Published May 27, 2026 05:00AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In 2019, Todd Poquette<\/a>, the founder of a youth biking program called the 906 Adventure Team<\/a>, started working with an 11-year-old boy named Will. Unlike his peers, Will had never been taught how to ride a bicycle. He lacked the skills of the other kids his age in the program, which helps kids and adults build confidence through outdoor adventure.<\/p>\n Other coaches wanted Will to join a group of six-year-olds, because the younger kids had the same biking abilities. But Poquette balked at it.<\/p>\n \u201cThat ain\u2019t gonna work,\u201d Poquette, 52, told Outside. <\/i>\u201cIt\u2019s demoralizing.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, Poquette worked with Will on a one-on-one basis for several\u00a0<\/strong>months. Poquette\u2019s personal philosophy for teaching kids to thrive in the outdoors involves pushing their comfort level, and helping them adjust to fear, setbacks, and doing hard things.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was so scared,\u201d Poquette said. \u201cHe just needed somebody who wouldn\u2019t let him make excuses, who would sort of give him that rough edge.\u201d<\/p>\n Poquette said the tough-love approach went on for a year. But after that period, Will learned to ride a bike, and developed enough skills to ride alongside his peers. The mantra that came from the experience still echoes through the 906 Adventure Team today: Where there\u2019s a Will, there\u2019s a way.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n The 906 Adventure Team is one of the most successful programs in the Midwest at getting kids outdoors. Founded in 2014 in Marquette, Michigan, the program now works with 1,300 kids spread across 17 programs in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio. The majority of teams sell out fast and are limited based on how many volunteers sign up.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to offer a well run, organized program that parents can feel good about signing their kids up for,\u201d Poquette said. \u201cOur first night is always an orientation to get people comfortable on bikes.\u201d<\/p>\n After signing up, kids are assigned to different groups, and these groups ride for two-hour sessions each week. They\u2019re monitored, but unstructured. \u201cKids get to do hard stuff, have fun, see wildlife, get stung by bees. They crash, they fall, they learn how to get back up,\u201d Poquette said. \u201cThey belong outside. They are, in fact, very capable of handling anything the trail and nature wants to throw at them.\u201d<\/p>\n Over time, the kids develop skill, grit, and deeper confidence to take on life.<\/p>\n Poquette says he started the program after leaving his 20-year corporate career in 2009.\u00a0<\/b>Poquette, who loved to lift weights, suffered a back injury soon after. His doctor recommended he take up cycling to stay fit. After starting to ride, he realized there was a lack of programs that help kids and adults get into cycling.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was all it was in the beginning,\u201d Poquette said. \u201cI just wanted to do something good for my community. That was my simple mission. And it all happened because I was on a bike.\u201d<\/p>\n In the early years, kids rode solely on mountain bikes, taking on local off-road singletrack trails. But over time, that expanded to competitive racing.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought we were doing a good thing, but we weren\u2019t finding a lot of kids who wanted to do it,\u201d Poquette said. Many of the kids in the area were stuck in traditional sports. And it was a challenge for Poquette to find adults who wanted to train them. \u201cIt just seemed that something was missing,\u201d Poquette said.<\/p>\n In spring of 2016, Poquette heard about The National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA)<\/a>, an organization that provides essential on-the-ground infrastructure and world-class events for 1,055 teams across the country. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have a league in Michigan, but there was a league in Wisconsin,\u201d Poquette said. \u201cI reached out and was like \u2018Hey, I see your website. I\u2019m reading your mission. Your mission seems to be in alignment with what we want to do. Can we come race in Wisconsin?’\u201d Poquette was able to gather a team of 34 kids who trained for four months to compete for five weekends in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n What came of this race lead to the Adventure Club being officially established, and Poquette and his team of trainers finding two types of kids: those who wanted to race hard, and those who just wanted to ride their bikes in the woods.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s have two layers of the team,\u201d Poquette thought up. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be the race side, but if you don\u2019t want to race, you can just be on the adventure team. We called it ABC or Adventure Bike Club.\u201d He set the cap at 50 participants. After two hours of going live, the club was at capacity. \u201cAnd all of a sudden my ability to recruit volunteers went from being on the struggle bus to everybody wants to be part of it, because the idea of adventure even as an adult, resonates,\u201d Poquette said.<\/p>\n The club started as a subcommittee of the Ranger Area Mountain Bike Association (RAM), but quickly into its own nonprofit by 2017.<\/p>\n Alongside the Adventure Club was the conception of three off-road\u00a0races for adults: The Polar Roll,<\/a>\u00a0Marji Gesick<\/a>, and The Crusher<\/a>, known as The Triple Crown. The Triple Crown holds a growing reputation of being three of the toughest events on bike or foot, crafted by Poquette and course designer, Danny Hill.<\/p>\n Athletes who complete all three are granted lifetime entry into the Hall of Pain, and eligible to attend a secret event that Poquette holds.<\/p>\n The Marji Gesick, the most brutal of the three, is 90 percent singletrack. According to Hill, you can\u2019t see more than 100 feet ahead of you at a time, and the trail takes in 12,000 feet of elevation gain. \u201cThere\u2019s no way to get into a rhythm,\u201d Hill shares in a video outlining the event<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s fun, but in a sick sort of way. It\u2019s sadistic. We wanted it as tough as nails.\u201d<\/p>\n Poquette has been called a masochist\u00a0for the brutal nature of his races. Parents are sometimes hesitant to send their kids to the Adventure Club knowing that the man who tortures adults will be working with their kids.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s always been the tension,\u201d Poquette said. \u201cIf somebody doesn\u2019t understand how we handle it, they\u2019re like, \u2018Are you talking like this around kids? Do you swear around kids? I don\u2019t want my daughter around a guy like that.’\u201d<\/p>\n But Poquette has attracted a following of adults who believe that kids should take on hard things, and finish what they start.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of concern right now around the resilience of kids. I am a strong believer that life requires you to be a strong competitor. That is the ethos behind the bike club. These kids have no idea what they\u2019re in for. Bike riding is just inherently hard,\u201d\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n Despite the brutal reputation of his races, Poquette says there isn\u2019t a single bike race on the planet that\u2019s more challenging than life. <\/b>The skills kids develop at ABC stay with them forever.<\/p>\n On May 15, a public campaign began for the opening of Gluski Park<\/a>, a first-of-its-kind adventure club in Marquette that will house the first asphalt pump track, an ADA path, a recreational area, and \u201cThe Hub\u201d (where there will be a variety of jump lines and technical lines to help kids develop skills to take out on the trail). The park rules? Free entry from sunrise to sunset.<\/p>\n In 2023, at the time of its purchase, the 906 Adventure Team had two full time employees: Todd Poquette, who started the organization in 2014, and Tara Gluski. Todd and Tara, longtime adventure buddies, began to dream of what the space could become, and kept landing on the same conclusion: it needed to be a park. It needed to be a place for people to get active and find community\u2014a place for bikers, hikers, runners, and folks of all ages to recreate together and to see each other as people, not just another \u201cuser group.\u201d<\/p>\n But those plans screeched to a halt in January 2024 when Gluski\u2019s car was struck by a truck on her way to a girl\u2019s weekend in Michigan\u2019s Craig Lake State Park. Gluski, who was in the passengers seat, died in the collision. That loss rocked the 906 Adventure Team community to its core.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were going into the year thinking we\u2019re going to celebrate what we built together, and she gets killed,\u201d Poquette shared.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of celebrating our tenth year, we were just trying to survive it. There was nobody who believed more deeply in community and children than her.\u201d<\/p>\n The same community that Tara Gluski helped build became even more determined to make the adventure park a reality, and to honor her by giving the space her name, a vow to keep her mission at the forefront of all it becomes.<\/p>\n This year, 650 people volunteered from Poquette\u2019s small town to care for the kids of their community, to use the sport of mountain biking to instill in them the confidence that they are intrinsically worthy, no matter who is cheering for them on the sideline.<\/p>\n \u201cI want them to be sovereign individuals who understand the value of hard work so they can be a standalone people,\u201d Poquette said. \u201cThey don\u2019t need somebody else to value them to feel like they matter. They don\u2019t need me or any of these adults to tell them they\u2019re worth something, because they are.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/div>\nHow a Need for Cycling Produced an Adventure Team<\/h2>\n
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Bike Races that Dish Out the Punishment<\/h2>\n
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A Facility to Honor a Fallen Instructor<\/h2>\n
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