Biking to the Top: Tanner Culbreath
By: Matty Mooney
As the Holidays are coming around the corner, it’s the best time of the year to spread positivity and appreciation. Especially appreciation for our teachers. They provide so much for students, and put in their best effort everyday to help us succeed. Tanner Culbreath, Jenks Science Teacher, was recognized this week to show his passion for competitive biking.
Growing up at a small school in Western Kansas, Culbreath moved to Tulsa and graduated from ORU. He worked on a small farm, and other jobs going through college and starting at Jenks. His passion for biking grew his sophomore year of college, when his PE class would bike to Turkey Mountain every week. His love for cycling has only grown since then, competitively riding for teams and his own youth cycling group, Oklahoma Flyers.
“We promote races and we promote clinics, and really it’s to promote youth as athletes,” said Culbreath. “It’s to grow youth as overcomers, kids that can train themselves and go through pain and struggle, to hopefully become victorious in a race setting or just to ride 100 miles one day.” (see next page for more)
Culbreath explains, he's so encouraged to help underacessed kids and bring them scholarships, and opportunities to succeed when they have never been given those choices. His team provides an outlet for struggling youth to find strength, and use him as a mentor.
Culbreath says that he was unaware that he would be locally recognized, and was surprised when a friend sent in an application to be celebrated.
“That was kind of a huge surprise, but also a very proud moment, that what I do or what I work on gets recognized, so that was exciting because it is a lot of work to do what I do.”
The balance of teaching and biking to culbreath with his workload has been easy to balance, but being recognized for all he is doing for his community was a much earned and amazing surprise. His overall work he's done for not just his students, but the community's youth was incredible to be able to see. He’s an overall good person and deserves that recognition, plus more.
Want to get involved or donate? Visit their website below:
http://oklahomaflyers.com/