Jingle Cross, Iowa City’s weekend cyclocross festival, will donate all of its proceeds to the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital.
By Sarah Watson
Spectators sip the last dregs of beer, the course lights power off, and cyclists park their bikes for the night as the second day of the Jingle Cross Festival comes to a close.
This may be a common scene for other cyclocross competitions, but everything at Iowa City’s festival was set up by volunteers.
All the money raised from this weekend’s festival will be donated to the new University of Iowa Children’s Hospital.
Race Director John Meehan, a graduate of the University of Iowa College of Medicine, now works as a pediatric surgeon in Seattle, Washington, but returns every year to direct the annual Jingle Cross Festival.
“I got my career start here,” Meehan said. “I went to medical school here, I got a very exciting career in robotic surgery, and it’s all because the University of Iowa supported me through medical school and encouraged me. This is my way to try to give back to a community I love very much.”
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The Jingle Cross Festival is the first stop on the Cyclocross World Cup nine-race series. The second race will be in Waterloo, Wisconsin, and is put on entirely by Trek, a major bicycle corporation. Meehan said Iowa City’s race operates differently because it’s an entirely volunteer-run and nonprofit event.
“Trek is putting on a wonderful event, but we don’t have the resources that they do,” Meehan said. “The community is putting this race on. I’m just the guy who makes phone calls.”
Meehan said about 400 to 500 volunteers helped build the course, including course marshals, registering cyclists. They will also tear the course down at the end of the weekend.
“There is no way I could put this race on in Seattle,” Meehan said. “The people here are unique; they are incredible.”
United Way of Johnson and Washington Counties posted volunteer jobs online for a second year.
“We’ve had a lot of returning volunteers coming in for multiple days,” said Wendy Nolan, a United Way employee and main orchestrator of the online volunteer registration. “Volunteers come for a shift and they have so much fun, and they see what the need is, how great it represents the community, and they want to volunteer more.”
Maria Roberts, a returning volunteer and RAGBRAI enthusiast, said volunteering for cyclocross helped her discover a new realm of cycling.
“I didn’t realize that there was something like an all-terrain cycling race here in Iowa until my work had it advertised,” Roberts said. “I do a couple days of RAGBRAI and that is pretty leisurely, but this is my second year volunteering at cyclocross and I really enjoy it.”
The Jingle Cross Festival originally took place in December, but it was moved up into September two years ago to accommodate the Cyclocross World Cup, when Meehan and Josh Schamberger, president of Iowa City and Coralville Convention and Visitors Bureau, bid for a two-year contract.
Meehan said he wasn’t sure yet if the festival would continue to host the event next year and fundraise for the community.
A small portion of the race’s revenue comes from admission sales, Meehan said. Instead, merchandise, beer, food vendors fees, sponsorships, and registration fees are where the Jingle Cross Festival accumulates most of the donation money.
“I would be delighted to continue to do this as long as we can,” Meehan said. “It’s a lot of work for a lot of people, and we really need the community to come out, be here, see it, and help us raise the money.”
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