Pathways
by BROOKE THAMES
Kelly Desharnais Catale ’12 came to Bucknell a track and field athlete but left a very different kind of racer.
After a broken femur forced her to hang up her spikes, Catale went looking for a new sport to satisfy her inner competitor.
“One of my friends kept telling me that I’d make a great cyclist, so I bought a bike and decided to join the Bucknell cycling club,” says Catale, who majored in biomedical engineering. “I fell in love with being out on the roads, riding through the countryside.”
These days, when she’s not managing medical engineering projects for Sunrise Labs in Bedford, N.H., you can find Catale claiming first place at major mountain-biking races around the country. As an elite racer, she competes against top cyclists on courses spanning up to 100 miles.
“About four years into my racing career, I decided to take it to the next level,” Catale says. “It had always been a dream of mine to represent my country, so I trained as hard as possible to make the national mountain biking team.”
That dream came true when Catale represented Team USA at the 2021 Union Cycliste Internationale Mountain Bike World Championships in Italy. Last fall, she again took on some of the best riders in the world at the 2022 World Championships in Denmark.
“It’s been an unbelievable journey,” says Catale, who placed 36th among 60 racers last year. “It feels full circle in a way; a lot of great things that I’ve experienced as an athlete are because of what I discovered at Bucknell.”
Kelly Desharnais Catale ’12 returned to Lewisburg in October 2022 to participate in unPAved, an off-road race through central Pennsylvania. She took first place among women.
photograph by douglas kilpatrick
Pathways
Kelly Desharnais Catale ’12 came to Bucknell a track and field athlete but left a very different kind of racer.
After a broken femur forced her to hang up her spikes, Catale went looking for a new sport to satisfy her inner competitor.
“One of my friends kept telling me that I’d make a great cyclist, so I bought a bike and decided to join the Bucknell cycling club,” says Catale, who majored in biomedical engineering. “I fell in love with being out on the roads, riding through the countryside.”
These days, when she’s not managing medical engineering projects for Sunrise Labs in Bedford, N.H., you can find Catale claiming first place at major mountain-biking races around the country. As an elite racer, she competes against top cyclists on courses spanning up to 100 miles.
“About four years into my racing career, I decided to take it to the next level,” Catale says. “It had always been a dream of mine to represent my country, so I trained as hard as possible to make the national mountain biking team.”
That dream came true when Catale represented Team USA at the 2021 Union Cycliste Internationale Mountain Bike World Championships in Italy. Last fall, she again took on some of the best riders in the world at the 2022 World Championships in Denmark.
“It’s been an unbelievable journey,” says Catale, who placed 36th among 60 racers last year. “It feels full circle in a way; a lot of great things that I’ve experienced as an athlete are because of what I discovered at Bucknell.”
Kelly Desharnais Catale ’12 returned to Lewisburg in October 2022 to participate in unPAved, an off-road race through central Pennsylvania. She took first place among women.