Riding Down a Dream

Riding Down a Dream typography

Kelly Desharnais Catale ’12, photographed hours before winning the single-speed event at the 2024 USA Cycling Cross-Country Mountain Bike National Championships.

Riding Down a Dream

Riding Down a Dream typography
Kelly Desharnais Catale ’12, photographed with her bike, hours before winning the single-speed event at the 2024 USA Cycling Cross-Country Mountain Bike National Championships

Kelly Desharnais Catale ’12, photographed hours before winning the single-speed event at the 2024 USA Cycling Cross-Country Mountain Bike National Championships.

Elite mountain biker Kelly Desharnais Catale ’12 spent decades chasing — and winning — medals and titles, yet true contentment with the sport eluded her. Now, as a coach and mentor, she’s found a more meaningful and fulfilling kind of success, redefining what it means to be at the top of her game.

by Kelly Desharnais Catale ’12

photography by April Bartholomew

O

n a blustery October day in 2022, I stood on a sloped patch of grass in Lewisburg between the Bucknell Farm and the campus water tower, hoisting my mountain bike overhead with a wide smile while a photographer captured the moment. He asserted that this pose made me look strong and victorious, as if I were celebrating a remarkable achievement.

wide shot of Kelly Desharnais Catale hoisting her mountain bike overhead while wearing a wide smile

Photo: Douglas Kilpatrick

Knowing that one of these photos would eventually make its way into the Winter 2023 issue of Bucknell Magazine, I did indeed feel like I was achieving something grand. I was concluding my fifth year as a professional endurance mountain bike athlete with a race resume that included many wins, multiple world championship appearances, and several top-10 performances at USA National Championship races. From an outsider’s view, I was living the dream — balancing a life as an elite athlete and biomedical engineer. And now, every Bucknell Magazine reader would know it.

While the photographer focused on capturing my strength, he inadvertently captured another characteristic of my life as I stood alone atop that sloped patch of grass: loneliness.

close candid shot of Kelly Desharnais Catale smiling while wearing her biking gear and a helmet

The world of elite sports is one of singularity, precision and commitment. Athletes at the pinnacle of their sport are celebrated. At the same time, most spend their lives in obscurity, dreaming of sitting at the top while sacrificing in nearly every area of life unrelated to athletics. Adhering to a strict and precise training routine and an equally strict and precise diet helped me melt away pounds from my body and minutes from my race times. But it also helped me disintegrate friendships, weaken family connections and nearly eliminate all joy in my life. I believed these sacrifices were worth the glory of being seen as a real professional athlete, worth the honor of representing my country and several supporting sponsors.

wide shot of Kelly Desharnais Catale standing atop the the 2023 National Cross-Country Mountain Bike Championships winners podium dressed in a tutu and hoisting the award over her head

Photo: Joe Catale

Kelly Desharnais Catale ‘12 took first place — in a tutu — in the single-speed category at the 2023 National Cross-Country Mountain Bike Championships.
Despite a social media presence that suggested popularity, my elite athletic journey was more isolation than connection. I believed that to pursue greatness, I needed to separate myself from “normal people” and typical daily life. I trained for hours alone and struggled with a lack of meaning and purpose. In my experience, female elite athletes face so much adversity that we often keep ourselves guarded, offering trust and friendship sparingly for fear of sacrificing our hard-earned achievements and success. Fighting the loneliness of elite athletics usually led me to chase increasingly ambitious goals. While each goal motivated me to push my limits further, I was always left with a sense of emptiness and the feeling that I might be missing something.

That something, I’d soon learn, was a team.

Strength in Numbers

In 2022, the parents of a 13-year-old mountain bike racer approached me for advice on managing their daughter’s race anxiety. They lived a few miles from my home in Pepperell, Mass., and had been following my athletic pursuits. They were intrigued by my social media posts about how cycling helped me manage anxiety and depression. When they asked for recommendations on resources to share with their daughter, I realized I could do more. I offered to meet her and share my personal experiences.

Giving my time in this way was something I had not done before. I would have dismissed it as too time-consuming or not an investment in my own racing. However, the request sparked a memory of the young, anxious athlete I was at 13 — a girl who could have benefited from a mentor who understood the mental demands of an individual endurance sport. I decided to open the door to an unofficial mentorship, perhaps driven partly by the sense that my isolated focus wasn’t benefiting me anymore.

KellCat Devo

Team KellCat Development, a Massachusetts nonprofit, is a junior development mountain bike race team for girls. The KellCat Devo mission is “to promote the sport of mountain biking and empower women of all ages to become healthy, lifelong cyclists.” The team includes six racers, ages 15-17, all of whom live in New England. Learn more about KellCat Devo at teamkellcat.com. Follow our adventures on Instagram at @TeamKellCat and @kelly.catale. — K.D.C.

candid shot of Kelly Desharnais Catale ‘12 (center) taking a photo with members of her junior race team at a biking event
Photo: Joe Catale

Kelly Desharnais Catale ‘12 (center), with members of her junior race team, is redefining athlete development by empowering young women to balance education, other interests and personal growth to foster a love for racing that lasts.

What started as a few fun mountain bike rides and dinner chats with the young athlete and her family transformed into something profoundly meaningful. Our mentoring relationship gave me a purpose far greater than anything I could achieve alone — it bloomed into an idea to create something bigger and more impactful.

In early 2023, I founded Team KellCat Development (KellCat Devo), an all-girls junior development mountain race team focused on the whole athlete, including mental health and wellness. Our core goal is to foster and support a “more-than-fast” mentality that values process, variety, education and non-sport pursuits while reducing the emphasis on results and outcomes.

KellCat Devo started small on paper, with only two teenage athletes and me, but our ambitions were anything but small. Within the first six months of the idea forming, we became a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit and began energizing a part of the cycling community that craved an organization with this purpose. For the first time in my professional athletic career, I was pouring my heart, soul and savings into something not directly tied to my individual racing pursuits.

Together, the team and I participated in local mountain bike races while implementing different tools, techniques and lessons we learned from team resources, such as a sports dietitian and sports psychologist. After each event, we reflected on what went well and set goals for the future. In parallel, I continued my professional racing pursuits, traveling to Europe for World Cup racing and training for the UCI Mountain Bike Marathon World Championships — while juggling a career as an engineering program manager.

Forming KellCat Devo was an inflection point in my athletic career. After years of safeguarding my resources and secrets as a singular athlete, I discovered that sharing and giving back to my community actually expanded my opportunities. I had feared that divulging my strategies and coping techniques would make me weaker and less significant, but the reality was quite the opposite. Sponsors who had previously dismissed me were now eager to support me and my team, media attention grew and donors emerged willingly. All of it brought a fulfilling richness to my life.

action shot of Kelly Desharnais Catale ‘12 leading KellCat Devo members Schuyler Hagge and Tessa Avery (L to R) on a biking trail
Kelly Desharnais Catale ‘12 leads KellCat Devo members Schuyler Hagge and Tessa Avery (L to R).

Embodying “More Than Fast”

In the summer of 2023, I hit a wall. Literally. I crashed into a rock wall and sustained a concussion — without realizing it right away. Because my symptoms were delayed, I continued to train and race, even winning a national championship, all while unknowingly hindering my recovery. Like always, I put my head down, focused and pushed on.

Then, two months later, another crash, another concussion. With worsening symptoms, I could no longer deny my need for rest and a focused recovery period. But that only amplified my anxiety. The bike was my primary tool for managing my mental health, so its inaccessibility felt paralyzing. I struggled with focus, memory, sleep and, worst of all, the uncertainty of my athletic future.

During my nine-month recovery, I couldn’t train or function as I normally would. Winter was particularly challenging, bringing harsh weather and time for harsh reflections. Elite athletics had cost me a great deal, and I began to evaluate the role bicycles would play in my future. In the dark spaces of reflection and recovery, my relationship with elite mountain biking started to transform, reshaping my idea of living “the dream” as a professional athlete.

close up of the worn socks from the KellCat Devo’s race “kit” featuring the KellCat logo icon

KellCat Devo’s race “kit” (uniform) gives its members a cohesive team identity.

During my nine-month recovery, I couldn’t train or function as I normally would. Winter was particularly challenging, bringing harsh weather and time for harsh reflections. Elite athletics had cost me a great deal, and I began to evaluate the role bicycles would play in my future. In the dark spaces of reflection and recovery, my relationship with elite mountain biking started to transform, reshaping my idea of living “the dream” as a professional athlete.

Luckily, throughout that process, I had KellCat Devo, which kept me engaged in cycling, mentorship and community. While my team continued to train, race and host community events, I found purpose in leadership. By 2024, KellCat Devo had grown to six girls, each on her own journey with the sport. Witnessing their learning and development was incredibly rewarding, and I saw my relationship with cycling evolve. I no longer prioritized my own journey but instead embraced a collective pursuit. Inadvertently, as I found purpose and progress through mentorship and sport-adjacent pursuits, I embodied KellCat Devo’s “more than fast” mindset.

Redefining “The Dream”

It took more than three decades, but I now realize my definition of “the dream” had been wrong all along. It isn’t an invisible threshold to cross after a certain number of race wins or mentorship interactions, nor is it a rank or a job title. It isn’t a destination at which to arrive, nor something I can force into existence. The idea that success equates to achieving a dream is fundamentally misaligned with my experience.

“The dream” is having the opportunity to leverage all the experiences I have gained through my engineering career, personal athletic pursuits, nonprofit endeavors, mentorship, coaching and mental health advocacy. It’s about embracing future challenges with those experiences in hand. It’s recognizing that I have the chance to become a trusted leader while still refining my leadership skills. It’s using all of my abilities to give back to my community in meaningful ways and helping others to do the same.

#MentalHealthDay post screenshot
second #MentalHealthDay post screenshot

Photo: Joe Catale

#MentalHealthMonday

In early 2022, with no concrete motivation other than wanting to use my social media platform for something more meaningful than sharing action shots and sponsor advertisements, I started publishing a reflection on my social media accounts called “Mental Health Monday.” This weekly ritual is one I have come to love because it has made me more mindful in my day-to-day experience, while also helping my followers reflect about their own lives. These posts, tagged #MentalHealthMonday, serve as a vehicle to share a wide variety of topics relevant to mental health, specifically as they relate to my own. I have shared lessons — big and small — using anecdotes from recent experiences or authentic reflections about how I feel — good and bad. — K.D.C.

In March 2024, I was presented with the incredible opportunity to become executive director of New England Youth Cycling (NEYC), a nonprofit with nearly 1,400 members dedicated to getting more kids on bikes. Despite some uncertainty, trepidation and acknowledgment of risk, I left my engineering profession to take the job.

The transition proved more challenging than I expected, with many road bumps. However, many of the lessons from my previous pursuits transcended their domains, proving to be directly applicable in my new role. The race-day jitters from my start-line experiences helped me connect with the hundreds of student-athletes. My entrepreneurial experience founding KellCat Devo prepared me to lead, and my engineering career taught me to find solace in well-defined meeting agendas, requirements and action items.

As with mountain biking, the obstacles and bumps in the path are relentless. But the work I am doing has the potential to make an immense impact on countless young athletes’ lives, which is more meaningful than I could have ever dreamed.

I have stood atop podiums and represented the U.S. in many countries, and for a long time, that honor was satisfying enough. However, my new relationship with elite sports has helped me realize that the ultimate honor is helping others reach their potential in a supportive community, something NEYC and KellCat Devo both offer in abundance.

Here I am at 34, living the dream in a very different way — and now, every Bucknell Magazine reader knows it too.

Bonding Over Bikes — and Bucknell

A few years after graduating from Bucknell, I began racing mountain bikes and started thinking about taking my racing to the next level. A friend recommended I connect with a talented cycling coach in Durham, N.C. I didn’t realize it when I first contacted him, but Benjamin Turits ’03 also went to Bucknell. In fact, we were both members of the Bucknell Cycling Club, albeit nine years apart. Ben is co-owner of The Endurance Collective, a company that offers performance coaching, sports massage and movement therapy. Ben started officially coaching me in late 2020 and helped transform my endurance and strength to compete on the world stage for marathon mountain biking. He has become a good friend and mentor for me and my own professional coaching endeavors. — K.D.C.

Team Sport

As the leader of Team KellKat Devo, Kelly Desharnais Catale ’12 mentors a group of six teenage athletes, including Schuyler Hagge and Tessa Avery.

Kelly Desharnais Catale, Schuyler Hagge and Tessa Avery, each wearing their KellCat Devo’s race “kit”, stand beside their bikes smiling in the middle of a clearing surrounded by trees
Kelly Desharnais Catale (center) picture with Schuyler Hagge and Tessa Avery, the trio, dressed in their KellCat Devo’s race “kit”, stand with alongside their bikes in the middle of a forest trail
close up of Kelly Desharnais Catale, Schuyler Hagge and Tessa Avery leaning on their mountain bikes in the middle of a forest
candid shot of Kelly Desharnais Catale, Schuyler Hagge and Tessa Avery sharing a moment of laugher while on a mountain biking trail
three cyclists in matching jerseys stand with their bikes on grass, surrounded by trees
Photos: April Bartholomew