects of Cycling for the Youth Section to continue to thrive.
For more information on our Youth Section, or indeed to find out where our next session will be held, please email secretary@cwmcarnparagon.com
THE HISTORY OF THE PARAGOONIES
The Paragoonies in its current form, is the brainchild of Tim Bailey. In the Summer of 2018, Tim wondered why the club no longer had a youth section, as his son Floyd loves riding his bike but wanted a few friends his age to ride his road bike with. As a result of this, Tim asked a few questions and spoke to a few people at the club and at Welsh Cycling about the possibility of the club reinstating the youth section. With a lot of support for this to happen, Tim got to work in organising a session for Monday nights, focusing on outdoor skills sessions and indoors at the clubhouse on turbo trainers when the weather was not good and during the Winter.
The first session had 3 participants and after the first few sessions, Tim happened to speak with Jeff Edwards who has set up the local triathlon club called Risc-A-Tri and Jeff advised a few of the children at the triathlon club to attend the Paragoonies sessions. They duly did and this took the paragoonies to around 12 active members. With the help of Tony Carpenter and Steve Jones as coaches, Laura Jones as the club Welfare Officer, Steve looking after the Paragoonies instagram account and Huw Fairclough on the clubs social media, the Paragoonies jumped up to 23 active members.
Unfortunately, it was around this stage that the Covid-19 pandemic came along. Naturally through this period we faced a lot of challenges, including a turnover in members.
After the pandemic, Tim stepped away from coaching and Ross Duffield became the clubs lead coach, shortly after Vinny Goodwin, Rowena Duffield and Mike Griffiths also joined us as coaches, followed by Charlotte Evans.
Our Youth Section members were then taking part in many races, which includes in 2022 Jess Duffield becoming Welsh Champion for both U12 MTB XC, and U12 Cyclo-Cross. We also held 3 Go-Ride events.
At the club AGM in 2022, Laura stepped down as club Welfare Officer, and Paul Stevenson was voted in to take over.
In 2023, we have organised 5 Go-Ride events including hill climbs at Cwmcarn Forest Drive, and using MV Bike Park.
Currently we have around 34 members with 25 or so regularly attending our sessions.