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Last year, Jordan won the junior varsity series championship.

This isn't his only sport. He played football as a freshman and ran cross country last year. But now he's completely dedicated to racing his bike.

Jordan admitted that freshman year, he would get strange looks when he told people he was on the school's mountain bike racing team. Bunch said that, Jordan notwithstanding, this is a sport that tends to attract the type of kids who wouldn't typically go out for other team sports.

Kaleb Bradley, a senior who is part of Murrieta Mesa's team, is one of them.

"This is my first time being a part of an actual, organized team," Bradley said. "Before I would just mountain bike, kind of on my own free time ... I started about two-and-a-half years ago, biking a lot over the summers, spending pretty much all my summer on a bike. Just riding around, never anything real technical or crazy. I just enjoyed it. It gave me something to do."

Last year, Hemet won the SoCal Division I (teams with more than 12 riders) title and Murrieta Valley was third.

With experienced racers such as Cole Picchiottino and Michael Gossett returning this season along with Jordan, hopes are high.

It still may be a while before the Nighthawks are competing for a California Interscholastic Federation, or CIF, title. And it may never happen.

Gunnell said that he's not opposed to it, but it's just not on his radar right now. When CIF Southern Section Director of Communications Thom Simmons was asked about the mountain bike racing, he confirmed that line of thinking.

Simmons said it was the first time he had heard about it.

But there is a precedent for a high school sport that does quite well without CIF sanctioning. High school surfing is governed by the National Scholastic Surfing Association.

"They want nothing to do with us," Simmons said.

But judging from the action out at the Vineyards on that recent Wednesday afternoon, there is a future for the sport in Southern California and beyond.

Gunnell said that Utah, Colorado, Tennessee and New York all have organized high school mountain biking organizations.

And as Aguilar, the Murrieta Mesa coach, and Bradley, one of his racers, have indicated, mountain bike racing is more than a sport. It's a lifestyle.

"If it wasn't for biking, I probably wouldn't be the person I am today," he said. "I was never a racer, but it opens you up to the outside world, the natural world. The whole idea of trails, and respecting the multiple uses of trails, camping and hiking -- it just broadened my horizons.

"And I want to take that to the kids who probably, like me, would have never known that these kind of sports exist. So when you hear people say, 'I didn't know there was a team,' you know, I hear that from students all the time. We hope that they come out and join us."