bendbulletin11-5-07

Bend Bulletin 11-5-07

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Dean Guernsey / The Bulletin

Jesse West, 8, of Bend rides his 50 cc motorcycle in Bend on Wednesday. The third-grader is already a decorated motocross rider.

Big time in minicycles

Bend's Jesse West captures motocross titles

By Clay Light / For The Bulletin Published: November 05. 2007 5:00AM PST

Bend's Jesse West isn't much different from any other 8-year-old.

Jesse is a multiple-sport athlete who enjoys basketball and snowboarding. His primary focus, though, is on motocross, a sport at which he hopes someday to compete professionally.

A third-grader at High Lakes Elementary School, Jesse hopes to in 2008 be the next Central Oregon motocross competitor to make his mark nationally, following in the footsteps of Powell Butte's Chris Alldredge.

At the moment, however, Jesse is satisfied to sit back and reflect upon his recent accomplishments. And has his sight set on dominating the 50cc and 65cc classes until next summer before making a leap into AMA (American Motorcyclist Association) Amateur National competition.

Despite competing at motocross for not even three years, Jesse this year garnered overall 50cc (age 7-8) and 50cc Open-class titles in two Northwest motocross series, the CMC (California Motorsports Club)-sanctioned Pac West and CMC Northwest Summer Series.

The 10-round Pac West series, which concluded in late July, has long been regarded as the premier Northwest motocross series and features events in Oregon (Albany) and in Washington (Bellingham, Washougal, Spokane and Richland). In that series last summer, the West family, consisting of Jesse's father, Mike, and mother, Tana, traveled throughout the Northwest armed with Jesse's potent 50cc two-stroke Cobra minicycle.

Jesse fared well enough at each round of Pac West competition (including two first-place finishes and a string of top-three performances) to earn the young rider his first two major Northwest motocross titles.

It was of little surprise to Mike and Tana West that Jesse would progress as he has as a motorcycle racer. After all, racing runs in the West family, and now has for several generations since Jesse's 2005 debut, dating back to the late 1950s, when Mike West's father, LeRoy, raced professionally.

Mike West raced during the 1980s, and Mike's brother, Joe, still competes in desert events and is a past Baja (Calif.) champion.

Jesse has always loved motorcycles, Mike West says, so it was only natural that he would want to compete.

And a little more than one year after initially throwing a leg over the seat of his first minicycle a 50cc Yamaha Jesse, then five, got his chance.

Things started off slowly for Jesse. At his racing debut at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds in Redmond in 2005, he struggled with a less-than-competitive motorcycle, yet he still produced mid-pack results that day.

We learned a lot about racing that day, Mike West recalls. He (Jesse) didn't do all that badly (11th place) riding against the more competitive riders and machinery, like KTMs and Cobras. And I'd have to say that it was probably the most fun racing we've had yet.

It wasn't long after that event in the winter of 2005 that Mike and Tana purchased their son an Australian-made 50cc KTM. From that point, his season began to turn around, and Jesse would later score six overall 50cc-class victories in the 2005-06 season.

While Jesse's racing progressed well in 2006, his commitment to other wintertime interests basketball and snowboarding minimized his racing schedule for much of that same year.

He'd win everything for a while that year, Mike West remembers, then a dry spell would come along. We were racing every other weekend, instead of every weekend like we were doing the previous year, so we figured we'd go at it as hard as we could in 2007.

Jesse went from an inconsistent part-time competitor to the top of the 50cc ranks this past summer, and he eventually made his 65cc-class debut midway though the Pac West series, when competed aboard a newly acquired Kawasaki. In mid-July, Jesse's 65cc debut was less than spectacular, and he didn't fare too well that day at Spokane's Extreme Motorsports Park.

He fell twice that day and had a tough time getting accustomed to using a hand-operated clutch, Mike West says. He's just now getting used to the bigger bike and, after a lot of practice, is starting to crack the top three in the 65cc class at some of the races.

Jesse did well enough in the later stages of the CMC Summer series, which concluded Oct. 27-28 at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem, to capture his third and fourth series titles this year, in the 50cc (age 7-8) and 50cc Open classes.

The event also doubled as the final two rounds of the 10-round Oregon State motocross championship series. Jesse missed two crucial series rounds in the state championship series, but he still squeaked out two high-point trophies with third place in 50cc (7-8) and second place in the 65cc class.

Like many other motocross competitors his age, Jesse's favorite rider is the legendary Ricky Carmichael. Although Carmichael at this time is semiretired, Jesse has big dreams of someday winning an AMA national motocross or possibly many national titles, like Carmichael.

Jesse knows he has a long road ahead of him, and that he must first tackle the 65cc and 85cc classes before making a jump onto the big bikes.

I'm having fun right now (and am) excited about riding the bigger bikes, but I still really like my 50cc Cobra, Jesse says. I like riding the 50cc bikes the best, and really like winning a lot. It's all about having fun and trying my hardest.

Clay Light is a freelance writer. He can be reached at (503) 734-6406 or at cdalight@worldnet.att.net.