“Everybody picks their line and once you know how you’re going to go around the track, you just hang on tight and aim for that spot,” says Alice Bixler. Bicycle Motocross is in Bixler’s blood. Literally. Born into a motorcycle family, Bixler’s father owned Hap’s Cycle Sales in Sarasota. Once known for exclusively selling motorcycles, Hap’s has now expanded their inventory to BMX bikes and cruisers as well–the result of a decision that Bixler made in 1974, when she took her son and the neighborhood kids to the local BMX track in Sarasota. It was a decision, it turns out, that would change the course of her adult life.
“I got involved in Bicycle Motocross in the early 70s, because the neighborhood kids knew I was a motorcycle lady and that I had a trailer and a van to take their gear to the local track,” says Bixler. “It sounded like something fun, my son was four and a half years old and he wanted to try it out as well, and that’s how we got to the BMX track. Once there, they needed someone to score the races and I used to score motorcycle races, so I volunteered.”
From that day on, Bixler never stopped volunteering. In October, Bixler was inducted into the National BMX Hall of Fame as a Lifetime Achievement Inductee for her contributions to the sport of BMX racing. What began in the early 70s as a mother volunteering at her children’s sporting events, snowballed into so much more. Because while most parents might just bring apple slices and sports drinks, Bixler brought something else entirely–an intense passion for the burgeoning sport and the people surrounding it.
In the early 1970s, BMX racing was only just beginning. Inspired by the motocross racers of their time, children in Southern California began racing their bikes on dirt tracks and not long after that, the high-speed sport became a national phenomenon. In 1974, the Sarasota BMX track–now the oldest continuously running BMX track in America–was built and people like Bixler flocked to the sport. In 1979, after a few years of volunteering, and even competing in the 24 inch cruiser class, Bixler became even more involved when she joined the board of the newly established Sunshine State BMX Association (SSA), an organization designed to grow BMX in Florida and organize the state championship series. Soon after, Bixler became the State Race Commissioner of Florida.
During Bixler’s 28 years as commissioner, not only did she shepard countless improvements to Sarasota’s BMX track, she was responsible for Florida becoming nationally renowned as one of the largest and most prolific BMX programs in what was then the National Bicycle League (NBL). In the NBL’s President’s Cup, a state against state competition that pitted the best riders in various age groups against each other, Bixler was the coach for Florida’s team. Florida won the President’s Cup 23 out of the 26 times the event was held. “The SSA is probably the largest BMX program in the country,” says Bixler. “Some of the tracks in Florida are the best in the nation. I’d say the quality of our tracks and the amount of training offered here are what has made us so dominant–in Sarasota we have training programs every Saturday for all skill levels from kids who’ve never set foot on the track to the really fast kids trying to be Olympians. Any child that can ride a bike can come out and we’ll start teaching them.”
