Team Kaos will cap its 2002 season Sunday (Nov. 24) with the Nebraska State Cyclo Cross Championships. The team, sponsored by UNMC, NHS and UMA, will try to add another state championship to this year’s list of accomplishments. Sunday’s event will be at Standing Bear Lake.
“We are approaching the end of the 2002 racing season and Team Kaos is proud to say it has been the best season in our 10-year history,” said Marco Vasquez, president of Team Kaos Cycling and NHS perfusionist.
Victories
Traveling as far as Arkansas, Illinois and Wisconsin, Team Kaos members won more than 50 races this year in the road, mountain bike and cyclo cross disciplines. Their victories included nine Nebraska State Championships:
- Men road race Cat 1,2;
- Men criterium Cat 1,2;
- Men masters 30+ criterium;
- Men masters 40+ criterium;
- Women 1,2 road race;
- Women 1,2 criterium ;
- Women 1,2 time trial;
- Men mountain bike Expert;
- Men mountain bike Masters 35+.
Looking back
In 2002, Team Kaos members promoted more than 30 events including the Mountain Bike Battle Royale, Branched Oak Road Race and the Nebraska Cyclo-Cross Series. The highlight of the year was the Omaha Criterium Weekend, which took place in Omaha Aug. 3-4. The weekend featured the Nebraska Criterium Championships and the inaugural Dave Babcook Memorial Race. More than two hundred racers, from as far away as Texas and Minnesota, competed in the races. A criterium race is one where cyclists repeat laps on a closed course.
Team Kaos made a $1,000 donation to the Dave Babcook Memorial Foundation at the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center. Dave Babcook was a cyclist, as well as a research technologist at the Eppley Institute, the basic research arm of the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center. He joined the Eppley Institute in September 1984. He died in October 2000 of pancreatic cancer.
Activities reach beyond cycling
In addition to competing, team members conducted safety clinics for children and participated in fund-raisers for Organ Donation, The Lymphoma and Leukemia Society and the Eastern Nebraska Trails Network. They also re-conditioned donated bikes for needy children.
Team members
Team Kaos members associated with UNMC/NHS include: Matt DeVries, Byers Shaw, M.D., Chris Spence, Marco Vasquez and Mark Emodi.